Page:Where Animals Talk (West African folk lore tales).djvu/183



Ukanakâdi lived in his great house, having with him his many wives. One of them bore him a son whom he named Lombolokindi.

As time passed on, the child grew in size, and strength, and skill. Because of this, his mother was treated by Ukanakâdi with special favor. This aroused the jealousy of one of the other wives. She took the child one day, and secretly gave him a certain evil medicine, which caused him to be constantly hungry, hungry, hungry. Even when he ate enormously, no amount of food could fill his stomach or satisfy his appetite.

Ukanakâdi finally was angry at the child, and said to the mother, "A11 the food of my plantations is finished, eaten up by your child. We have no more plantains, no more cassava, no more eddoes, nor anything else in our plantations or in our kitchen-gardens. You have brought a curse upon us! Go away to your father's house!" (He said this, not knowing that a Fetish-Medicine had caused all the trouble.)

So the mother went away with her child to her father's house. But there too, the boy ate up all the food of the gardens, until there was none left. Then her father said to her, "All my food is done here; go with your child to your grandfather, and find food there."

So, she went to her grandfather's. But there the same trouble followed.

After she had been there some time, and the child was now a stout lad, and she saw that they were no longer welcome,