Reading Notes: Nigeria, Part A

Nigeria Unit:

The Elephant and the Tortoise or Why Worms are Blind and Why the Elephant has Small Eyes
(Story Source:  Folk Stories From Southern Nigeria by Elphinstone Dayrell (1910).)

• Long ago (when Ambo was the king of Calabar), the elephant was a large animal that had eyes that were proportional to his large body size
• The people and animals were friends and would intermingle without problems
• The king would often have big feasts at his house
• The elephant would eat everything... So much that this angered the tortoise, who decided to plot against the elephant
• The tortoise filled a bag with dry kernels and shrimp (the elephant loved these), and he went to the elephant's house to act out his plan
• When the tortoise arrived, the elephant greeted him and told him to get comfortable
• The tortoise shut one of his eyes and started eating the food from the bag
• This made the elephant very hungry
• He asked the tortoise if he could have some, and the tortoise told him that he could only if he could removed his eye like the tortoise had claimed to do
• The elephant agreed and let the tortoise cut out his eye
• This hurt him badly but he forgot the pain as soon as he began to eat
• After eating some of the food, the elephant wanted some more to eat
• The tortoise told him that he could only if he cut his eye out... so he did
• In response, the tortoise hid and left the elephant blind
• The next morning, the elephant began to ask the people passing by if they would lend him a pair of eyes but everyone declined
• When a worm was crawling past, the elephant greeting him kindly, which charmed the worm
• He then asked to borrow his eyes and told him that he would return them in a few days
• Because he was so charmed, the worm agreed and the elephant put the tiny eyeballs into his sockets
• The skin around immediately closed up...
• After not being able to return the eyeballs to the worm, the elephant would ignore the pleas of the worm, and would instead yell out that he would stomp on the worms if they got in his way
• Ever since, worms have been blind and elephants have had tiny eyes

(Into the Eye of the Elephant. Source: Wikimedia Commons)