Short story – How buffaloes became cows

The rainstorms of 1782 filled up Ngami Lake and drowned the reeds, while the people milked rabbit-sized giraffes.

Afterwards, the wind gently stirred the rippling water before the sun kissed the treetops. By now, the villagers bathed in the neck-deep pool, while the smiling sun filmed their rain worshipping rituals.

Later, the sun dipped and ballooned tummies; children climbed the trees for the night. The next morning, a herd of cow-like animals showed up. These were the grey buffaloes wallowing in the mud, and greedily grazing the turfy grass around the lake.

This time, the inhabitants halted the grey cows with soft bark peeled from trees and chopped acacias for the bush-fenced kraals. Furthermore, they snared the mane-hair lions preying on their tamed buffaloes and stitched the first skirts and hand-sewed blankets from buffaloes’ skins.

Immediately, a quarrel broke out among the Ngami tribe because nobody could single out his cows. The fistfights erupted because the buffaloes grunted in the same way and looked alike. Soon the warriors stabbed each other with stick spears and raided each other’s grey cows.

Immediately, the c-thorns skirt chief gathered people under a fake-umbrella tree and charmed the war-like clans to paint their buffaloes. In response, the kudu clan dyed its cows white, and soon the cows gave birth to white calves.

On the other hand, the chameleon clan coloured its cows black, and the calves were born kiwi black. In addition, the lion clan painted its cows yellow by mixing golden-yellow fluffs with water. For two weeks, the ombara marching in hooves’ shoes happily reigned without any scuffles. However, quarrels started again, as the herders raided each other’s cows because they mooed the same way.

Luckily, the bewitched chief suffered scratching coughs; and soon the cows copied his coughs as mooing sounds. A small herd of cows bellowed because the lake dwellers weaned the calves. The cows now had different colours and mooing sound, and some farmers chopped the cows’ horns to easily identify them. Strangely, these cows calved hornless calves from then on.

Later, the branch-hat chief bribed people with churned milk, so they could nickname the cows. “Will cows hear their names?” chuckled Kauakovere, a pregnant-tummy man who owned as many cows as the brandy berries.

“Do cattle posts remember their names?” asked Kuzema, a bone-and-skin man answering with a wisdom-tooth rhetoric.

The practice of nicknaming cows discontinued as Chief Ngombe instructed young men to escort the cows to the red-dunes cattle posts. In the end, the clans plastered their huts with cows’ poo, and the horns were cut into body lotion containers. By 1972, the cattle people still stomped their feet or clapped their hands, while singing and praising the multihued cows.

-Mungambue@gmail.co

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