THERE WAS ONCE UPON A TIME an old man who lived in a kraal with his neighbors. And this old man had a wife and a small child, and he possessed a very fine ox.
One day he said to himself, “How shall I slaughter my ox?” And he said aloud to his wife, “My child! I will call the men and tell them that I am going to move. We can then slaughter our ox all by ourselves.”
His wife agreed and, in the evening, the old man blew his horn as a signal to his friends that he had something to tell them. His neighbors came together, and he told them that he wished to move, as the air did not agree with him. The others consented, and in the morning he saddled his donkeys, separated his cattle from the rest, and started off, accompanied by his wife, who was carrying the child.
When they had gone some distance, they halted and erected their kraal, after which they rested.
At dawn on the second day the old man called his wife and asked her why they had not yet slaughtered their ox. The woman replied, “My husband! How shall we manage to slaughter the ox? There are two things to be considered – the first is that we have no herdsman and the second that I am carrying the baby.”
The old man then said, “Oh, I know what we will do. I will stab the ox in the neck, then I will leave you to skin it, and I will carry the child to the grazing ground. But when you have skinned the animal, roast some meat so that it will be ready on my return.”
The old man then killed the ox, after which he picked up his bow and grass, and went to drive back the cattle, for they had wandered far. But when he returned to the spot where he had left the child, he was unable to find it, so he decided to set fire to the grass. “When the fire reaches the child, it will cry, ” he thought, “And I will run to the place and pick it up before it is burned.”
He made a fired with his fire-sticks, and the fire travelled to where the child was . He ran to the spot, but when he reached it, he found that the child was dead.
The old man had left his wife in the morning skinning the ox. And while she was skinning it – she had just reached the dewlap – the knife slipped, and she stabbed herself in the eye. She went and lay down, and the birds came and finished the meat.
After the child was burned, the old man drove the cattle to the kraal, and when they were opposite to the gate, he heard his wife weeping, and saying, “Oh my eye!’ He therefore asked her who had told her the news.
“What news?” she inquired.
“The child has been burned,” he replied.
The woman exclaimed, “Oh, my child!”
The old man then asked where his meat was, and his wife informed him that the birds had eaten it, whereupon he cried out, “Oh, my meat!”
They both wept, the old man crying, “Oh my meat!” and the woman, “Oh, my child! Oh my eye!”
Look well at these people. It was for their greed that they were punished. They lost their child and their ox, the woman lost her eye, and they had to return in shame to their former home.
[ MASAI ]