Tingane-Kwane

Which means...stories.  Or folktales.  Or children's stories.  Not to be confused with tindzaba, which are also stories, but stories that are true-ish, or explain something, or are possibly a report and/or meeting.  Also, tingane-kwane almost always contain a song as part of the story, but those songs have their own word that I haven't quite figured out.

Anyways, I've been interviewing and transcribing like a fiend lately.  More interviewing than transcribing really.  Turns out I hate transcribing.  I'm just going to pay my research assistants to do it while I lay on a beach in Mozambique.  I think this is what it feel like to be half a step up from the absolute bottom of the food chain.

One of the most popular characters that keeps coming up in these stories is a guy/girl named Ncjane.  (Incidentally, SiSwati is a really complicated language that doesn't always designate gender, and animal words tend to be genderless so...a lot of these stories may or may not be gender neutral?  Which is completely fascinating in a country where gender is such a defining aspect of every part of your life).

Ncjane is a trickster.  S/he is like coyote, or Anansi.  He just goes around screwing with people and demonstrating all around cleverness.  Sometimes ncjane is a jackal, but more often s/he is a rabbit.

As told by my informants:

Ncjane, the Elephant, and the Hippos

“Ncjane was taken as a very clever animal.  So she went to an elephant.  And then she said to the elephant, ”Big as you are I can pull you down to the river”  And then the elephant said, “Who, you?  A tiny thing like this?”  Ncjane said, “I can do it!”  And then he went to a damn of hippos.  He came to a hippo, a big hippo.  He said, “I can pull you out of this!”  And they said, “What, you!?”  “I’ll show you!”  So he got a very strong rope, gave it to the elephant.  And to that one he said, I’ll be in the pool myself so that I can pull you.  And then, he gave it to the hippo and said “because I want to pull you out!”  So…these two big animals had to pull and pull! 

            That story, they are trying to show that...don’t think, because you are big you can think bigger than a small thing.”

The above is hysterical in person, I promise.  As is this one:

Ncjane and the Lion’s Den

 Now this story, it goes like this:

            “There was this animal, the lion.  The strongest animal in the woodlands.  Now, because it was kind of going out and hunting for food, and at the end of they day was always coming up with nothing, then it said to itself, “I’m going to stay inside my cave and pretend to be sick.  And I’m going to scream for help.  Each and every hour scream for help.  So that when an animal comes inside…I mean, it will ask outside ‘what is happening?  What is happening?’  I will say, ‘come in my friend, and help me.”  And when the animal comes inside, he pounces on that animal and eats him.  Such that it went on that way, it caught several several unsuspicious animals.  Until that time that that animal he talked about –Ncjane!  Ncjane he came.  And he said, “How.  Why are you crying so loud?  What is wrong with you?”  [The lion] said, “Ah…I am very sick.  I urgently need your help my friend.  If you could only come in.”  And then Ncjane said, “No.  I want so much to come in and help you.  But when I look down I can see some of the feet of animals going in.  But I don’t see them coming out!  So I’m afraid I won’t be able to help.”