Part One of a new shelf: tales of the Ba-Ronga of Delagoa Bay, from Les chants et les contes des Ba-Ronga de la baie de Delagoa (Lausanne: Georges Bridel & Cie, 1897) by Henri-Alexandre Junod (1863–1934) of the Swiss Romande Mission, who collected these stories around Lourenço Marques and the mission station of Rikatla, from the tellers of the Ronga villages themselves, and printed them in French; the English you hear is a fresh translation made for this programme. Billed by collector, book and people, exactly as the source prints them; not a survey of all the traditions of Mozambique, and no completeness is claimed. Every tale in the book was read in full, in book order, under this shelf's standing rule, and most were set aside — every one stands named, with its reason, in the shelf register.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Nabandji, the Girl of the Toads — a young man insists on choosing his own bride, against his parents' warning, and brings home a wife who will not eat: for in her far country the people carry a second, hidden mouth at the nape of the neck, and Nabandji's food is the green grass of the bush and the toads of the lake, until her husband's magic song shows the whole village what she is. The Year of the Famine — in a year of hunger, a husband digs up the family's buried dowry hoes, buys maize, and hides it in the forest to eat alone, while his wife and children go hungry; but his wife follows him, finds the hiding place, and keeps her knowledge until the day of the beer feast, when she digs the basket up before both their families.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:52 Nabandji, the Girl of the Toads
9:58 The Year of the Famine
Henri-Alexandre Junod, Les chants et les contes des Ba-Ronga (Georges Bridel, 1897) — public domain.
Narrated by Morgana. Music: opening and closing theme, "The River's Dying Vision," also heard as a short separator between the stories — the tales themselves are read dry.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
Ba-Ronga tales · Delagoa Bay · Mozambique folk tales · Henri Junod · Nabandji · African folk tales · Ronga stories · world folk tales · free audiobook
