Kintu and Nambi

The story

In the beginning, Kintu was alone.

He had a cow, and a land with no name all around him. He drank her milk, slept under a tree and, in the evenings, talked to the cow the way you talk to a friend. The cow listened, chewed and gazed into the distance. Kintu did not know he was the first man. He only knew he was very, very lonely.

One day, some young people came down from the sky.

They were the children of Gulu, the lord of the sky, and they came to earth to play, without their father knowing. Among them was a girl, Nambi, light on her feet and quick to laugh. She stopped to watch Kintu milking his cow, and asked him what that white liquid was.

“Milk,” said Kintu. “Would you like some?”

Nambi's brothers wrinkled their noses: you don't eat what you don't know. But she tasted it and laughed. She came back the next day, and the day after that. When she went up to the sky for the last time, she had already made up her mind.

“Father,” she said to Gulu, “I want to marry that man.”

Gulu was not pleased. The children of the sky do not mix with the people of the earth, and besides, one of his sons, Walumbe, was more against it than all the others. But Gulu was also a fair father, and he decided not to refuse. He decided to put Kintu to the test.

Kintu climbed up to the sky, and the tests began.

The first was food. Gulu had enough food brought out to feed a whole village, and said: “Eat it all, if you want my daughter.”

Kintu looked at the trays, piled like a mountain. No man could have done it. But Nambi had whispered to him to look at the floor of the hut, where there was a deep hole. Kintu ate what he could and hid the rest in the hole, one mouthful after another. When Gulu came back, the dishes were empty.

The second test was firewood. Gulu gave him an axe and pointed to a rock: “Turn that into firewood.” Kintu raised the axe, brought it down, and nothing happened. The rock was as smooth as an egg. He tried again, and again. At last, when his back was aching all over, the rock split open along a seam no one had seen, and firewood came out.

The third test was water. “Bring me water,” said Gulu, “but not from the wells, and not from the rivers. I want dew.” Kintu went out at dawn into the wet meadow and spent hours gathering every drop with a leaf, until he had filled a jar.

The last test was the hardest.

Gulu opened an enclosure, and out came an immense herd. Cows of every colour, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, all with long horns and glossy coats. One of them was Kintu's cow, which Gulu had had stolen and mixed in with the others.

“If you can find her,” he said, “you have won.”

Kintu walked among the animals and felt his heart sink. They were all the same. All with big, moist eyes, all with the same smell. He looked at one cow, then another, and no longer knew what he was looking for.

At that moment, out of the air, came a bee.

It circled Kintu's head, as if calling him, and landed on the horns of a cow. Then on the horns of another. Then it went back to the first, and stayed there, quite still. She was his. Perhaps Nambi had sent the bee. Perhaps it simply knew who the cow's friend was.

“This one,” said Kintu. “This one is mine.”

Gulu was silent for a long moment.

“You have won,” he said. “Take my daughter.”

As a wedding gift Gulu gave him more cows, goats and sheep, a hen, and plants to sow: everything a man needed to build a life. Then he gave an order, just one, in a voice that allowed no argument.

“Leave at once. And whatever you may have forgotten, do not come back for it. If you come back, your brother Walumbe will see you. And if he sees you, he will follow you.”

Walumbe was Death.

Kintu and Nambi went down from the sky, with the animals following them in a line. The light was soft, the earth was soft, the grass was green. They had almost arrived when Nambi stopped.

“The millet,” she said, a hand over her mouth. “I forgot the millet for the hen.”

“Leave it,” said Kintu. “We'll find more. Your father told us not to go back.”

“But how will the hen eat?”

Kintu should have insisted. He didn't. Nambi ran back up the path, took the millet and was about to set off again when, at the door, she found Walumbe, arms folded.

“Where are you going?” he asked. “I want to come with you.”

Gulu, far away, shook his head. “I told you so,” he murmured. But he could no longer stop it.

On earth, for a while, there was nothing but celebration. Children were born, the herds grew, fields and the first houses appeared. Kintu and Nambi were no longer alone. But Walumbe, who had followed them, would not leave. One day he asked Kintu for one of his children, to be his servant. Kintu said no.

Soon afterwards, the children began to fall ill, one at a time.

Then Kintu went back to Gulu, walking like someone with no strength left. Gulu listened and did not scold him. He sent another of his sons, Kayikuuzi, to catch Walumbe and bring him back to the sky.

Kayikuuzi came down to earth, found his brother and grabbed him. Walumbe twisted free. He slipped away, threw himself into a hole in the ground and sank deep into the earth.

Kayikuuzi began to dig. But it was slow work, and to hear where his brother was going, everyone had to keep quiet. He told the people: “Make no noise.” But the children, who did not understand, shouted; Walumbe took fright and went down even deeper. Kayikuuzi went back to the sky empty-handed.

Since then, Death has lived under the earth, and when someone's time comes, it is he who calls them. People go on being born, sowing, building. And every evening, when the children play in the grass, the earth beneath them stays silent.