Grandmother's stories
Mutai Chepkoech
Marleen Visser
We often gathered at grandmother's house to listen to her stories. We liked to sit around the fire, under the stars on a cow skin. Grandmother began her last story for the night, "Hare and Elephant were neighbours and friends."
Hare liked mushrooms, but he was too lazy to farm. So he stole Elephant's mushrooms. Elephant had planted bananas and pumpkins that year. So there were no mushrooms for Hare.
Hare went without food for many days. Then he decided to steal Elephant's bananas. Elephant noticed that someone was stealing his bananas. He went to Hare and said, "Someone is stealing from me."
Hare asked, "Who is the thief?" Elephant began to sing, "I will catch the thief! Aaah! I will catch the thief! Ooo!" Hare felt nervous.
Elephant asked Monkey to watch his farm. But Hare did not steal that day or that night. Nor the next day or night. Monkey became tired of watching.
The following day, Hare went to Elephant's farm to steal again. When Elephant came to check on his crops, Hare hid amongst the pumpkin leaves.
Elephant saw leaves move and began singing, "I've caught the thief! Aah! I've caught the thief! Ooo!" Elephant searched everywhere but did not find the thief.
On another day, Hare was there helping himself to Elephant's crops. Elephant arrived at the farm and Hare jumped inside a huge pumpkin to hide.
Elephant noticed the large pumpkin and said, "Ooo! Here is a big pumpkin. I'll eat that for lunch." And he swallowed the pumpkin whole!
Hare tried to jump out of the pumpkin, but could not. Elephant felt something jumping in his stomach and said, "What kind of pumpkin is this that jumps in my stomach?"
Elephant spat out the pumpkin. Before he could examine it, Hare burst out of the pumpkin and ran away as fast as he could. Elephant never caught the thief.
Grandmother said, "And that is the end of the story." "Thank you grandmother," we sleepily chorused. Then we went to bed thinking about grandmother's stories.
You are free to download, copy, translate or adapt this story and use the illustrations as long as you attribute in the following way:
Grandmother's stories
Author - Mutai Chepkoech
Illustration - Marleen Visser
Language - English
Level - First paragraphs
© African Storybook Initiative 2016
Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0
Source www.africanstorybook.org
