RETURN OF AN ANGRY COBRA (Part Two)
By Baba Galleh Jallow



One week to the great day, and still no challenger to the great cobra.
Streams of our village folks had taken to visiting Korr Yandeh’s compound to
dissuade him from contesting, should in case any one decided to take up his
challenge. ‘You are our chief,’ they would say, ‘and you surely are no match
for any of these kids. So please withdraw,’ they pleaded. But the great
cobra was adamant. ‘A cobra does not walk backwards,’ he reminded them. ‘An
old lion does not retreat in the face of a young ram!’
        And so the challenge remained open. To make it more attractive, Korr Yandeh
now announced that whoever threw him down would have three cows and a full
barn of millet as prizes. But even this attractive offer did not seem strong
enough to lure any young man into accepting the challenge of our angry
cobra.
As the day drew nearer, tales of the great exploits of Korr Yandeh in his
youthful days assumed legendary proportions. Tales of how the mighty
Nyangorr threw down the wrestlers of entire villages were narrated with
remarkable gusto by the elders of our little village. Largely ignored under
normal circumstances, the old people cherished the great attention paid to
their tales of Korr Yandeh’s exploits by the younger generations. ‘Ah,’ they
would nostalgically exclaim; ‘those were days. You should have seen
Nyangorr. He was the best at lagga dancing far and wide and there was just
no wrestler who could throw him down. For him, it was always lambi gollo,
monkey wrestling, who gets up, goes down!’
Korr Yandeh himself took no chances. Since he threw the challenge, he had
taken to eating lots of roast meet every day and drinking lots of milk to
shore up his energy reserves. He also asked to be rubbed with peanut butter
and thoroughly massaged every night before he retired to bed and every
morning before he got out of bed. Now, one week to the great day, Korr
Yandeh had taken to walking alone into the bush every evening to practice
his famous cobra dance and simulate his dangerous tricks. He would rush at a
tree trunk and throw his might against it and try to move it by pushing and
shoving and pushing and shoving. Then he would stand back to catch his
breadth before flinging himself against the trunk again. He had to make sure
that if he flung himself against any man, he would uproot him like a leave
of grass. This was what he did in his youthful days and this was what he
would do now.
Then, tired of wrestling the tree, Korr Yandeh would crouch like a tiger and
practice his cobra dance. He would slither and twist and hiss once a while
and rush fast forward and stop and fiercely glance around. He would prowl
again and spring forward and loudly hiss. Then he would straighten up and
start his dance all over again. Just before sunset, he would head back home.
Korr Yandeh’s lonely evening escapades soon got the village rumour mill
grinding and churning out diverse tales of wonder, much to the secret
pleasure of Korr Yandeh. Some tales had it that he went out to consult his
jinns while others said that he actually had a real cobra friend from whom
he went to get some magical powers. As he was so feared, no one ventured to
ask Korr Yandeh what he went to do in the bush. His faithful cronies
however, made sure that he heard first hand accounts of all the tales
circulating in the village. Korr Yandeh would patiently listen to them and
would wear a knowing look in his eyes. He would sagely nod and groan and
slowly shake his head and say, ‘youth is strength, age is wisdom, that’s
what I say.’


_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------