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Like most African folklore, Swahili
tales feature crafty animals pitted
against each other in a struggle
between good and evil. And, as in
Aesop’s Fables, the moral of the
story almost always is that the good
will live happily ever after.
ong ago, a young monkey lived
alone in a huge baobab tree hanging
over the sparkling Indian Ocean.
One day, a shark swam up to the
monkey’s tree and the unlikely duo
became friends. After sharing fruit
the monkey had gathered from
nearby trees, the shark invited his
friend to come visit his home in the sea. But as the two swam down into the
ocean, the shark confessed that he was actually taking the monkey to the
Sultan of the Sharks. The Sultan had fallen ill, the shark said, and the healer
had prescribed a monkey heart as the only way to save his life. Terrified, the
monkey told the shark that he had left his heart hanging back in the tree. The
pair returned to the surface and the monkey scampered high up into the baobab.
After awhile, when the monkey didn’t return, the shark got anxious and yelled up
to the monkey, "Have you found your heart yet? Bring it down, so that we can
return!” But the monkey replied, "My heart is where it always has been . . . In
my CHEST!”
“Go away, go find some other foolish monkey!"
And to this day, the monkey may go near the water, but he is too smart to be
persuaded any closer into the beautiful, but dangerous Indian Ocean.
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