Chains broken

A storm in the Caribbean. A terrible storm. The slave ship was thrown from one wave to another.

"This ship will go down. A hole in the hull. Chains broken."

"We'll swim free. Slaves no longer."

"We'll settle on an island. We'll start our own place ..."

"We'll call ourselves the Garifuna."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"I don't like it."

"The Trayorays."

"Yuch."

"The Jabartays."

"Never."

Then there was a fight. Tooth and nail. Blood and murder. Ears bitten off, eyes gouged. As this was happening the storm ended. The ship sailed free and continued on under a calm moon. The fight faltered. Calm, calm and depression, settled over the hold.

"The Garifuna then."

Silence.

"I still don't like it."

Music

A Kazakh man began to play his dombra indoors.

"That's an outdoor sound, like a galloping horse," said a visitor from another country who had dropped by to observe the native customs. "Why don't you play outdoors?"

"That would be overkill."

"Then," the visitor said, "why don't you find an indoor instrument and play it out of doors?"

"Put my hat outside."

The visitor did.

"There," said the musician. Then he continued to play the dombra.

Modern inconveniences: greedy griots

The woman gave a griot money and in exchange he sang a song in her honour, telling her that she was wonderful, that her husband was handsome, and that her son would one day be rich and take care of his mother in her old age.

So it came to pass.

The griot, hearing that his song had come true, returned to the woman and said: Give me twice as much money again or I'll sing the opposite.

No.

So the griot sang the opposite. Then the son lost all of his money in an email scam, the husband fell into a vat of boiling beer, and the woman woke one day to discover that she was not wonderful after all.

Arrest that griot! she told the authorities.

But the authorities backed away, saying, No, thank you, no, he might put that curse on us as well, no.

The woman roared.

You modern men! How can you believe in that superstitious rubbish!

Here!

She gave the griot his money.

Now piss off!

He did.

I'll never believe in the authorities again!

She never did.

The History of Polar Bears

1500
There was a polar bear.

1600
There was a polar bear.

1700
There was a polar bear

1800
There was a polar bear

1900
There was a polar bear.

2000
There was a polar bear

Experimental production of emotions, continued.

"What's that noise?" they said in the new South Africa. People of all races were united in puzzlement.

It was the elves, come to complain that they were being exploited and underappreciated: they wanted a slice of the economic pie, they wanted good houses, fair treatment, and dignity in labour.

"Look: they are doing a toyi-toyi," one old ANC man said. "That's so cute."

"Meat not milk!" the elves shouted. "Dignity for elves!"

"So adorable. Give them a toadstool, see what they do."

"Oo!"

The elves sat on the toadstool and the protest was over.

Now there was a toadstool in the street blocking traffic.

"Bloody elves."



-----
The end of apartheid, the employment of the elves.

Islands

The Wodaabe man with a stripe painted down the centre of his face stood by his friend looking extraordinarily slender, elegant, and smooth.

At the same moment a tortoise stood on a rock in the Galapagos Islands looking extraordinarily squat, blunt, and knobbly.

Nature, sensing that the co-existence of extreme opposites created something like a vacuum of meaning, sent a vision of the Wodaabe to the tortoise, and a vision of the tortoise to the Wodaabe. But the tortoise had never seen a Wodaabe before, and the Wodaabe had never seen a Galapagos tortoise, so each one saw the other translated into a physical language they could understand. The tortoise saw a tall, thin female tortoise with a stripe marked on her beak, and the Wodaabe man saw a warty Wodaabe woman under a basket. They spent the rest of their lives searching for this being, which, they felt, was the only thing that would make them whole.

Proof

"Moa are easy to kill," boasted the Maori warrior. "I smacked one on the head and it died."

"That's nothing. I smacked one on the head and the one next to it died."

"Ha! I just have to look at them and they die."

"They do not."

"They do so."

He proved it.

"Well fiddle dee dee!"