South African Folktales - Reading Diary B

The second part of this unit was full of more great stories from South African Folktales. A lot of the stories used animals as characters and the folktales used many of the same characters throughout the various folktales. I was really surprised to find that some of the stories were pretty dark. For example in the folktale, Jackal and Monkey, the jackal tricks the monkey into a trap made by the farmer. The farmer made the trap to catch the animal who had been stealing his sheep. The notorious jackal was caught after stealing a sheep and the monkey taunted him. The jackal tricked the monkey into letting him out of the trap and the monkey was caught in replace of the jackal. The jackal wouldn't help the monkey escape and left him to receive the wrath of the farmer. When the farmer arrived to the trap in the morning, he saw the monkey and believed it was the animal stealing his sheep. He shot the monkey and the jackal lived another day.

(chacma baboon)