Ethiopian Folktales

Narrated by Fatima Ali

There was a poor farmer who had only one ox. Every time he asked to borrow another ox to plough, they always turned him down.

“You only beg,” they said to him.

Then one day, a man gave the poor farmer an ox. While he was ploughing one day, he found a pot full of gold. He hid it. Then he cut off the foot of the ox.

Then people came and said, “Why do you do that?”

He said, “I don’t want it. Let it be for the poor.”

They said, “Why do you do that, since you are poor and you have nothing to eat at home?”

But still he did it, and said, “God gave me the ox, so it can be meat for the poor.”

So they cut it up and shared it out, but they couldn’t understand.

When he came home he said to his wife, “Give me a sack and come with me.”

And they went and dug up the gold.

After that he became rich and he got all his wealth and he was a man who always gave alms to God.