Ethiopian Folktales

Narrated by Belay Makura

A baboon and a monkey were friends. The monkey was clever. He enjoys himself at weddings, he steals food and he dances, making sounds like “qua, qua, qua”, and the baboon also in his own way says, “qua, qua, qua, whom, whom.”

“Where are you? Where are you?” he says in his own voice.

He says this to call his friend, so that they can come together and have a feast. So they scold each other.

“Qua,qua, you have no nose, your bottom is bald, sitting on a hot stone,” they say to each other, but they are still friends and call each other to steal and eat grain from the field.

The monkey says to the baboon, “How can you say this to me? Let’s have a race and see who gets to the field first.”

So they compete in this way, and one day the monkey said, “Let’s jump off this tree and see who wins.”

The monkey chose a nice place to jump into the water and lived, but the baboon jumped into the deep place and died.

So the monkey was very clever, because he was the one who chose a good place and the baboon chose a bad place and he died.