Ethiopian Folktales

Narrated by Degen Ali Adem

Once there was a cannibal woman in a village and people in the village were afraid of her in case she came to eat them.

There was a family in the village, and the husband had to travel away, and he said to his wife, “Please don’t open the door at night. There is a cannibal woman around who eats people. So be careful.”

So off he went.

In the evening the cannibal woman came and knocked on the door. The woman was alone.

“Who are you?”

She said she was the woman’s husband, so the woman opened the door. As soon as the cannibal came in, she ate the woman and put on her dress.

Then the woman’s husband came home. He had gone (because he was a nomad) to find grass and water. He had found a good place with other men of the village and they wanted to move to the place they had surveyed and selected. So all the families started to pack up their houses and go to the new place.

When the man came home he thought the woman was his wife, because she was wearing her clothes. He ordered her to pack.

His wife had been pregnant. The cannibal woman had put the remains of the woman and the baby into a hole. And she made an artificial pregnancy.

Soon all was packed and they went on their way. The family had one dog, one hen, one cat, one camel, one cow, one goat and one sheep. When she tried to milk the camel, it ran away. When she got near to any of the animals they ran away. The man wondered why.

Then at last he saw that this woman was not his wife but a cannibal woman. He killed her. He had suspected because of the animals, then he looked and found his wife’s body and his child’s.

That is the story.