Country: Chad | Our Mythical Childhood Survey

Siddi Hamadou

In a very long distant past in Hadjarai in the Northern part of Chad, a basket-maker met Mr. Death, who was going to the market to sell his teeth. When Death realized that the basket-maker was lacking one tooth, he offered her a tooth, which she tried to fit in. Once she put the tooth in the hollow space in her mouth, it stuck and couldn’t come out. Death cried: “Give back my tooth”. The basket-maker tried in vain to remove the tooth. She promised to give Death a stable full of(...)

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COUNTRY: Chad

TAGS: African Mythologies African Storytelling African Traditions

Beyana Ngarbaï

Kazaye and the Horn of Abundance

There was once a hunter in the village of Lere, in the Mayo Kebi East area of N’djamena in Chad. He was called Kazaye. He always hunted to feed his family, and would keep fruits for them upon return home. One fateful day during his hunting expedition, he felt itches on his body and decided to take a bath in the river. While taking his bath, he happened to touch a hard and twisted object (a horn) inside the water. He immediately took it out of the water and out of curiosity, started singing(...)

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COUNTRY: Chad

TAGS: African Mythologies African Storytelling African Traditions Cornucopia

Guidang Danzabe

Matching, the Rainmaker

The myth goes that one day among the Mundang people the chief’s daughters decided to go and look for walnuts and millet stalks, to fabricate vegetable salt. On their way, they arrived in the village of the wicked (devils) and everything there was strange. The sap of a cactus was the only thing to take as liquid in that land. They collected some to drink on the way. These girls, who were constantly very thirsty, finished the sap from their cactus on the way before reaching their final desti(...)

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COUNTRY: Chad

TAGS: African Mythologies African Storytelling African Traditions Seasons

Losngar Nodjidoumngar

Metamorphosis [Njeh bôlh je]

In ancient times, the Mbanga people lived and interacted with animals and trees in their everyday activities. Among those people, there was a man called Bath, who could transform into an owl, a hippopotamus and a lion at the same time. One day, he discovered that another man in a far off tribe, called Mongh, had the herb that could give a person the power to transform into other creatures, just like his own plant did. The challenge for Bath now was how to get to Mongh’s place and steal tha(...)

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COUNTRY: Chad

TAGS: African Mythologies African Storytelling African Traditions

Mohamadou Houlaï

Myth of the Origin of the Logone River

In the long distant time in the past, the Sao people who live in a very vast territory had all the riches that God bestowed upon them. These included fertile lands, beautiful women and physically strong men. God had an agreement with their leader, where He promised not to refuse any of their requests for additional bounties. These people were unusually very tall and well-built such that they could reach the sky, the house of God, just by stretching up their hand. In the local language it is said(...)

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COUNTRY: Chad

TAGS: African Mythologies African Storytelling African Traditions Giants Gods

Brey Houzibe

Origin of Ancestral Worship

In the olden days, there lived a patriarch by the name Akoa among the Garap people of Abeche in the Northern part of Chad. He was a member of the council of elders of the village. In this village there were certain hours of the afternoon which were believed to be dangerous for any person to be out in the farm or near a certain river. This hour was the time that the inhabitants of the underworld would come out to take a rest in the human world. Akoa, the patriarch violated this tradition by going(...)

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COUNTRY: Chad

TAGS: African Mythologies African Storytelling African Traditions

Beyana Ngarbaï

Ping the Precious Monkey

From the beginning of time, when the women of the Pala clan in the western part of Chad were pregnant, there was only one way for them to give birth - their wombs had to be opened with a knife to remove the baby, and they would inevitably die in the process. One day a pregnant woman, realizing that she would soon go through the same fatal process, escaped to the forest and sat under a big tree, lamenting her situation to the forest. Then, the forest god appeared to her in the form of a mo(...)

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COUNTRY: Chad

TAGS: African Mythologies African Storytelling African Traditions Gods

Brey Houzibe

The Enormous Monster [Burma-Te-Dge]

In the beginning, among the Ngambays people of Mundu in the South of Chad, there lived a young pregnant woman, who constantly went out to fetch wood in a nearby forest. While in the forest, she wanted to lift a big log of wood, and suddenly her baby came out of her womb together with the placenta. In this village, the placenta was considered as a second baby. She took the placenta home and abandoned the real baby in the forest. After a long time, an old woman who had also been fetching wood in t(...)

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COUNTRY: Chad

TAGS: African Mythologies African Storytelling African Traditions Slavery in Africa

Paul Louabe

The Feeding Cow

In the distant past in the villages around Ndjamena there was a cow that was known to provide food to the people of Yatilam. The cow was just a mere messenger sent by God to feed the people. But the people by mistake considered the cow to be the real God; and consequently started adoring the cow to the detriment of the real God. This situation angered the real God, who tried several times to tell the people that He (the real God) is invisible. But the people considered it absurd to praise an inv(...)

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COUNTRY: Chad

TAGS: African Mythologies African Storytelling African Traditions

Beyana Ngarbaï

Why the Garap People Do Not Eat He-Goat

A a man stayed in the forest in the land of the Garap people of Mayo Kebie-East in the South of Chad until daylight ended. According to the myth, the daylight that ended transformed itself into a he-goat and was going back home to come back the next morning. When this man saw the he-goat, he caught it and took it home believing that it was a stray animal. According to the tradition of the Garap people, if a lost property or object was found, it was to be given to the chief priest of the land. Th(...)

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COUNTRY: Chad

TAGS: African Mythologies African Storytelling African Traditions