How it all started

I heard this story from my grandmother who heard it from her grandmother who heard it from an uncle, who was a monkey.

The uncle never listened to his mother and jumped off the tree whenever he got a chance. Although he barely escaped from the coils of pythons and the claws of leopards many times, he still preferred the hard certainty of the ground to the wispy fragility of the arboreal world. So he always fought with his tribe for longer breaks at streams and bushes on the ground.

One day he found some boys and girls of another tribe quietly munching on red berries from bushes. After looking around to see if there were any adults nearby (he hated them), he joined the party and plucked a few berries for himself. Going near the girls, he smelt their backs and sat down beside a pretty one. They ate for hours until they heard a leopard roar.

Quickly all of them got onto their hind legs and  gazed for long over the tall grass, looking for the leopard.

And, that's how it it all started, with some monkeys looking over the tall grass.


Soon, this new tribe began to use sticks and rocks and later fire. They started to take over the savannah. And the lands beyond it.