Nana And The Magic Pot

Dura, a poor young man, had absolutely nothing to live for and look forward to except Rudo the love of his life whom he regarded as a pie in the sky considering the demands her parents placed on who so ever wished to win her for a wife.

In a last resort measure to just subsist, he gets something that changes his fortunes and leaves him wondering whether Rudo is still worthy or someone plus something else.

Nana and the magic pot

Long ago in a certain country lived Gogo, a poor old woman. She lived there with Nana her grand daughter. Nana was a small girl whose parents were late. Gogo was very very old such that she could not work well in the fields. She used a staff for balance when walking and Nana used to tease her that she had three legs like a three legged pot. Gogo would just laugh it over and tell Nana that one day she, herself, would also need a staff in many years to come.

Nana and Gogo had very few belongings. They had two pairs of torn old clothes each. They had one torn blanket they used to cover themselves at night to keep them warm when they slept. In winter they made a fire in their hut because their blanket was not warm enough for them. Gogo had forgotten when she had last worn new clothes, as for Nana, she had never worn anything new at all.

They got their food mainly through growing a few crops and reap very little produce such that they often ran short of food. They also went gathering wild vegetables, mushrooms, fruits, mopani worms, flying ants and wild nuts.

They did not have any livestock like cattle, goats or even chickens like all other villagers because of poverty. Sometimes well wishers would donate to them food like milk, eggs and sometimes grain and dried meat and vegetables. The neighbouring well wishers only donated food when they had abundant stocks themselves. During drought, no one gave them anything.

Nana and Gogo’s most valuable possession was their tiny three legged magic pot. Gogo had inherited the little pot from Koko, her own grandmother long back when she was still young. The pot had the capacity to make porridge. Since it was a magic pot, they did not need any mealie-meal to make porridge, they just needed to pour water into the pot. They wouldn’t put the pot on fire, but just sang a special song then the water in the pot would start to boil and make sour-sweet brown finger millet porridge. They would sing another special song for the pot to stop making the porridge. They would thank the pot and serve themselves with the porridge.

However there were rules to be followed. First of all, the pot only needed to be used when there was no food in the house, meaning they could only just use it when they were very desperate with nothing else to eat. The pot could only be used again on a day when the owners had gone to work and failed to get anything to eat, not just waking up and deciding to use it even if there was nothing to eat. It would be a serious mistake that could either weaken the magic or reverse the gains altogether. 

The pot had to be kept clean inside and outside; however, the outside had to be smeared with ashes mixed with water. This would give it a whitish grey colour suggesting its protection from soot from the fire as if it had ever been put on fire.

Also, the pot was not to be used for any other purpose besides its magical cooking process. While in use, the pot was not to be hoisted or placed on a table, bench or any pedestal, but it had to stand by its legs on a traditional earthen floor that got occasionally smeared with cow-dung.

Gogo had over the many years succeeded in adhering to the rules of keeping the pot and she was educating Nana to do the same. You must never try to experiment with the magic pot at all. Many people who had such pots do not have them anymore. Yes, it will not give you everything you need but it will ensure that you remain alive even in times of serious famine.Nana would listen attentively and hope she would keep the pot in working order till she got as old as Gogo herself.

Up the slope, there lived a lonely man. This man was very greedy, very rich and very lonely. He wanted to own everything big and small, cheap and expensive. If there was an auction of livestock, Mr.Bukhali would go there with plenty of money and buy everything, just to please himself that he had won. He never cared about everyone else but himself alone.

Mr. Bukhali lived alone since all this relatives shunned him because he was unfriendly. If they stayed with him, they would starve because he would think they were wasting his money and food, so they saw it better to struggle on their own and leave him alone. He did not attend his relatives’ funerals nor did he contribute if anyone fell ill. He always gave the excuse that he was a very busy man so he could not attend. He would always find excuses not to involve himself with them.

Bukhali was a rich man. He had so many cattle, goats, sheep, donkeys and even chickens. Most of his time, he spent looking after them; gathering, treating, herding as well as counting them. In most instances, some of the animals would be found dead by the mountain sides or in rivers, then he would either burry them or burn them so that the people would not take the carcasses for meat. Every night before he slept, he would unpack his bags of money and count it to make sure that it was increasing and no one had come to steal it.

People would talk long about him and his strange ways. Sometimes he would overhear them talking about him but he neither took them seriously nor changed his ways. He would console himself that they were speaking out of jealousy.

One year there was a devastating famine due to drought. Most people did not harvest much, so no one ever thought of assisting the poor old woman and her little grand daughter with food. They did not even reap anything in their fields. There were neither mushrooms nor fruits.

It was this time that Gogo found it wise to turn to her old trusted magic pot for help. Almost everyday in the evening they would take the pot and sit around a fire then put the pot on the earthen floor. Nana would sing the song as the pot started its job. The porridge would be made and they would take their plates and serve each other with the sour-sweet porridge.

The wicked man, Mr Bukhali wondered how the two survived in such harsh times when others were dying of hunger. One evening he made a trip to their home while they were about to cook with their dear magic pot. He sneaked near the hut unnoticed and peeped through the small window. No one saw him because the two did not keep any dogs to bark if a stranger or intruder entered the home; after all they would not been able to feed one even if they tried. Mr. Bukhali could see very clearly what was happening inside the hut because there was a fire burning and a small paraffin lamp illuminating Nana and Gogo’s faces and everything inside, yet Nana and Gogo could not see him since he was in the dark outside.

The rich greedy man saw Nana taking the pot from the front shelf and putting it on the floor. He saw her singing the special song and listened carefully to the song. He saw, to his astonishment, the magical porridge making by the pot. He was so excited with what he saw that he decided that he should come and steal the pot at all costs. He could not wait for the end of the process as he tip-toed back to his home in a hurry.

Back home, the wicked man did not sleep, he lay awake for the whole night. He found it as a challenge that these poor people could have anything that he, a very rich man did not have. In the morning, he sneaked to the home of the two and hid himself in the shrubs near the home voyeuring to see what they were doing. Since the two had to go and try to find food first and fail before they could turn to the pot for the magic porridge; that presented a good chance for the wicked man to scurry to the hut.

The hut was not locked because Nana and Gogo could not afford a real lock and key and there was not much to secure, more so everyone else knew them as too vulnerable to steal from, or even cheat. This was a golden chance for Mr. Bukhali who found it so easy to just push the door and head straight for the front shelf. He took the pot and concealed it in a jute bag.

Although Mr. Bukhali was a short stout man with a bald head and a very huge hanging belly, he ran like an athletic teenager in world sprinting championship competitions. It was a funny sight to see a smiling pot bellied short man carrying a pot on his back. It was a real comedy.

When Nana and Gogo left their home, they decided to go to the river so that they could try to catch fish. They went to a pond they used to catch fish from. They found that the pool was drying up and there was very little water left. Nana stepped into the very shallow water, barely covering her ankles and started running about the water.

Stop playing on that water Nana, it’s so little and it will soon get muddy and you will be dirty, where will you wash your feet? If your feet are muddy, if you get muddy, you won’t sleep in the same bed with me because you will make our blanket dirty and we have nowhere to get the soap to wash them, said Gogo.

No, Gogo, you’re wrong. I will go to the next bigger pool to wash my feet and even my body. Can’t you see there is plenty of clean water there? Nana continued to wallow in water till it was really really muddy.

Look Gogo! said Nana as she grabbed a big bream that had been raising its head trying to breathe since the muddy water wasn’t good enough for the fish to breathe.

All the fish were raising their heads above the water and the girl picked all the fish while her grandmother took the fish and put them into the sack she had. They caught so much fish that they got busy carrying them home. They made several trips to their home, stashing all the fish in their hut, little did they know that their magic pot had developed legs and eloped to a new owner and location.

When they were about to make their last trip to the river to collect their last lot of fish, they saw people rushing to their neighbour’s homestead. Also, there was a familiar aroma in the air arousing their appetites. They looked around but they could not identify the source of the nice smell. It is Nana who spotted scores of people at Mr.Bukhali home. That was very unusual and suspicious.

Gogo, there are plenty of people at Mr. Bukhali’s home, look, she said.

What can it be? Is he well? There could be something wrong, maybe we need to go and see what it can be, but we need to go and collect our last load of fish before someone gets there first otherwise we will loose to either people or even dogs.

Meanwhile, the wicked man arrived home and excitedly placed his new find in the kitchen, on the table in pride and excitement. He looked around to see if there was anyone watching him and he saw no one. He sat down on his comfortable arm chair and began to sing the song Nana had been singing the previous night. All the time, he was looking very intently at the little pot.

Slowly the porridge began to appear at the rounded base of the pot, hot and boiling. Although the man did not eat porridge, he was very proud and pleased with himself for having achieved great success. The porridge kept increasing and increasing in quantity and the man kept watching excitedly till the level of the porridge was just about to get to the brim, that’s when he realised he had to be able to stop it somehow.

Little pot stop, he tried with no change in the flow of porridge as it continued to fill the pot. Hey, little pot it’s enough, still there was no change.

He tried various statements with no change. He remembered that since he had sung a song to start cooking, he