Theme · 4 stories
Respect for Elders
Parables from across Africa that turn on the lesson of respect for elders.
nigeria · Igbo
The Child Who Ignored the Elders
A young hunter was warned not to enter a certain forest. He went anyway, because the warnings sounded like the talk of old men. The forest taught him what no old man could have said.
Read the parablekenya · Maasai
The Maasai Boy and the Stars
A young herdsboy, impatient to be called a warrior, is sent by his grandfather to spend one night alone counting the stars — and returns a different person at dawn.
Read the parablecameroon · Fulani
The Fulani Shepherd and the Stranger
A Fulani shepherd shares his last bowl of milk with a tired traveller. The traveller, it turns out, has been sent by the elders to see who in the country still remembers the old ways.
Read the parablesouth-africa · Venda
The Stone That Listened
A Venda elder gives each grandchild a smooth stone and tells them to drop it in the river every time they speak a careless word. By harvest, the riverbed has changed — and so have the children.
Read the parable