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Observations of a Young Nigerian Female . Powered by Blogger.

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I am young, "normal" and I like to write. People say I eat too much, people don't know what they are saying.

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The Tortoise and the Owambe Parry



THE TORTOISE AND THE OWAMBE PARRY
– A PARODY OF THE FOLKTALE "The Tortoise and the Feast in Heaven"
Once upon a time, in the kingdom of the animals, which is in the same area as the kingdom of the humans, but on an underground level, there was a scarcity of food.
The king of the animals, who of course is the lion, had spent a lot of the kingdom’s funds on his daughter’s fancy schmancy wedding. His daughter was an ignorant, private-college-flunking, makeup-abusing, designer-clothes-wasting, finstagram-disturbing lioness. Nobody liked the lion’s daughter.
Come to think of it, no one liked the lion either. No one really knew why he was king, he just was.
Well, in his favour, he did have the loudest roar in the kingdom; and apparently, noise rules.
Anyways, the lion was king. The kingdom was broke. The tortoise was hungry.
The tortoise, as you probably know, was never one for hard work. The tortoise loved to chill. He liked to kickback, sip sprite, chew on some good grass and write tacky motivational speeches on tailbook. The tortoise was always “in-between jobs”.
Well, one day, while scrolling endlessly through his tailbook newsfeed, the tortoise saw something that made him smile. The tortoise was a member of almost every group on tailbook; both public and secret groups, well, except for the Carnivorous and Proud group. He scrolled through his newsfeed until he saw a post on the Feathered Friends group which he somehow belonged to.
The post announced an exorbitant feast on the rooftop of The House With No Stairs. The house belonged to the Proud Eagle, who was the Representative of the Feathered Folks Constituent. The house was ostentatiously tall and it had no stairs, so only birds could get in.
The tortoise knew that it was impossible to get into The House With No Stairs, but according to his motivational quotes on tailbook, “If you aspire to inspire, you will not have to perspire to make the impossible transpire to become 'I’m possible'.”
He knew he could get into the tall house with a good plan. He was really good with plans; everyone said so.
That afternoon, he was listening to Omo Akin’s song “Borrow borrow make them fine” and sipping cold sprite. All of a sudden, the sprite hit a spot in the brain, like sprite tends to do; the tortoise realised what he was listening to. He grabbed a notepad and began to draw up a very feathery plan.
Late in the evening, the tortoise’ roommate and long suffering best friend, the snail got in from a hard day’s work as an uber driver and slumped in a chair.
The tortoise immediately asked, “Did you buy any food?” the snail glared at him and then gestured to a bag he had dropped beside the chair. The tortoise immediately grabbed the bag, pulled out roasted plantain and began to chew. Soon after, the hare walked in looking just as tired as the snail. He was their roommate and the snail’s co-worker, the tortoise was not a fan of his existence.
While chewing on the plantain, the tortoise said to the snail, “there’s a big feast happening at The House With No Stairs next week.”
“Yeah, I heard” replied the snail, “I drove their caterer yesterday. She was quite the talkative. It’s supposed to be a big deal. I only bought 3 plantains. Don’t eat more than one. You know how the economy is.”
“Especially as some people don’t bring any money home”, the hare muttered just loud enough for the tortoise to hear.
The tortoise ignored him and said to the snail, “I’m going to the feast.”
“What feast?” asked the snail.
“The feast at the house with no stairs” the tortoise answered cheerfully.
“Was there something in your sprite? Look at me, my dear friend, look. Let me tell you something that will probably surprise you.” The snail said
“What is that?” asked the tortoise
“You’re not a bird” the snail said and picked up a roasted plantain.
The tortoise smiled, shook his head and said, “I’m going”
With a resigned look on his face, the snail asked “what harebrained plan do you have now?”
“I take serious offense to that” yelled the hare from his spot on the floor.
“Sorry dude”, the snail apologized, turning to the tortoise he asked “well, what have you got planned this time?"
The tortoise happily proceeded to explain each step of his plan to the snail who was looking more alarmed after each sentence.
The tortoise asked the snail to make him wings with the gum he produced in his spare time. Of course, the snail vehemently protested at first, but he agreed to do it. At the end, he always did what the tortoise wanted. It had always been like that. The snail wondered how the tortoise planned to get feathers for the wings, but the tortoise had it covered.
He smiled in his sleep that night; he could already taste the jollof.
The next day, he began to make posts on tailbook and he tagged all the birds he could; exotic birds and ordinary birds, big birds and small birds, nice birds and angry birds. He told them about his love for their kind and his lifetime passion to at least look like them and hopefully even fly like them.  Birds all over the world were very happy to see the posts. They couriered feathers to the tortoise, and some popular youtube birdies sent him DIY tutorial videos on how to fly.
By the next week, the tortoise was ready to fly. 
On a beautiful Wednesday, the Eagle tweeted, inviting the tortoise to the party in The House With No Stairs on account of his “dedication, passion and adoration of winged creatures”.
Everyone was talking about the tortoise’ invitation to the exclusive party. Some follow-follow animals tried to do the same thing, but it was too late for them. Some trends are only for one person, or animal.
Well, the D-day arrived and the tortoise polished his shell. He borrowed money from his dear friend the snail and bought a fat data bundle. He was live on finstagram showing himself putting on his wings, everyone was watching.
At first, it was a turbulent flight, but with the help of his bird friends, he soon got the hang of it and flew safely to the venue of the party. The party was everything social media had said it would be, and more. The party was lit, but not like a wild forest fire, because that is really bad. It was lit like a moderate, not-very-harmful fire.
The tortoise ruled the red carpet. Everyone wanted pictures with the daring, non-winged animal who had made it to the most exclusive party in the history of exclusive parties.
Now, the people of the bird coalition had a tradition. At events, food was served in groups. The waiters would bring food and lay it on the tables of each group, then, the members of the group could eat as they wanted. Being the opportunist that he is, the tortoise noticed this and thought up a plan. Being the greedy, selfish animal that he is, the plan was not for the good of anyone else but himself.
The tortoise got up, cleared his throat and began to casually address the people he was seated with as a group.
“Guys, when are we picking our party names?
“What are you talking about?” said the partridge who was drooling over a bowl of pears on the table ahead of theirs.
“Party names. You don’t know about them? You don’t know that at parties, animals now pick cool names to be addressed with other than their real names. Everyone is doing it. My goodness! I thought you guys were in this century”, said the tortoise as he laughed at the clueless birds.
Not to seem backward, all the birds said something to the effect that they knew about the trend, although they’d never heard of it. The tortoise was popular on social media and so he must know all the trends, the birds did not want to seem like they lived beneath rocks and so they immediately began to talk about the trend.
“Oh yeah!”
“Oh! Party names, I thought you said petty names”
“Oh, of course we know party names”
“We all have party names”
“In fact, my party name is fireworks” said the kite who had never been called fireworks, ever.
All the other birds began to pick party names; some of the names were corny, some ridiculous, some others were unclassifiable.
After everyone had picked names, the tortoise said, “My party name is y’all, because at this party today, I’m just like you all.”
Everyone cheered at the tortoise’ clever name; everything he did was cool.
Well, the eagle had recently been to the United States as a delegate for a Universal Animals Conference and he had fallen in love with the American accent. He made all his staff; secretaries and waiters alike, talk in an American accent. It made him feel like he was refining them. The clever tortoise already knew this.
A few minutes after the party name talk at the tortoise’ table, a waiter walked up to them dresses in a very awkward leather jacket. He put down the food on the table and said, “This is for y’all” and he walked away in his un-weather-friendly apparel.
The tortoise smiled, he was already seated at the head of the table as the special guest. He looked around at the birds and said, “Well, you all heard the man. It’s for y’all. I’m yall. I guess your food will come later.”
The tortoise drew the bowl of jollof rice to himself and dug into it’s spicy colourfulness.  More bowls of food got to the table and each time, the waiter said, “This is for y’all” before walking away.
The tortoise ate the jollof.
He slurped up the spaghetti.
He swallowed the banga soup.
He demolished the shawarma and he turned the bowl of vanilla ice-cream into a dry and weary land.
The tortoise ate and ate until he was nearly bursting out of his shell.
All the other birds were infuriated. Especially the partridge who had watched the tortoise reduce a bowl of pears to a container of ugly seeds. He flew up and shouted to all the other birds, “look! The tortoise thinks we’re all stupid. He just said that the King has a bird brain.”
All the birds were very annoyed. In fact, they soon turned to a raging mob.
Everyone knew the King was the dumbest in the land and the birds were offended. The tortoise was “shook”. One minute, he was having the time of his life, and the next minute, he was surrounded by a mob of enraged birds.
The birds began to rip the feathers off the tortoise until there was nothing left but the shirt the feathers had been glued to. The mob carried him up and flew to the single exit/entrance point at the house.
The tortoise managed to send the snail a voice note, “Dude, I’m about to crash from the tallest building. Please, I beg you in the name of everything that appeals to you, come out and lay down all the mattresses you can get at the bottom of The House With No Stairs, close to the exit side o. Abeg, na fall I dey!!”
The angry birds raised the tortoise and tossed him off the house through the exit. The infuriated partridge screamed after him, “let’s see you fly now, smarty pants!”
The tortoise fell and fell and fell. The House With No Stairs was so tall. It was so tall that he had time to admire the greenery and the domestic life from so high up. As he fell, he thought about his life, he wondered why the Lion was king and he was not; he wondered why he had never tried to take the throne from the lion. He figured it was probably for the same reason why he was falling for over 10 minutes.
Now, the poor tired snail was asleep when he received the voice note from the tortoise. His phone beeped and he picked it up groggily and clicked play. After he listened to the voice note, he leaped off the couch and half-sleepily began to pull the mattress.
5 minutes later, he got to the bottom of The House With No Stairs, and he searched in vain for the entrance/exit. It was so high up and try as he could, the snail could not see the entrance/exit, so he just put down the mattress and crossed his fingers. Well, the snail has no fingers, so he crossed his eyes.
Apparently, the universe was not on the tortoise’ side, because the tortoise fell far away from the single mattress put out by the snail. The tortoise fell and his ceramic shell smashed into smithereens.
The poor snail and the miffed hare had a really hard time picking up the scattered pieces of the tortoise’ shell.  The tortoise huddled in a corner naked while his roommates looked about for the pieces of his shell.
Later, the snail glued together bits of the tortoise shell with other random objects (flattened bottle covers, broken ceramic toilet seats, hard mud etc.).
And that is the story of how the tortoise ended up looking like an unfortunate, kindergarten art project.
THE END.
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3 comments:

  1. Great piece, enjoyed every bit of it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Meinfade Olivia
    Great piece.....
    My kids gonna love it too

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow,wow,wow!!! Amazing piece! Just like the 'writist' anyway.

    ReplyDelete

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