#Zarma folklore

[patheticbatman]

Day 1 of my 47th Win A Commission Contest! If you guess what story this is from before I post the title, you get a commission! Click the link or check out the tag #wac for more details! :) This one ends on March 14th, 2023.

Hint: This is a giant hippo villain

[patheticbatman]

@kim-poce won this round again! The 47th Win A Commission contest was Nana Miriam. I adapted this from the Myths and Legends podcast version. If you’d like to see the drawings in context with the story, please keep reading!

This a standalone story from the predecessors of the Zarma, the Sorko people, one of the peoples who was part of the Songhai Empire, known for their fishing ability on the Niger River. The Songhai empire was in West Africa and reached its peak in the 15th and 16th centuries. This story may take place, but it's not really connected to anything historical. All you need to know is a hippo has been terrorizing a village, and a young man was hired to take him down.

—

The young man crouched in the tall grass surrounding the Niger river, watching the hippopotamus - the river horse. It was larger than he expected. He had killed bigger. He had killed everything. Dragons, giant crocodiles, wizards, anything that brought pain, destruction and chaos to the land was what he was called on to fight.

He smirked.

The funny thing was he hadn't done anything special. Really? He was just brave enough to go into the dark after the monsters, only to discover that the monsters were nothing more than normal. The dragons were scared lizards, the giant crocodiles were regular crocodiles made massive in the mind by panic. The wizards were twisted old men who delighted in cruelty.

The young man rested his spear on the ground and unlooped the bow from his shoulder. Everything - no matter how big, powerful or otherworldly - everything died. His job was just to help it along. And this, this was just a hippo.

He placed his spear on the ground, and then climbed a tree overhanging the river, careful to stay out of sight. He crept out onto a branch, balanced himself on the wood and drew an arrow from the quiver. He steadied his hand, nocked the arrow, drew it back and let loose. At the one spot he knew would kill this thing quickly.

The hippo dropped, but not in the way the young man had expected. It rolled to the side.

The young man drew back the bow ducked and rolled as the earth seemed to rumble. He lowered his bow as he crouched, jaw agape, then a smile curled on his face.

“Well, you're a fast one,” the young man said, glancing down to where he left his spear. He looked back up at the beast, but noticed that the hippo was following his eyes. Did this hippo know what was going on? He didn't have time to think through the implications because the hippo now appeared to be three sizes larger than it was when the young man shot the bow. It roared and charged as the young man dove from the tree.

He had to get to a spear. He hit the ground, rolled and found himself before a wall of hippo. The creature had tripled in size since the young man had seen it triple in size. It was nine times its original size. And now wait, were those ovens on the creatures back? They flashed to life with flame.

The young man couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. There was wonder in the world after all. He narrowed his eyes. Too bad. It had to die.

—

Nana Miriam sat on the riverbank with her father. She had seen the hippo eating the rice fields as it did every day.

Her father hobbled over and took a seat by her. “Oh, Hey, there's that new hero type guy that they got to fight the hippo.” Fara Makan said as he grunted to a seat. “How's that going?”

Nana Miriam saw the hippo, the size of a convention center, light the fires on its back. 10 of them. This time she glanced down at the young man, the hero, just in time for him to become a silhouette and the flood of flame. When the fire stopped, the hero’s bones fell among his ashes.

“Well, it's not going well,” Nana Miriam said as the hippo shrunk back to its normal size and shuffled back to the rice fields.

The men who hired the hero rushed to put the flames out before they spread. This hippo would destroy the village, not by carnage, but by starvation.

“Don't worry about it,” Fara Makan said to his daughter. “Everything has its time. We should get back to our lesson.”

Nana Miriam was Fara Makan’s only child. Her training had started one warm morning. Three years ago, she sat by the river with her father and he pointed at the fish. He would ask her what each fish was that swim by.

“And that one and that one,” she told him each time.

But he only shook his head with a grimaced. “Nope, not that type of fish.” He told his daughter she needed to learn to see the world as it truly was, even if it was muddy and uncertain at times. Only then would she have power.

And so Nana Miriam learned to see. It was difficult of course, but she was a quick study. Three years on, in her late teens, she rivaled her father.

About six months later, the hippo had arrived and the father and daughter knew it for what it was instantly, through a rare combination of magical forces.

A monster had been born, whether it was an actual hippo that had discovered the power or a demon that took the form of a hippo. They didn't know, but they saw its wrath. It devoured all the rice fields. Anyone who tried to stop it, was incinerated, trampled or devoured himself.

They had banded together one time and surprised the hippo with the whole village, making a stand against one of the monsters of the unknown.

But the thing turned into a mouse and darted into the reeds.

Their celebration was cut short by the seven more trampled fields the next morning.

That day, Fara Makan, Nana Miriam's father, had hunted the beast. The monster had caught his spears, melting them in bullets that popped out of his back like some fifth generation Pokemon. Fara Makan’s magic was the only reason he was able to walk away. But magic can only go so far when a hippo the size of a Mack truck is jumping on your body. So Fara Makan walked away with a permanent limp.

Now the village was looking at moving. It was a tragic and harrowing prospect. This had been their land for generations and the journey to find a new home would be a long one. The neighboring peoples were nice, but not like let-the-neighbors-live-in-their-home-permanently nice.

The last night in their home, Nana Miriam smelled the air and walked to where her father was cooking. “What was all this? That was a lot of rice and meat for the two of us.”

Her father sparked a grin. “Oh, it wasn't just for the two of us.”

Just then, outside, they heard a cacophony of barking.

Nana Miriam looked to her father. “You didn’t.”

Fara Makan rushed to the door.

“You did!” Nana Miriam followed with a groan.

Her father, despite criticizing the town for looking elsewhere for their salvation, was inviting a hero.

There stood Kara-Digi-Mao-Fosi-Fasi, and his 120 hounds.

As Nana Miriam walked up to the hounds she found she looked up to them. Not like they were role model dogs or anything. They were the size of horses.

“One hundred and twenty horse-sized dogs.” Nana Miriam said, nodding approvingly as she looked over the field of dogs.

Not only did they sound like a real threat, but they might actually have a chance.

“Thanks for coming,” Fara Makan said to Kara-Digi-Mao-Fosi-Fasi.

The dog handler asked the father if he had the fee ready.

With a grin, Fara Makan went in and got the first pot of rice. “Who's hungry?” He yelled out to the hounds.

They bayed and wagged their tails and jumped as he flung the rice and meat out to them.

“Your fee is feeding your dogs?” Nana Miriam asked the dog handler.

He shrugged. “Yeah, having a hundred and twenty horse-sized dogs is expensive.”

The next morning, the trio walked to confront the hippo with 120 horse-sized dogs.

“Why do you have them all on separate leashes?” Nana Miriam asked. “Wouldn't it make more sense to have one big leash, one that branches off into smaller leashes? That way you're not pulled in 120 different directions.”

The warrior said that this gave him more control this way. He could decide which dogs to loose.

“When does it usually take more than one dog to win a fight?” Nana Miriam asked, but she would soon learn the answer to that question.

They were in one of the far off rice fields, one of the few still remaining, and they found the hippo there bent down, munching on some rice. It looked up, barely registered the field of horse-hounds in front of it and continued eating.

“Hounds, attack!” Fara Makan said, pointing at the hippo.

The animal didn't even look up, and the hounds didn't move.

He smiled, embarrassed. “Oh yeah. Sorry. I guess that's your thing.” He said to the warrior.

Kara-Digi-Mao-Fosi-Fasi let the first hound go to attack the hippo. It charged for the hippo’s throat.

—

“Well, what did we learn?” Nana Miriam said to the two sheepish men, when the trio returned home.

The two men remained silent.

“You're going to make me run through this little post-mortem - oof.” She sighed. “This literal post-mortem-”

Kara-Digi-Mao-Fosi-Fasi exploded into tears. “They are dead. All of my dogs are dead.”

Fara Makan patted his friend on the back. “It wasn't your fault.”

Nana Miriam couldn’t hold back anymore. “Yes it was!” She had told him after he let the first ten go one-by-one. The hippo had crunched each lone dog with the same amount of effort that we would give to a piece of popcorn. She told Kara-Digi-Mao-Fosi-Fasi as he was loosing the eleventh dog that he needed to let all the dogs go at the same time so they could surround and overwhelm the hippo.

He told her to know her place and that he had this in the bag.

“Well congrats. All of your dogs are gone. I hope you have a Plan B.” Nana Miriam was not trying to be nasty, but her hope had faded fast as the hippo finished eating the dogs, and all that was left was irritation.

Kara-Digi-Mao-Fosi-Fasi left in tears to go update his resume from Dog Handler to Regular Guy.

And Nana Miriam and Fara Makan were left alone. The father and daughter went out to sit by the riverbank. They didn't have enough food for dinner. He used the last of it feeding the 120 horse-sized dogs.

Rice was exceedingly scarce in the village. They would need to find an alternate soon, or they would die.

Looking up at the clouds, Fara Makan said that they would need to leave soon if 120 dogs couldn't hurt the thing. In addition to all the heroes that had tried and died, maybe the hippo couldn't be killed.

Nana Miriam sat up. She said, “Yeah. I’m going for a walk.”

Fara Makan nodded. “Yeah, I kind of want to be alone too.”

They joked, but watching 120 dogs get chewed up by a giant hippo is the kind of thing that sticks with you.

Nana Miriam patted him on the shoulder and rose to her feet. She started walking to the north, toward the village. She looked back until she was out of sight of the river, where her father sat, processing all the death. And when he was out of sight, she moved west and looped back, past their house. She was going south. She was going to see it. She was going to see the hippo.

“Hey, what's up?” The hippo asked Nana Miriam when she walked up to him, chewing at the rice fields as per usual.

“You can talk?” Nana Miriam asked,

“Well, kind of,” the hippo clarified “You can hear me because of your magic. You do magic with your dad. I can kind of tell, you seem like the type. By the way, I am a shape-shifting hippo who can make oven jets on his back. You're kind of amazed about the wrong thing here.”

Nana Miriam thought that if she could talk to the hippo, she might be able to reason with it. She said that he was killing the village by eating all of their rice.

“Ah, bummer. Hey,” the hippo asked one question. “Did you ask to be born?”

Nana Miriam shook her head.

“No one does, right?” The hippo said through a mouthful of food. “Well, neither did I. I was born though. And do you know how much energy it takes to run ten ovens on your back to defend yourself from guys trying to kill you?”

Nana Miriam said, “No, but that didn't mean-”

“Oh, didn't mean what? That I, a hippo, can't defend myself? If someone attacks me eating the one food source that's both delicious and calorie dense enough to feed me, I can’t defend myself? That seems like a double standard. And it’s not like I’m going into the village eating people or something. No, I'm hanging out on the outskirts, eating rice. You all should let me be.”

Nana Miriam asked the hippo if they had any other choice.

It said, “Nope. I’m not saying that I am invincible, but I am kind of pretty much invincible. I mean, I just slayed 120 dogs - new record, by the way. And they’re not as filling as you’d think. No one can kill me and you humans obviously don't respect me. So I can and will continue to do whatever I want.” The hippo swallowed the rice and bent back down to eat.

“I can kill you,” Nana Miriam said.

The hippo looked at the girl and laughed, and started to light the fires on his back.

Unlike all the others, she didn't shirk away.

She kept looking right in his beady little hippo eyes.

“Sure you can, little girl,” The hippo said to the grown woman. “Maybe come back tomorrow though. I kind of had my fill today.” The fires on its back ignited shooting a ring of fire that expanded out from the hippo. It came to rest on the ground, not burning the rice, giving the hippo a comfortable space to eat without being disturbed. Or so he thought.

Within minutes his walls of flame flickered, smoked, and turned to water, which dropped to the earth.

Nana Miriam stood, tossing out bits of spices from her belt-bag and finishing up the last of her incantations. Her eyes snapped open and she looked directly at the hippo. “One of us is going to die today, and it isn’t going to be me.”

The hippo’s giant nostrils flared. He squinted his little pig eyes and charged in the absolute opposite direction. He didn't need any of this. There was something about that woman, something that filled him with a deep abiding terror.

After a short sprint, the hippo was far enough away to throw up some walls. The ground rumbled and Nana Miriam rocked back and forth as the rice field parted and iron walls grew from the dirt. They stretched high into the sky, secluding the hippo. Nana Miriam heard a low laugh echo around the chamber.

But Nana Miriam was just beginning. She waved her hands, said an incantation and transformed into a smith.

Nana Miriam, Smith Extraordinaire, made short work of the wall after she'd conjured a bellows, hammer and an anvil. She smashed her way through just as the hippo floated out underneath her feet. The hippo had transformed itself into a stream and was now making a break for the river.

Nana Miriam took off after it.

It was nearly to the river's edge when Nana Miriam waved her hands and the local river was gone.

The little creek that the hippo had turned into slid into the cracks of the Riverbed, but there was nowhere else for it to go.

Knowing that it could move faster as a hippo, the creature changed back and took off in a full run toward the Niger River.

Nana Miriam was able to dry up that tributary, but not even the hippo's magic could dry up the Niger. It could rest, reform, and come back and destroy this woman and her entire village.

The hippo was so busy congratulating himself that he didn't notice another wall until he slammed his head into it and started bleeding. The hippo staggered backward to see Nana Miriam finishing her incantation.

She said, “There is nowhere else for you to go. I should thank you for helping me realize my true power.” Nana Miriam laughed. “But for now? It was time for you to die!”

But before she could charge, however, they both heard, “Nana Miriam!”

The woman turned to see Fara Makan, his best spear pointed at the hippo.

“Did, did you do this?” Fara Makan asked, gesturing to the lack of a river, the wall, the bleeding hippo.

Nana Miriam nodded.

“My girl. I am so proud.” He smiled wide.

The hippo had a wry smile of his own. He turned not toward Nana Miriam, but toward Fara Makan. It charged.

Fara Makan stood up as straight as he could. He wouldn't die, shrinking and fearful. If he was going to be eaten, he wasn't going to be an easy meal. He gripped his spear, braced himself and gritted his teeth for the gaping maw that just this morning had gulped down 120 horse-sized dogs.

But the hippo froze inches away from his spear point. The hippo scraped at the dirt, but couldn't get to the man.

Nana Miriam was gripping its tail. She couldn't get in front of the beast, but she could get there fast enough to grab it and stop it.

She held it as it desperately scraped at the dry river bed, pulling uselessly away. As she hauled the hippo to herself and from her father, her hands and arms glowed with the otherworldly light of her incantations.

She started spinning the hippo.

He, who had destroyed lives, villages and hope, was at her mercy.

And it would find none.

It went around and around, over her head, Miriam spun and spun and spun the hippo.

With a cry, she released it, and it flew into the sky. Soon, neither Nana Miriam, nor her father could see it. In fact, when the creature crashed into the earth, all the way to the east, it was already dead. Nana Miriam had thrown it so hard, it had circled the earth three times, and died of thirst, before hitting the ground once again.

The creature that had plagued their village was gone and it was never coming back.

Nana Miriam flew to her father and hugged the man, weeping as she allowed the water to return to the river. She was so glad that he was safe.

Fara Makan patted her on the back. He could hardly believe it. The famine was over. Nana Miriam had done it. The fight was over.

But the fear had not left Nana Miriam’s heart.

—

“Hey, so I was in town just now,” Fara Makan said to Nana Miriam, as he knocked on the doorframe of her workshop. “Did you make an announcement in town telling everyone to come to the river?”

She shook her head slightly. “No, no. I made an announcement in every town.”

“Okay,” The father said, then he looked to her work bench. “My girl, you had been in here for 40 hours straight. What were you working on?”

Nana Miriam was wide-eyed. She was working on a solution. So that nobody would ever have a problem with magic hippos again.

“Again?” The father forced a smile. “Nothing like the hippo would happen again. He was dead. Nobody can't fall from low orbit and survive. Not even if you're a hippo with back ovens.”

It had been a few weeks since she had killed the monster and saved everyone living along the river. She even personally hunted any other, normal hippos that dared walk within her village lands. Fara Makan taught the people songs about his daughter. Her name would live on forever for this brave act alone. Like he said, it was over.

She stood, her fingers stained by the powder that she had been working on. She got up in his face until she was mere inches from him. “It isn't over.”

As someone blessed with such power, she was duty bound to serve her people. She could never let such a dangerous creature exist again. She showed her father an egg - her final solution to all their hippo problems.

There was a murmur from out front. The father emerged to see not only the members of the village, but all the neighboring ones too, assembling on both sides of the river.

Nana Miriam stepped out, and announced, “I hope you left your weapons at home, friends, because you won't be needing them today.”

The father jumped when he heard Nana Miriam yelling out behind him. Some of the people nodded that they did leave their weapons at home. Others set their spears and arrows down.

Nana Miriam walked to the water's edge and said that they never needed to worry about another hippo attack with her magic. She will be able to get rid of all of them. “With only this,” she held up the egg, your only responsibility will be to feast.”

She dropped the egg in the water and light shimmered out from it.

She stood, her eyes fixed on the ripples. Smiling.

The people looked at each other, faces reflecting the light. But when was this feast coming?

Then a lump, a small island surfaced in the river.

The crowd around it jumped back when they saw that the gray mass had eyes, but then relaxed when they saw that those eyes were dead. Some jumped in and started fighting over who would get to take this hippo home.

Nana Miriam told them to calm down. “This won’t be the only one.” She pointed back out to the river.

As far as the people could see, dead hippos were surfacing in the Niger.

Nana Miriam raised up her hands and told the people, “Hop to it!”

For hours people came to drag the bodies of the hippos from the water to render them, to smoke and sear the meat. To save it for the future. While their villages were still recovering from the famine, they could eat hippo.

And now she had saved them from every possible future hippo attack. All the people were grateful. None of them would ever threaten her father or her people again.

—

Weeks passed. And the river was clear. Only the hippos had been killed. The frogs, fish, birds, even the crocodiles, everything else flourished, but something, something strange was going on.

“Where have you been?” Farrah Maka nearly hit the ceiling while tiptoeing into his hut. He found Nana Miriam sitting up waiting for him.

He chuckled. “Nowhere, just out for a walk.”

“Tell me,” commanded Nana Miriam, not echoing her father’s chuckle.

“Since when does a father need to explain himself to his daughter?” Farrah Makkah asked. “I will tell you nothing.”

Nana Miriam rose and reached into a pouch at her side. “That's what I thought you would say.”

She went to the threshold and sprinkled powder from the pouch onto the dirt outside and muttered an incantation. The footsteps, the path that her father had walked, glowed in the night. It stretched off alongside the river. Beyond Nana Miriam’s sight. “Nowhere looks awfully far away.”

She swung her pack onto her back. And without a goodbye left her father standing in the doorway.

He hesitated for only a moment before rushing off after her. It took a little over three hours following the glowing footsteps until Nana Miriam arrived at a second larger hut.

She said another incantation and a hovering light glowed above her. She unhooked the gate and entered the darkness there.

She saw two beady eyes staring back at her. Hippo eyes.

Fara Makan arrived, winded from jogging the whole way, just as his daughter drew the dagger from her pack. “Now wait,” he said.

Nana Miriam turned. “What were you doing? Are you harboring it? Are you caring for it?”

Fara Makan nodded. “The hippo has a child, and is pregnant.”

Nana Miriam couldn't believe it. After everything she had done, he went and did this?

Fara Makan stopped her. “I did it for your fear!” She closed her mouth and he took a breath, and then continued. “I don't know what it was. If it was when the magical hippo charged me or from something that happened in the fight. But you've taken things too far. People who are fine, don't wipe out entire species.”

Nana Miriam lowered her dagger. “But what if another hippo monster came? What if it came after you again?”

“Then we'll handle it the way we handle everything: together.” The father said. “But these hippos weren't the ones that deserved to die.”

Nana Miriam sheathed her dagger. He was right.

She'd been scared. She'd been scared for him. And she had taken things too far.

Nana Miriam opened the door and took it by the chin. “You’re free to go.”

The pregnant hippo and calf trotted out.

Nana Miriam and her father began the long walk back home in the dark, side by side. And Nana, Miriam would forever be known as the destructor and the source of all the hippos in the world.

And so ends the happier version of Nana Miriam.

—

But in some versions, that is not the end.

Apparently after everything was finished, the hippos returned and the land was at peace, Nana Miriam met someone. Fono was a good kid and they were happy. But Fara Maka was worried. All that magic. He taught Nana Miriam. That was his old family secret.

If it got out, that would be it. So he sat Nana Miriam down and made her promise to never reveal the family magic to anyone except her own descendants. Since her father was her father and her betrothed was just that, she agreed. After all they had been through, she would honor his request.

Well, things changed. Nana Miriam married the man and he became her family too. It also didn't help that Fara Makan was showboating. Literally. When the father and son-in-law went out fishing, Farrah Maka would return with a full boat, laughing and berating his son-in-law's empty boat, telling Fono “Don’t worry! I will take care of your family for you.”

Then one day, a year or so later, Fono returned with a catch bigger than Fara Makan. Soon, all of his catches were bigger than Fara Makan’s.

Nana Miriam had consulted with a holy man and asked to whom she owed a greater duty. Her husband, who was honest with his feelings, or her father, whose fame by association had gone to his head.

The holy man replied with the former.

So Nana Miriam taught her husband the magic.

One morning, Fara Makan was in bed with a fever. Fono told him not to worry. He could fish for the both of them. He knew that it was a bit of a stinging blow, but he was also being genuine. He knew his father-in-law was getting older.

Fara Mako winced and waved Fono away with a sneer.

As the man left for the day, Nana Miriam remained behind to care for her father.

When Fono was gone, Fara Makan rose from the bed, his fever having disappeared like magic.

He asked Nana Miriam, “Why did you do this to me, your family.”

She replied that Fono was her family too. He was Fara Makan’s family. It wasn't fair to shame him each day when Fara Makan was over there, cheat-fishing. So yeah, she told her father that she taught Fono the family magic. But once again, there was nothing to fear because he was family.

Fara Makan did not see it that way. And he attacked.

Whether Nana Miriam was unable or unwilling to fight back, it was never said. Nana Miriam’s might was considerable, and she loved her father dearly, so she may have been holding back.

But when Fono came back from fishing, Nana Miriam was dead and her father was gone.

Enraged and sorrowful, Fono found his father-in-law and challenged him to a duel.

At sunrise, the pair rode their boats out on the Niger and had a final battle. They unleashed all of their magical powers.

And both died.

And so ends the sadder version of Nana Miriam.

Nana Miriam Explanation

This was another story I had in the works for several years. I based it off the transcript of a Myths & Legends podcast by Jason Weiser. If you’ve seen my story ‘The Eyrie’, it’s the same podcast. This episode came out in 2021. The show does not release its transcripts or sources for free, so I found a site that recorded an iffy transcription. Then I fixed it up and adapted it to be more obviously dialogue and cut some details that sound good by ear and in context, but were distracting on-page.

But I actually drew the pictures first. Due to how long it took me to get to writing things, and because I knew how the story went, I drew the pictures for this one early.

The first one is my crappy attempt at making Nana Miriam (NM) throw the hippo. His tail is supposed to spell Nana Miriam, but I accidentally added another cloud tittle (the dot over the letters ‘i’ and ‘j’) so oh well. It’s the most famous part of the story, and I wanted to include it in a special way. Also I originally was only going to draw four pictures total for this story, and had a lot of ideas on what to draw.

My sources for the Sorko people’s wear was inconsistent, especially in terms of how the women wore their hair. So NM has various different hairstyles, some based off Zarma hairstyles and practices. But the most fun part was drawing her dresses! Again, I used Zarma patterns for the drawings, and it was quite fun. They’re complicated, but I personally am looking forward to coloring them in.

For the second picture, I wanted to draw the giant hippo (occasionally called Mali in some sources) but at the time I was using a small page. So I just drew his face! I wish I could’ve included his ���ovens’ but oh well.

Third, I wanted to put the scene of NM killing the ring of fire to paper. I thought that was pretty cool, and easier to draw than the iron wall event or the river nonsense. In some versions, her bag holds magic spices that are huge amplifiers to her power, so of course I had to include it. I was pretty proud of her hand position, so here’s a closer-up sketch of it.

The fourth picture is where I feel like I lost her face. But anyway, that’s her being triumphant and mean over the other hippos.

Hippos are a genuine danger to river-dwelling peoples. They’re fast and like to literally break boats open and destroy fields. Even zookeepers who know their hippos for decades avoid interaction whenever possible. They can and will eat you, if they’re hungry enough. But they’re also very important to the ecosystem.

The last picture is NM ‘freeing’ the hippos after terrorizing them for so long.

Like many people, she had gone through a lot of trauma. And like many people, she had to realize that her trauma did not give her license to hurt others. It’s a tough lesson, but one that was especially inspiring to see from a lady character.

I’m not sure how common was the ending with Fono, Fara Makan and the death of NM. As far as I know, it only appears in the ‘African Myths of Legend’ book collected by Stephen Belcher - at least as far as I found.

The parts of the tale that are definitely from Sorko culture, largely the beginning, hint at a view where heroines were maybe not the most common thing in the world, but weren’t outlandish within the culture.

But the Zarma are pretty different from the Sorko. The Zarma are largely Muslim, lived quite recently under foreign rulers far away with a tendency to enforce their own gender roles, and their women’s rights are stifled. Again, due to the effects of colonization in the countries the Zarma inhabit in modern day. Plus, the story was collected by an outsider - they may have left out details or changed things to keep bits of the myth private.

In any case, in the Belcher book I found, the tale is about Fono and Fara Makan. Fono is drawn to legends of NM and despite her father’s bad feelings, they happily marry. NM’s accomplishments are not mentioned in detail, and are only stated as equal to Fono’s own.

So from this newer, more conservative mindset, we get a quieter NM who is less willing to do violence or use magic, and lets her husband be the main character. And lets herself be killed by a weaker man, a man she loved and trusted, in the name of another man she loved. She even sought advice! When did NM seek advice in the ‘happier’ story? Never. She just did what she wished. And Fara Makan never wielded such dominance over his daughter. It’s just weird.

So in my opinion, that was a new addition tacked on to appease conservative listeners. But I decided to include it because sometimes, even the strongest people have trouble keeping up their boundaries and defending themselves from family. And that’s normal, and nothing of which to be ashamed.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed Nana Miriam!

[patheticbatman]

Day 2 of my 47th Win A Commission Contest! If you guess what story this is from before I post the title, you get a commission! Click the link or check out the tag #wac for more details! :) This one ends on March 14th, 2023.

Hint: she’s casting a spell to kill the monster hippo