Central African Republic / All works
Tale
Wanto et l'origine des choses
Not translated into English
Paulette Roulon-Doko · 1977
Synopsis
Thirteen Gbaya-Kara tales about the origin of things, followed by other tales, told by storytellers from the village of Ndongué Bondowen. In the beginning, the sky and the earth touched each other, the sun was an animal, the rain had its village in the sky and death lived among men, while Gbason, the great god, kept for himself alone the water, the cultivated plants and the goats. Wanto, the spider, at once god, animal and man, curious as a child and cunning as an adult, procures for men the means to live in the village.
Context
The collection appeared in Paris from the Conseil international de la langue française, with Edicef, in the bilingual series of the collection Fleuve et Flamme: texts in Gbaya and French, nine illustrations, one hundred and forty-two pages. Its thirteen origin tales are chantefables, in which the audience answers the song struck up by the storyteller. The corpus the author gathered afterwards exceeds three hundred and fifty tales, for some one hundred and sixty themes. Wanto is the most frequent character in it, and the only one whose name can be borne by a man; Gbaya musicians today claim him as a symbol of their identity. Gbaya is spoken in the Central African Republic and in Cameroon.
Who it is for
Short tales, bilingual, made to be spoken aloud; the songs call for an audience that answers.
Prizes and reception
In her later work, the author refers back to this collection to describe the world of origins in Gbaya tales.
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