A man was dying of thirst in that country, which is dry country, and he had no more walking left in him.
Paga, on the Burkina Faso border. Bring a chicken; they will sell you one.
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The Crocodile That Carried a Man
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The Crocodile That Carried a Man
A man was dying of thirst in that country, which is dry country, and he had no more walking left in him.
A crocodile came.
It did not take him. It carried him — to water, to the pond, and let him drink, and let him live. And the man, being a man who understood what had just happened to him, made a covenant on the spot: this water is sacred, and no child of mine will ever harm one of these animals, and no one will eat their flesh, forever.
There is a second telling. A lion had him cornered and the crocodile killed the lion, and the same promise was made in the same breath.
Six hundred years later the promise is holding.
The crocodiles of Paga do not attack anybody, and nobody can quite explain it. The people of Paga will tell you why: each crocodile in that pond holds the soul of a person in the village. When a crocodile dies, someone in Paga dies. When someone dies, a crocodile is found dead. They are not neighbours — they are the same people, in two shapes.
The guides call one out of the water with a live chicken. It comes up the bank into the open, three metres of it, and sits. You are invited to touch its tail and sit behind it for a photograph, and you will be told, correctly, that you are perfectly safe, and every instinct you have will disagree.
If you visit Ghana. Paga, on the Burkina Faso border. Bring a chicken; they will sell you one.
A man was dying of thirst in that country, which is dry country, and he had no more walking left in him.
A crocodile came.
It did not take him. It carried him — to water, to the pond, and let him drink, and let him live. And the man, being a man who understood what had just happened to him, made a covenant on the spot: this water is sacred, and no child of mine will ever harm one of these animals, and no one will eat their flesh, forever.
There is a second telling. A lion had him cornered and the crocodile killed the lion, and the same promise was made in the same breath.
Six hundred years later the promise is holding.
The crocodiles of Paga do not attack anybody, and nobody can quite explain it. The people of Paga will tell you why: each crocodile in that pond holds the soul of a person in the village. When a crocodile dies, someone in Paga dies. When someone dies, a crocodile is found dead. They are not neighbours — they are the same people, in two shapes.
The guides call one out of the water with a live chicken. It comes up the bank into the open, three metres of it, and sits. You are invited to touch its tail and sit behind it for a photograph, and you will be told, correctly, that you are perfectly safe, and every instinct you have will disagree.