Shirley's Short Stories

Disobedience is Dangerous!

This is one of those moral stories that your parents tell you when your going them a hard time. This one was told to me by my mother, and it's a true story from her province, Simbu Province.

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In Simbu Province, a small family of four lived at the bottom of the mountains where the Simbu River flowed from. This small family consisted of a father, mother, an elder sister of 8, Maria, and her younger brother of 6, John.

The girl was called Maria, and she was the most disobedient child. She would never do as she was told, always making excuses to go play in the river or pick wildflowers.

Her parents were constantly burdened by Jeff disobedience, and so, they hatched out a plan to get rid of her.

One day, the family were preparing a mumu -which consists of cooking done in a dug up pit with heated stones. The father said, "Maria, take your brother and go fetch some water in the bamboo for us to drink while we eat."

Unknown to Maria, they had made a hole under her bamboo, that no matter how long she waited, it would never be full.

Maria took her little brother and went up the hill where the creek was, and they filled their bamboos. John's bamboo filled quickly, and he left his sister on the hill, where she desperately tried to fill her bamboo to no success.

"Why isn't it filling up?" Maria questioned after a while. By the time she discovered the hole, she left the bamboo and came back home.

But nobody was home.

"Daddy?" She called, but no one answered. "Mommy!" No reply. She searched the house and the mumu pit, but nothing came up.

Frightened of being abandoned, Maria ran down from her home to a bamboo bridge that was extremely narrow. There she found her family, on the other side of the bridge.

"Daddy!" She called. "Come take me to the other side."

But her father stayed where he was. "You come here."

"I'll fall daddy, come and get me." Tears started pouting from Maria's eyes.

"You come." Was all her father replied.

Maria eyed the unsafe bridge and placed her foot on it. Below her, the Simbu River sped down in between large rocks. As she reached halfway across the bridge, her father removed a bush knife and cut the bamboo bridge.

"Mommyyyyy." She shouted one last time before plummeting into the icy clutches of the wild river.

An old woman found her floating on the river bank later that day and fished her out. She pressed the water out of her body and laid her by the fire to review warmth. She rubbed oils made out of pig fat on Maria's skin, and nursed her back into health.

Maria finally regained consciousness, and woke up to find herself in an old hut. The old woman had no children, But owned quite a bit of land. She told Maria to help her work in the fields in exchange for hospitality.

Maria, eager to not be abandoned a second time, worked hard to help the old woman. She plowed the fields, dug drainage systems, planted, harvested, took care of the pigs, and even repaired the old woman's house.

Maria was a new woman. Not the misbehaving girl she once was.

Ten years later, there was to be held a pig killing ceremony in which all the eligible woman in the village would be presented to the chiefs son for him to choose one to marry.

Maria was a beautiful grown woman of eighteen, and she had land and pigs under her name, in which she had inherited from the old woman before she died.

When the time came for the ceremony, she brought forward ten large pigs as contribution towards the pig killing ceremony, But wasn't part of the contenders who were to be lined up before the chiefs son.

The chief noticed the ten large pigs and asked the master of ceremony. "Who is the man that has brought forward so many pigs in honor of my son? Let me bestow my happiness and honor upon him."

To which the master of ceremony replied. "It wasn't a man. A young woman who isn't part of the ceremony itself brought these pigs."

"Where is she?"

"She went back to her house. It's outside the village near the river." A village elder spoke up, pointing in the direction of Maria's house.

The chief went to his son and told him of what he learned. "We must go and see her at once." The chief, his son, his wife, and the rest of the villagers started walking down to Maria's house, where she was busy digging out kaukau -sweet potato- for the pigs in her garden.

She heard all the noise of people heading towards her home, and stopped her digging.

"Are you the woman that gave ten pigs for the pig killing ceremony?" The chief asked.

"I am." She nodded, as she walked out of her garden and to her front yard where the whole village was assembled.

"I would like you to marry my son. For we need someone as generous and modest to be a chiefs wife in the coming future."

Maria was delighted, for she knew that since she was an outsider to the village, she would die a spinster. "Thank you chief."

The village elder, who had followed along with the crowd suddenly burst forward and stood in front of Maria. "Maria? Is that you?" Tears were in his eyes. "My daughter, you're alive."

The village elder was indeed, Maria's father whom had abandoned her on the narrow bridge, almost causing Maria to loose her life.

"I'm not your daughter." Maria replied to him.

"What's going on here?" The chiefs son, Gene demanded. Most of the villagers were thinking the same question.

"This man is my father. When I was little, he cut the bridge I was standing on and sent me into the Simbu river to die. An old woman found me and saved me." As Maria told the story, faces were shocked and murmurs of disgust ran through the villagers.What kind of father would do that to his daughter? "He may be my father, But I will never be his daughter."

Upon hearing this, the chief banished Maria's family from the village, and sent word to other villagers to never accept them into society. And Maria married the chiefs son, to which the lived comfortably till the end of their days.

The End