Storytelling and Learning an Alphabet

Early this past summer, I promised myself that before I left for Ethiopia, I’d learn the Ge’ez alphabet, or fidel (ፊደል), used to write many of Ethiopia’s languages including the official language of Amharic.  My flight is at the end of this month, and I have made no progress. The fidel has some 268 characters, which my audio language lessons breeze through in the first half hour session.  Given the likelihood that I would teach myself atrocious pronunciation without proper instruction, I decided to wait until I arrive in Ethiopia where I’ll have a proper tutor.

In his book Notes From the Hyena’s Belly, Nega Mezlekia recounts his grueling first two years of schooling as a child in Ethiopia where the only subject was the written Amharic language.  To make sure he stayed in school despite the drab subject matter and the curmudgeonly, abusive old teacher, Mezlekia’s mother told him a story about the King of Shewa who loved stories.  The tale made me think of the pissing match that narratologists and ludologists waged in establishing the field of game studies, a debate I learned about over the summer through reading the First Person thread on the Electronic Book Review.  Those of you familiar with this debate might see why.

The King of Shewa loved stories.  Many storytellers came to the palace to entertain the king, and it didn’t take long before he had heard all the stories in the land and all neighboring regions.

Finally, in desperation, he decided that what he needed was a storyteller who could make him cry out, “Enough! No more! I am done with stories.” If such a person existed, the King swore to make him a prince and give him a great piece of land.

Many storytellers came, and the king listened to all their stories intently.  One day a farmer offered to tell a story.  The king was skeptical about the farmer’s ability to outdo the professional storytellers, but he let him try anyway.

The farmer’s story started:

“Once there was a peasant in Axum who sowed wheat.  When the crop ripened, he mowed it, threshed it and stored it in a granary.  It was the best harvest he’d ever had.  But there was a small hole in his granary, barely large enough to pass a straw through – and that is the irony in this tale.  When all the grain was stored and the farmer went home, delighted, an ant came and entered through the hole.  He picked up a single grain, which he carried away to his anthill to eat.”

The king was engrossed with the story at this point and expected things to pick up pace.  The farmer continued on, telling of each ant coming each day into the granary and taking a single grain of wheat.  The king grew inpatient, begging the farmer to proceed with the story, to get to the plot, to get beyond these details.  The farmer always said that there was still so many ants in the story, and that the granary was still full, and the story needed to go in the right order.¹ Despite the king’s interruptions, he always proceeded:

“And the next day, another ant came, and took another grain.  And the day after that….”

Finally the king lost his temper.

“Enough, enough, you may have the land and the title of prince!”

Mezlekia’s mother told him this story to convince him that it was worth his effort to learn the fidel because working persistently little by little brings good fortune.  There’s a curious slippage here between the persistence of the farmer-storyteller and the persistence of the ants in his story, not to mention the persistent search for stories by a king and the persistent reassurance from a mother.  With all the stories nested in one another, of the ants and their grain, of the storyteller-farmer and his king, and of the boy and his mother, it is not easy to tell what story elements are working for whose story.

Mezlekia wanted to be a prince, just like the farmer-storyteller, so he persisted in school, studying the fidel.  Maybe if I wanted to be a prince, I would have learned the fidel by now.  But no; I spent my summer learning about games and stories.