Playing “pass the story” with a huge group of Ugandan kids, ages 10 through 18 or so, is hilarious. We sat, about 20 of us, in a circle, and passed around a box of cookies as we “passed” the story – whoever held the cookies told the story. Our first story was about two children, who ran into a crocodile on the road. But no, it wasn’t a crocodile (the next kid corrected), it was a snake, a huge snake, ready to bite the children in half. No, it WAS a crocodile after all (the next kid insisted), laying in the road with its mouth open, waiting to swallow them whole. Actually, it was both a crocodile and a snake (I amended), and the children stood, amazed at such a coincidence, too scared to move. The girl ‘urinated’ from fright (provoking much laughter from the boys, and a slap from one of the girls), and the children ran away.
The story went on, sometimes going back and forth, back and forth over little details, as the kids took their moment of glory to turn the story in a new direction. Occasionally bits of the story would break out into Luganda, which was wonderful, and afterwards I would beg them to translate it for me. The small ones often repeated exactly what was said before them – for emphasis, I told the older kids; repetition is good for emphasis – or sometimes broke in with utter non-sequiturs, just to keep us on our toes! The guys tended to dominate the story scene, but the girls broke in more and more as we went, often with the express purpose of disagreeing with the last boy’s comment. Both stories (the second one being based around a madman, a preacher, and multiple transformations into Jesus and back) were largely a display of wit between children – most of which I could catch and some of which was beyond me, but obviously accessible to the oft-hysterical group. Both stories also ended with a parable, a “and so this is why you should not do that” type of moral. We wondered later if this was a habit ingrained from religious stories, folklore, or another source.
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