of the first girl to go to the river for water. The second girl was not nearly as strong as her sister. Her arms were thin and it was difficult for her to walk long distances. When she was asked to carry anything, the load felt twice as heavy to her as it did to her stronger sister. For this reason, most of her work was at home, plucking chickens or doing other things which required little strength.
The mother and father of that family had spoken to many people about what was wrong with that girl. They had taken her to a witchdoctor, who had pinched her thin arms and rubbed a thick paste on them.
“That will make them strong,” he had said.
They kept the paste on the arms until it had all rubbed off, but the second girl’s arms remained thin.
“She will always be weak,” her mother said to her father. “We must accept that she is a weak girl.”
The second girl felt sad that she was not as strong as the first girl, but she did not complain. There was plenty of work even for weak girls in that dry place.
The first girl always fetched her water from the same spot. There was a pool in the river there, and a path that led straight down to the edge of the water. It was a place where animals came to drink, and each morning she could tell from the footprints which animals had been there before her. She could tell the marks of the leopards – who always drank at night – and the tiny marks of the duiker, who came shyly down to the river just as the sun was rising.
Every day the first girl would dip her calabashes into the pool and draw out the cool river water. Then, with the calabashes full, she would dip her hand into the pool and take up a few mouthfuls of water before she began the long journey home.
One day she felt very tired when she arrived at the river’s edge. It had been especially hot that day, and it seemed to her that all her strength had been drained by the long walk. As she leaned forward to fill her calabashes, the first girl felt her head spinning around. She tried to stand up again, but she could not and slowly she tumbled forward into the water.
The river was deep and the first girl could not swim. For a few moments she struggled to get back to the edge of the pool, but there was a current in the water and it tugged at her limbs. Soon she was out in the middle of the river and it was there that she sank, with nobody to see her or to hear her last cry. Only some timid monkeys in a tree by the edge of the river saw the first girl disappear. For a few minutes they stared at the ripples in the water where she had been and then they turned away and were gone.
When the first girl had not returned by sunset, the father knew that something had happened to her. There was nothing he could do during the night, as there were lions nearby, but the next morning all the men went out to search for the first girl. They followed her footprints, which were clear on the ground, and traced her steps to the edge of the water. When they saw that the steps did not come back from the river’s side, they cried out in sorrow, for they knew now what had happened to the first girl.
There was great sadness in that home. Everybody had loved the first girl, who had always smiled and been happy in her work. The second girl slept alone in her hut, sadly staring at the emptiness where the first girl had had her sleeping mat.
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