The Great Grey-green, Greasy Limpopo River
Did you read the Just So Stories when you were a child?
I must have because I remember the the rhythm of Rudyard Kipling’s words and, especially the Great Limpopo River. Who could forget the lilt of the “great grey-green greasy Limpopo River?” All these years, I have thought the Limpopo River was a made-up name, made for how the sound of it was like the running of a stream. And all this time, I thought the Kolokolo Bird was real.
Come to find out, I was wrong on both counts.
Kolokolo Bird does not exist except in Rudyard Kipling’s stories. Of course, a real bird of that name should have been created, but, alas, as luck would have it, only in the imagination of a writer.
I just recently discovered that Limpopo is real, however! How do I know? Because we have a new subscriber from Limpopo in South Africa! It’s a good bet that there is a river there. Whether it is grey-green and greasy, I don’t know.
The fact that the Just So Stories took place in India and Limpopo exists in a different continent makes no difference to me. Limpopo exists somewhere in the world, and odds are there is a river there, and this makes me happy. I am so delighted you would think I hacked my way through the jungles and discovered the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River myself.
Do you remember the story of The Elephant Child? It is the story of how elephants got their long trunks. Before Rudyard Kipling wrote this story, elephants had ordinary noses.
The elephant child who had ’satiable curiosity wanted to know what a crocodile ate for dinner, and the elephant child went out into the world to find out. He had never seen a crocodile and didn’t know what they looked like. So, when the elephant child came to the banks of the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River, he didn’t realize he was asking a real live crocodile what he liked to eat for dinner.
The crocodile kept asking the innocent elephant child to come closer. You can imagine what happened when the elephant child got close enough!
In the struggle, the crocodile stretched the elephant child’s nose. Fortunately the elephant child got away, and that’s how it happened that today all elephants have nice long trunks.
Read the whole story here:
http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/elephant.ht
Godwriting is a blog by Gloria Wendroff and is about Gloria's daily life as the Godwriter of the Heavenletters project that is having a profound effect on the lives of people around the world.
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