Tales from the Congo: Reading Diary A

My favorite character in Tales from the Congo is Mavungu from Another Vanishing Wife. At the beginning of the story, he was the underdog, mistreated and disliked by his family and neighbors. It was natural to sympathize with him. Once he escaped his village, he ran across some luck and obtained a beautiful wife. He foolishly but unknowingly reversed his luck, and his wife disappeared. The reader ends up feeling terribly sorry for the Mavungu. He couldn't catch a break.

It was interesting to compare the lives of the men with just one wife to those with more than one wife. The polygamists tended to be more successful because they always had a back-up if something went wrong. The men with just one wife seemed to lose everything in the end. They are also made out to be the foolish ones. If their lives end up in shambles, it is usually their own fault.

They kill each other over the littlest things! One guy died twice! It's scary to think about what their society must have been like if the stories they shared involved this much murder. The popular stories out there now about our day and age don't involve much death. Excluding the vampire stories... But the tales from this unit seemed very plausible. They revolved around jealousy and revenge. I'm glad that murder is not the go-to punishment for crimes today. We value life more and more throughout the decades. I guess that why we're in a population crisis.

Women of the Congo. UnTextbook.