The Man from the Gods by Tawanda Nyahasha

When I was a child, relatives often complimented my parents on my looks. They always remarked that God had blessed them with a beautiful child who took after Sangare himself. I never knew who this Sangare was, nor did I care. The only thing I understood was I was a beautiful child, a marvel; whoever this Sangare fella was, he was irrelevant. At some point I thought Sangare might have been my father, maybe his childhood nickname I didn’t know about. This theory was soon crashed when I heard a relative compare me to Sangare in front of my father. When I got to my teens, the comparisons never stopped, but by then, I had begun to resent this man, whoever he was. It became apparent that no matter how much someone complimented me, they made sure to point out that although I was quite a beautiful boy, I was no Sangare. No man can ever be as beautiful, as handsome as Sangare. You may think me immature, my dear readers, but I will plead my case. To begin with, I was a boy of fifteen, and as with all children that age, I was at the height of my ego. I saw myself as the wisest, bravest, and most handsome fifteen-year-old boy that ever graced the planet. I think it is also within my rights to place the blame on the adults who constantly compared me to this man. I have often heard tales of people who grew up resenting their siblings because they were often compared to them, often reminded they were not as capable as their younger or older siblings. Not to make light of their sufferings, but I do believe my case to be much worse, for here I was being compared to a man I had never met, a man who apparently was the most handsome man to ever live.

It was after I had grown out of such follies and had become secure enough in my own skin that I had the courage to ask who this Sangare man was and possibly find out if he had anything to do with me. As with all tales of the old days, I sought out my best and most reliable source, my grandmother. However, she was not available at the time, so I had to hear the tale from my mother, who had heard the tale from my grandmother. I know, dear reader, that at this very moment, I position my mother as an unreliable and untrustworthy source, which is not at all the implication I am making. Like my grandmother, my mother is also a woman to be trusted as she is also a woman of truth. I also don’t want you to be dissuaded by the fact that you are hearing the tale from a narrator who heard the tale third hand. That is, if my grandmother was present when these events occurred because, it is possible that she might have heard the tale from someone else. Still, I must plead that you do not be dissuaded, for I come from a tradition of oral storytellers, historians who store histories in memories rather than books. I suppose my decision to not wait for my grandmother to tell me the story can also be a case of pride, the desire to show that the gift of storytelling in my family is passed from generation to generation. In any case my intentions are irrelevant, pride or not my mother is a profound storyteller, so, I put it on my reputation and state that this tale’s truthfulness should not be doubted.

It is said that Sangare lived in the middle of the jungle with his mother, both of them secluded from the world. The reason for their seclusion is unknown. Some say Sangare’s father died right before he was born. The mother was left with nothing, and none of the husband’s relatives were willing to help, so she took her belongings and set to live in the jungle to place herself at the mercy of the ancestors. She figured they would protect her and her son if they deemed her and her son worthy enough to live. As it happens, the ancestors did show her some favor, and the two of them survived, and Sangare grew to be a young man. One day, when Sangare was roaming the jungle, he ran into some hunters. The hunters were so struck by his beauty that they forgot what they had come for in the first place and ran back to the village to tell everyone that they had seen the most beautiful man to ever live. Now, at the risk of appearing envious, as I can promise you that I have indeed left those follies behind, I still must contest this. Firstly, no description of Sangare was ever given. The hunters said they were so struck by his beauty that they could not even describe him. Now, dear readers, am I the only one who is not satisfied with this answer? I have seen people try to describe angels, and now, these hunters could not describe one man? I theorize that these hunters were tired and fatigued by thirst and hunger. It was common in those days to go hunting for three days straight, and these men were probably on their third day. I do not mean to call Sangare ugly. I would like to think he was quite a handsome man, but I doubt that he was so handsome that no man could describe him.

Unfortunately, no one from the hunters’ village displayed the same kind of skepticism that is needed to discern fiction from fact. These were men of valor, so when it was reported that these men, who had never run from anything in their lives, had dropped their weapons and ran back to the village like children because they saw a handsome man, everyone wanted to see this man for themselves. News like this could also not be contained to one village; the three nearest villages also heard the news, and it produced the same kind of excitement. Every unmarried woman now took it upon herself to be the one who would marry Sangare. So, girls started flocking to the jungle to meet this mystery man. The women who did make it to Sangare’s house would harass Sangare’s mother, demanding to see him. There was even an attempted kidnapping. One woman evaded Sangare’s mother and found Sangare sitting by himself under a Mutohwe tree. She rushed to him and put an axe to his throat, threatening to slash him open if he were to let out a scream. She tied him up, put a gag in his mouth, and started leading him to her house. Sangare was only saved because the woman lost her bearings on her way back and mistakenly led Sangare to his own house instead of getting out of the jungle. Sangare’s mother immediately went to the village chiefs to ask them to put a stop to this madness. A ban was issued in all four villages. All women were prohibited from venturing into the jungle. In all four villages, the women revolted. In an unprecedented event, all the single women from the villages took whatever weapons they could from their homes, with some stealing their fathers’ and brothers’ weapons. They banded together and chose a general among them, the daughter of one of the village chiefs. They threatened to march on the villages if the Sangare ban was not lifted.

The village chiefs, together with Sangare’s mother, held a meeting to try to find a solution. One chief suggested they hold a Sangare day. A day when Sangare would come to a public space, and all the women from the three villages who wanted a chance to marry him could come with their proposals. This was thrown out because it was feared that this would escalate things instead of calming the situation down. There was fear that the women would turn on themselves, and the whole situation could turn into a bloodbath. It was Sangare’s mother that came up with the plan. She suggested that all four villages take turns to send ten of their most beautiful women. The women would have a chance to talk to Sangare and he would choose who he wanted to marry from the ten. If he did not choose any from the ten, the next village would send their own ten, and so on. Every chief agreed that this was a sound plan. It was also agreed that each woman would bring a gift to Sangare’s mother as compensation for all the harm this situation had caused. The plan was sent to the general of the single women's army, who relayed it to all the women. They did agree that this plan seemed fair. Even if they were to march on the villages, what would they do with Sangare? They could not all take him with them. This plan at least gave everyone a chance to see this man. They send back a message saying they would only disband if the chiefs gave their word that no retaliation would be made against these women. After assurances were given and oaths were taken, the army disbanded, and every woman went to her own home.

From what I heard, each village selected a panel of judges and held contests to see which ten women would be selected. It is not clear what these contests were comprised of. We know one of the criteria was beauty, of course. It is said that in one of their demands to the chiefs, the women sent criteria upon which these contests would be judged to ensure that every woman had a fair chance. However, no one knows what these demands were. Some historians whom I have told this tale have gone on to claim that this might, in fact, be the first beauty pageant ever held in the world. I myself believe this to be true. However, in the spirit of truthfulness, it is important to point out that I am indeed biased, as the thought of something of this magnitude originating from my people fills me with excitement. With that being said, not that I want to push you in any direction, but it is also worth pointing out that it is not I but other historical experts who came up with this theory.¹

Sangare’s mother, however, was skeptical that the pageant would go smoothly. She was sure that some women who were not selected would take it upon themselves to come and see Sangare. To protect her son, she led him to a cave near her house and prepared lodgings for him there. She fortified the place and started taking meals to him. The two of them devised a plan. Sangare would remain hidden when the women came. The mother would cook for the women and entertain them for a while to make sure that there were no other women who had sneaked in with the group. After she was sure, she would go outside her hut and sing a song to let Sangare know it was safe to come out. They came up with a song that was in the form of a dialogue. She would let him know he could come out, and he would respond, stating that he was coming down. Truth be told Sangare’s part in the song was unnecessary, but the mother insisted that he respond so that she would know he had heard the message. No one was supposed to know where he was hidden, so the mother was to make sure not to face the direction of the cave or give any hints to the cave when she sang. The women were also supposed to remain in the hut so they wouldn’t see him coming out.

When the first ten women came, Sangare’s mother could not help but admire their beauty. Although the discovery of Sangare had brought nothing but trouble for her and her son, her mind started to change when some of the most beautiful women she had ever seen stood in front of her. The gifts each woman brought also helped in softening the mother’s heart. She welcomed the girls, led them to her kitchen, and cooked for them. After they had all eaten, she went outside to call her son. As per their code, she started to sing a song:

Sangare’s Mother:
Nhai Sangare
Teterunde teterunde
Vanhu kumba
Teterunde teterunde

Sangare:
Vabikirei sadza
Teterunde Teterunde

This was Sangare going off-script. He was only supposed to respond by saying he was coming down. Now he was asking the mother if she had cooked for them. She, however, went along with it.

Ndavabikira
Teterunde tererunde
Vese vadya
Teterunde teterunde

In kekeke in Sangare
Teterunde teterunde
Ini kekeke ini Sangare
Teterunde teterunde

Sangare’s second reply was once again off-script. To you and I, “Ini kekekeke ini Sangare,” is gibberish, but the mother knew exactly what those words meant. When Sangare was a toddler and had not yet mastered language, whenever he didn’t want anything, he would say “kekekeke.” It was a strange sound, and the mother assumed her son was mimicking some bird he had heard. When he grew out of it, she told him the story, so she had no doubt what it meant; Sangare had rejected all the women without even seeing them. The mother went back to the women and told them that Sangare would not be coming out. They had all been rejected.

I ask for your forgiveness, dear readers, but I must interject here. Am I the only one who sees this as nothing, but a scam cooked up by mother and son? I do not want to keep objecting to the legend of Sangare’s beauty, but unfortunately, truth often puts us at odds with such myths, no matter how they may be dear to us.² We must remember, dear reader, that up to this point, no one had yet given a full description of Sangare. Most of the women who had gone to the jungle to look for him before the pageant did not even find him; they only talked to the mother. The woman who had tried to kidnap him was too focused on getting the plan right, so she did not spend too much time looking at him. She planned to thoroughly inspect him after she had gotten him home which she never did. Now Sangare was rejecting women who came to see him without even coming out of the cave? I must stress once again that I am not doing this because I have a vendetta against Sangare. My objections simply come from applying logic and the strong desire to get to the truth. I believe after the kidnapping incident Sangare’s mother saw an opportunity. She suggested the pageant and nudged the chiefs into decreeing that the girls bring gifts. The hiding in the cave was simply a ruse to delay the inevitable. Eventually the women would see Sangare and realize his beauty was exaggerated. But by hiding him and Sangare’s refusal to come out of the cave, they could get gifts from all the villages before they were discovered.³

You must forgive me, dear readers. I had no intention of going on this long of a tangent. As I am aware that my readership respects logic the same way I do, I have no doubt you came to the same conclusions yourselves. Hence, I promise from now on to keep my interjections at a minimum. After the women were informed they had been rejected, they returned home with their heads hung in shame. They told their chief they had been rejected, and the chief sent word to the second village to inform them that it was their turn. The ten women from the next village were also rejected, and word was sent that it was now the third village’s turn to send their women.

The third village did their own pageant. Ten women were selected and given gifts to present to Sangare’s mother, and they were sent their way. In that village also lived another young woman. From the time she was little, she had boils all over her body. Each day, some boils would burst, and before she had a chance to clean the ooze that came off, another would have grown in its place. The ooze constantly dripping off her boils made her a fly magnet as they followed her around, feeding and nesting on her skin. Some of the boils were also in her mouth, which made eating painful for her; thus, she often avoided eating as much as she could. This solution left her with a body that looked malnourished. She was bony, and whenever she was seen outside, for she was rarely seen outside, she walked as if she was struggling to support her own skin as if each boil weighed twenty pounds. The whole village called her Chinamapezi because of her skin and she was known as that for so long that most villagers did not know her real name.⁴

Chinamapezi was also bitten by the Sangare bug. She knew she would not win the pageant because no matter how fair the process was, it did not apply to girls like her. She then decided to sneak into the jungle and go by herself. She did not know the way, but she was going to rely on descriptions in the stories of those who had come across Sangare’s house. Chinamapezi did not think she would make it to the house. She thought and hoped that some wild animal would attack and kill her.

As fate would have it, Chinamapezi made it. She arrived right after the pageant girls had arrived, and the mother was cooking for them. She knocked on the door and announced herself as one of the women from the village. The mother panicked. She thought the chaos had started again and someone had come to kidnap her son. When she went to the doorway, she saw a girl with a hoard of flies around her, who looked like she was about to fall any moment. Her defenses immediately lowered, for she thought there was no way a girl this sick would have the strength to pull off a kidnapping. She invited her in to sit among the other girls. The women were not too pleased; they thought Chinamapezi had ruined their chances. Sangare’s mother cooked for all of them, but when she offered food to Chinamapezi, she refused on account of her sores. Eating was such a painful, slow process for her, one she preferred to do in private. After the mother waited an appropriate time to ensure there were no more gatecrashers, she went to sing to her son.

Sangare’s Mother:
Nhai Sangare
Teterendu teterunde
Vanhu kumba
Teterunde teterunde

Sangare:
Vabikirei sadza
Tetererunde teterunde

Sangare’s Mother:
Ndavabikira
Teterunde teterunde
Vese vadya
Teterunde teterunde
Kunzwe kwekadiki
Teterunde teterunde
Ndiko karamba
Teterunde teterunde

Sangare:
Iko kadiki
Teterunde teterunde
Ndiye wangu
Teterunde teterunde

The mother was not sure she had heard him right, so she repeated the song again. She told Sangare that everyone had eaten except for a tiny little girl, but Sangare’s answer was the same. He stated that the one who didn’t eat was going to be his wife. It is said that the mother was quite upset by this; she thought her son had so many beautiful girls to choose from, and yet he rejected them all without even seeing them and went on to choose a girl who looked like she was going to die any minute. Dear reader, although I promised to keep my tangents at a minimum, this part demands an interpretation. I believe Sanagre’s mother was upset because her son had gone rogue. The plan was to reject this village as well so that they could get gifts from the fourth village. I also have a theory on why Sangare chose to go rogue. He knew that after revealing himself, the world would be disappointed, and whoever he chose to marry after the fourth village would not be happy with him. Chinamapezi was a golden opportunity. He would marry a girl with her own problems, and Sangare’s exaggerated beauty would be the least of her concerns. I must be fair to Sangare and state that his reasoning was not based on vanity. He was afraid of what the mob would do to him and his mother if they found out they had been tricked. Chinamapezi was a way to make everything go away. I believe Sangare’s mother described Chinamapezi in the song, a version that no longer exists, and Sangare took his chance.

In any case, no matter the version of events you believe (although I have no doubt it is the second version of events, for you my readers are people of logic), Sangare’s mother had to inform the girls that they had all been rejected for Chinamapezi. After they left, Sangare came out of his cave to meet his new wife. Sangare looked at his wife and, without saying a single word, went outside and stood in front of a Mutowa tree. He removed a slender branch from the tree and formed it into a whip. He went back inside the house and, without saying a word, lashed Chinamapezi ten times. At the tenth lash Chinamapezi’s skin cleared, even the sores in her mouth were gone. In front of Sangare now stood a girl who, although she looked unhealthy, looked as beautiful, if not more beautiful, than all the pageant girls who had come and gone. Now, I do not claim to be an expert in magic, but I have never heard of a spell that required someone to beat up someone they loved for it to work. It may seem as if I had an agenda from the start to discredit Sangare, but I do hope that episodes like this show that my objections to the romanticization of this man are well founded.

If you would allow me, dear reader, to leave Sangare for the time being and return to the girls who had been rejected. When they went back to their village, they had to explain that Chinamapezi had sneaked into the jungle and made her way to the house, and she was the one who was chosen. The village chief had to send word to the fourth village that the search was over; a girl from their village had been selected.

When the messenger arrived and delivered the message to the fourth village council, they were enraged. They thought the third village had purposely sent more than ten girls, and they did not believe this bogus story that it was a girl with a skin disease that was chosen. As far as they knew, they had sent twenty beautiful women to increase their chances. Some reports started to come in from eyewitnesses who said they saw a large group of girls that numbered fifty, leave the third village and go into the jungle. It was determined that the third village had to be punished for their dishonesty. All of a sudden, things that had never been said before started to come out, like how the herd boys from that village would let their cows cross over to the fourth village, feeding on their pasture. Then there was the case of the little boys from that village who were caught stealing sweet potatoes from a widow. When the chief demanded retribution, the other chief refused to pay, saying this was not a crime between the two villages but simply boys doing mischief. They could not let the third village get away with these types of infringement. A herald was thus sent to call all men and women for war. They were to march on the third village the next day. Word got to the chiefs of the other two villages and, fearing an all-out war, quickly sent dispatches to Sangare and his mother to come to explain themselves. The fourth village was convinced to halt their attack. They were to hear from Sangare and his mother first.

The next day, Sangare came to the appointed place with his mother and new wife. When Sangare introduced the beautiful woman beside him as his wife, everyone lost their minds. The first two villages switched allegiances to the fourth village as they were sure they had been deceived. They were not looking at a girl with boils all over her body as had been described. The reports must have been true then; the third village had sent fifty girls instead of ten! Everyone was shouting on top of each other, and Sangare, seeing that no one was listening to him anymore, took out his whip and lashed Chinamapezi ten times. It took a while for someone to notice what he was doing amid all the shouting. By the time some saw what he was doing and pointed it out, he was putting in the last lash. In front of their eyes, Chinamapezi’s old skin with its boils returned. Everyone was too stunned to speak. Sangare went on to explain that this, indeed, was his wife and that no further bloodshed was necessary. He curiously, however, did not explain his magic and where he had gotten such power.

The tale has it that after the speech, Sangare lashed his wife again in front of everyone, (which I must say, dear reader, magic or not, could surely have been done in private), left the village with his wife and mother, and the three of them moved deeper into the jungle never to be seen again. As with all stories of this kind, dear reader, it is reported that Sangare and Chinamapezi lived happily ever after, although no one knows where they went. Questions, of course, still remain, with the obvious one being about Sangare’s looks. Despite him finally revealing himself to all four villages, no physical description of him is ever given. In any case, the issue of beauty here is largely irrelevant. History does not concern itself with such trivial matters. What this tale exposes is simply that oral tradition cannot be trusted.⁵ Although unintentional, it can often romanticize people who don’t deserve such flattery, exaggerate, and make forced correlations. It is only through projects like these dear reader, when we have a narrator who clear of all bias decides to put these stories into writing, that we remove all fallacies and get to the objective truth!

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¹See Charles Murambinda’s “Sangare Tale: Revelation of the First Beauty Pageant in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

²I do recognize that I appear to contradict myself since I confidently laid my reputation on the validity of this story at the beginning. It is, however, the mark of a true historian and academic to challenge our notions of truth and always put them under scrutiny. In other words, dear reader, my contradictions speak to an absolute lack of bias on my part.

³It is also my theory that the mobilization of the single women’s army had nothing to do with Sangare whatsoever. I believe the women had their own grievances against the villages, and they disbanded when their demands were met. Since it happened at the same time as the Sangare situation, people mistakenly combined these two tales as the story was passed down from generation to generation.

⁴The name Chinamapezi can be roughly translated to “All boils.”

⁵See footnote 2.