Legend of Godumo-dumo: a myth unpacked (Part I)

This well-known Sotho legend speaks of a ‘great sky monster’ that once flew into a village and swallowed everyone.

However, a fearless boy called Mosimane wa Sankatane (‘Boy Who Does Not Retreat’ i.e. fearless boy) immobilised it from inside with his spear, split its belly, and managed to free everyone. Now, is this mere myth, nonsense?  What we must note is that whereas other cultures could record in writing events that occurred in great antiquity, we in Africa relied on oral traditions. This, however, is a means subject to greater distortion and embellishment as it passes from story teller to story teller. But if one looks carefully enough, one can see that we in Africa have exactly the same legends. An even greater ring of authenticity is when one legend logically continues where the other left off. We have such a case with the legend of godumo-dumo. It continues where the Myth of the Pickaxe, translated by Samuel Kramer, leaves off. Of course, in relating an event, people often dwell on what most fascinated them, leaving out the essential background to the tale…and this is what I will be attempting to now fill in when relating the well-known Legend of Godumo-dumo.

Now, every nation or race or tribe in the world speaks of gods (ba-dimo). This, I have discovered, is a term that has long lost its original meaning. As the Setswana term still betrays, it actually meant ‘Those from Up High (i.e. the skies, the heavens)’, not ‘unseen, departed spirits’. Indeed, I have unbundled the long and convoluted mystery of the gods over many months in this column, and for lack of space will only summarise them as real, technologically advanced beings of history who fled to Mars, their famous N’ibiru (Na-hibiru meaning ‘the Reddish One’ and indeed befitting the Red Planet), before the Mother-of-all-Life, a planet I call ‘Old Earth’, but named ‘Tiamat’ by Sumerians, was knocked from one orbit to another in a collision with a giant comet later named after Marduk, a Babylonian god.

Editor's Comment
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