The Legend of Mjanja and the Crocodile of Chirundu

Massassi was sharpening her bone hunting knife when she first heard the screams from the river bank. Loud at first, sustained. Then shorter, more frantic. Then… gone altogether. Something was wrong.

It was a stifling evening in Chirundu Village. The villagers had already made their way to bed for the most part but a few still sat huddled around campfires in the leftover heat of the day, drinking and dancing in the bleak light of the rising moon.

“Rudo? Has anyone seen Rudo? Where is he?” Massassi shouted.

The bemused villagers, only slightly more alert for all the screaming, pointed down to the river bank and Massassi began to run in the direction of the water, her pulse matching her footfalls, the sounds of the African wild assimilating with the thoughts in her head, her chest searing with lick after lick of fiery panic.

Away from the lights of Chirundu Village, the inky Zambezi stretched indifferently in front of Massassi, still and silent and sinister… too flat for its own good. There! Massassi spotted the ripples at the edge of the river and watched as the black water gave way to an even darker shadow.

The Crocodile floated nonchalantly toward the bank toward Massassi, sliding its rubbery stomach onto the sand and coming to a halt only a few metres from her. It gazed at her with cold, calculating eyes. Then, it opened its mouth and spoke.

“Good evening, my sweet.”

“Where… where’s my brother?” spat Massassi.

“I have him.” The Crocodile snapped its mouth open and closed again with mirth. “He’s safe… for now.”

“Please, bring Rudo back? He’s all I have.”

“Perhaps, my sweet, perhaps!” The Crocodile snarled. “But first — shall we play a little game? Shall we?”

“I’ll do anything. Anything. Just bring my brother back, please,” Massassi pled, shaking.

“You see, my sweet, I’ll gladly return the boy to you. If. If? If you can guess — correctly — whether or not I will indeed return your brother to you, safely,” said the Crocodile, cocking its head to the side and jeering.

“I — I don’t understand,” said Massassi.

“Understand girl, there needn’t be a problem this night should you choose correctly,” said the Crocodile matter-of-factly, shuffling his leathery feet. “Should you decide that I return him — and you’re correct? Your brother will be returned, indeed, he will. But… what if you are wrong? What then? Then tonight, I feast.”

“But… that makes no sense,” said Massassi, confused. “If I decide that you’ve no intention of returning my brother and I’m right, you’ll have to return him to me… and I know you don’t want to do that. You… you’d sooner break your word, I know it!”

“Oh, you know it, do you? You know it! Hmmm, my sweet, that’s just a paradoxical observation. Perfect in theory, pathetic in reality.”

The Crocodile snapped his mouth again, once, twice, and set his dead gaze on Massassi once more.

“I’ll give you my word, my sweet: I’ll play this game fairly. Will you?” It said.

“Your word means nothing, beast. I don’t… trust you,” replied Massassi.

“Trust! Beast! You, humans, burden yourselves with words,” hissed the Crocodile.

“I have no interest in words… I am a creature of action. Now act!” It snapped, “Or you can carry on with your words and doom your infant-kin to the rolling throes of the watery death I’ve in store for him should you fail.”

“You will return my brother to me unharmed, beast.” Massassi declared. “That is my decision. That is what I choose.”

“Well done, my sweet.” Said the Crocodile cheerfully. “Now, wait right there.”

The Crocodile backed his way into the inky Zambezi, snapping its mouth open and shut as it moved and Massassi waited uneasily on the bank of the river, whispering hushed prayers to her ancestors’ for protection.

A moment passed.

Then, ripples in the water at the river bank disclosed the return of the Crocodile and with him, Rudo, unconscious… but alive. Massassi allowed herself a sigh of relief.

“Here he is, my sweet. As promised,” said the Crocodile. “Come… come and get him.”

“Bring him to me,” Massassi challenged.

“That was not part of our deal,” the Crocodile sneered. “Come… a little closer. Come and get him child.”

“The only “deal” we had is that you’d —

— but before Massassi could finish, the Crocodile reared and charged her with shocking agility. It swung its head, snapping its mouth open and shut, knocking Massassi squarely off her feet.

“I’LL KILL YOU BOTH!” spat the Crocodile as its knife-like teeth closed around Massassi’s ankle and it began dragging her towards the river bank.

Without thinking too much about what she was doing, Massassi drew her recently honed hunting knife from her belt and stabbed furiously at the Crocodile, landing two direct blows: one in the ear, one in the eye.

This served only to further infuriate the Crocodile, who snapped its jaws open and shut in an attempt to get a better grasp on Massassi’s leg.

Massassi took this opportunity to square a kick at the Crocodile, connecting solidly against the back of its throat with her free leg, briefly choking the beast. This allowed her a chance to strike a fatal blow: one furious downward thrust into the top of the creature’s hard skull.

“Bones for bones,” Masassi said as she withdrew the hunting knife.

The Crocodile’s carmine blood dripped intricate patterns into the sand as Massassi made her way down the river bank to pick up Rudo, then all the way back to the village, leaving the Crocodile in its final death throes on the bank of a slowly reddening Zambezi.

Massassi — who was given the epithet ‘Mjanja’ by Chirundu elders — fast became something of a folklore tale to all who made their home beside the Zambezi river.

In fact, tales of Mjanja’s courage and moxie are recounted to this day by wayward travellers along the North Road, many of whom spin elaborate, embellished accounts of their own chance encounters with Mjanja and her brother Rudo limping warily alongside the river bank, bone hunting knives at the ready, scaled carry bags slung over their shoulders, searching for the next challenge.