One day there lived a family with 4 children, 3 girls and 1 boy. All the children were good except one – you guessed it was the boy. But he wasn’t just unruly – he was also funny. He wanted to spend the whole day playing jokes on people.
One day the boy was sent to get water from a river that was full of crocodiles. After he had collected his water he put the pot safety on the back. Then he started to call out at the top of his voice, “Help! Help! The crocodiles! The crocodiles!”
When they heard his screams, everyone was in a panic. They all came running as fast as they could down to the river bank to help him. When they got there they found him laughing his head off. He’d fooled them all! He thought he was hilarious.
Of course everyone was very cross. “You called us for nothing. You interrupted our work for nothing. You stupid, bad boy.”
Another day the boy was given the same job to go down to the river to collect water. This time though he really was caught by the leg by a crocodile. He pulled all he could and yelled and screamed – “Help! Help! The crocodile the crocodile!”
Everyone in the village heard, and rolled their eyes. “Yeah yeah yeah,” they said. “He does that all the times. Take no notice.” When his screams got really loud and panicky, they all shook their heads. “He doesn’t give up, that boy, does he? But he’s not fooling us twice!”
No one realized that they were really listening to the boy being attacked and then eaten by a huge crocodile, until they went down to the riverbank later on and found nothing but a pile of clothes and some bloodied mud.
And what is the moral of the story? Simple: you must never lie. You must always tell the truth. Even when you want to make a joke.
This is a Congolese tale from Melvin Burgess blog.
African Heritage 
Great story. The American version is the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The Wolf ate him.
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Thanks for sharing. yes it is a great story.
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🐺🐺🐊🐊🐊
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I was thinking that when I read this story. It also makes you wonder which story came first.
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Right? Like the Looney Tunes character Bugs Bunny! In a lot of African tales, dating as far back as forever, the rabbit or hare is a very smart animal always outrunning and outsmarting everyone. It sounds like that character was borrowed from African tales!
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Makes you wonder. Bugs Bunny had African archetypes with their folktales? Wow, I legitimately didn’t know about that! That’s very fascinating. Seems like so many Western media icons get borrowed or straight up ripped off from other countries. Maybe I should read up on these African tales about these aforementioned rabbits and hares. I think it would be mind-blowing such as finding out about the Obelisk of Axum or watching Kimba the White Lion for the first time. Hahaha!
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Yes indeed! It will be mind-blowing.
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Hahaha! I guess so. I just found a Shona story involving a rabbit and he has a trickster personality to him. That was certainly eye-opening reading that story.
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🐊🐊🐺🐺
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Those are the perfect emojis for this conversation. Haha!
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😀😁😉
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Hahaha! Very nice.
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The same as, “The Boy That Cried Wolf.”
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Thanks for sharing… indeed it is similar to “The Boy That Cried Wolf”
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Almost the same old story here in Germany: the wulf is coming!
Regards
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Thanks for sharing… it is so neat to see all the variants of the same story around the world.
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