The Humps

Birago Diop’s “The Humps”

Folk tales have served an important role in in the different cultures of human beings. They can be seen as a form of knowledge and education, as their ending morals influence a person’s attitude and behavior. In addition to acting as a moral guidebook, folk tales offer explanations of events or phenomena that cannot be explained through basic means. While Birago Diop’s African folk tale, “The Humps”, still offers a moral for people in the end, the folk tale focuses more on finding out an explanation for wonders in nature. The narrator tells a story, an explanation for the humps of Senegal (the Point of Alamdies). Through his story, he is able to give an interesting and detailed account of how they came to be, providing both a form of knowledge and entertainment.
The story begins with the narrator and a young girl named Violet. From a distance, Violet notices the Points of Alamdies, questioning what made them so famous. The narrator is very confident in his reply, telling the story of Momar and his two wives, Khary and Koumba. Khary is Momar’s first wife. She has a minor hump on her back, and lashes her anger out on other people, “She could have filled ten calabashes with her jealousy and emptied them down a well, and she would still have had enough to fill ten times gourds in the depths of her coal-black heart” (2). Momar, who had been growing tired of having to work all day, decides to take his second wife, Koumba. Koumba also has a hump on her back, but much larger than Khary’s, described as it “exceeded all proportions of what a decent hump should be. When she turned her back you would have thought that there was a dyers pot holding up both her neckerchief and the calabash carried on her head” (3). However, Koumba was still friendly and sweet-natured, despite people being spiteful against her because of her outrageous hump. In addition, she was extremely helpful to Momar and Khary. Momar showed appreciation, but this made Khary even more hateful towards Koumba.
One day, an old woman tells Koumba that she had been watching her, “’I have known how good is your heart and how great is your merit, as long as you have known your right hand from your left’” (5). She rewards Koumba by telling her how to be rid of the hump on her back. She tells her to go to the clay hill of N’Guew during the spirit-maidens’ dance. She must approach one of the spirit maidens and say, “Here, take the child that I have on my back; it is my turn to dance” (5). Koumba does just this, and a spirit maiden took the hump from her back. Koumba flees from the hill to her hut. She is described as much more beautiful after losing her hump, “Her finely braided hair fell on her neck which was now as long and slender as a gazelle’s. Momar saw her as he was leaving the hut of his first wife, thought he was dreaming, and rubbed his eyes many times” (6). Of course, Khary is further enraged with jealousy, she even faints. Koumba, who still retained her pleasant nature and good-heartedness, decides to tell her how to get rid of her hump, as well, despite the way Khary treated her.
Khary repeats what Koumba tells her, but upon telling one of the spirit-maidens to take the child from her back, the spirit replies, “’Oh, no! Not on your life!...you look after this one for me; I’ve been with it for a whole moon and no one has come to claim it’” (7). She plants the hump of Koumba onto Khary’s back, and all the spirits disappear. Khary could not take it any longer. She runs far into the sea, but does not disappear completely. The two humps on her back stayed jutting out of the ocean. The narrator claims Khary’s two humps to be the humps of Senegal, or the Points of Almadies.
This folk tale gives out two pieces of information. It provides a social moral. Like many other folktales, karma comes up. Koumba, a sweet and pleasant person is removed of her hump, and Khary, an evil-tempered woman, is repaid with two humps and a death in the ocean, as well as her humps jutting out for all to see. Though the moral is fairly simple, this story is mainly a focus on how the Points of Almadies came to be. Folk tales do not only serve to relay moral codes, but give people reasons to explain natural phenomenoms such as the humps of Senegal. This is much like the story of the sleeping giant, a folk tale from the Quinnipiac Indians. A giant who is foul to everyone is made to stay sleeping forever. Even though these folktales do not provide much of a moral, their indication of why things in nature are the way they are is just as interesting, and continues to let the story be passed down from generation to generation.