THE GIRL WHO SOLD COOKIES

Yves PinguillyPeggy Nille

(Adaptation)

Let me introduce Yangba. She is seven or eight years old, no more than that.

Although we pass her by every day, we hardly see her. And yet, she is always there.

She is the girl who sells cookies at the school gate of Dèngbè a yé bia, the School of the Singer Rabbit.

Yangba sits on her stool, with the bowl in front of her, and she sells friedbanana cookies, the makara ti Ndongo.

She lives with her father, her father’s wife, and the daughters of herfather’s wife.

She hardly ever sees her father, becausehe is a night watchman at the city. He only comes to sleep at dawn, and he ignores the life his little Yangba leads.

Her mother died when she was born and now she has to work for her father’s wife, her stepmother.

But Yangba wants to grow up.

Lately, she has begun to tie a piece offabric around the hip, and she wears a loose pale top.

Yangba is a beautiful name.

Yangba has a friend, a bird. It is a yellow belly kaya, attached to a string on her wrist that looks like abracelet.

Sometimes, it stands on her shoulder... Other times, on her head...

On a particular day, Yangba sees the children enter the school yard, watches them play, and then queue near the classroom.

Then she sees some people arriving with white coats.

Everyone brings a bag in the hand or on the shoulder.

But there is a man and a woman who also carry a cooler.

They enter the school. They go to the rooms. They are there to vaccinate five, ten or twenty students, maybe more.

Soon after, a car arrives. A huge car.A car that makes up a whirlwind of dust around Yangba.

A tall lady gets out of the car. She is beautiful, dressed with a tunic embroidered on the sleeves and chest. But she doesn’t even say hello, and enters the school without looking at Yangba.

She comes to see how the vaccination is going.

Yangba stays alone, with no one around.

Then the lady leaves the school.

She sits at the steering wheel of her big car.She starts the engine but, instead of driving on, she reverses the car andcrushes the bowl with Yangba’s fried dumplings.

Although Yangba is crying, the lady starts yelling at her.

Then, she drives away and, after that, night comes.

Yangba doesn’t go back to her stepmother’s house.She doesn´t want to be beaten for coming home with empty hands.

With kaya, she will sleep in her hideout, which is a mango tree.

There, among the branches and mangoes, she rolls herself up in a bull’s skin that somebody once gave her. The skin still has the two big sharp horns.

It’s late at night when she falls asleep. But soon she wakes up.

By the tree, some thieves are plotting and arguing.Yangba trembles with fear. She is really scared, and falls among the robbers, covered with the ox’s skin with horns.The moon that is watching everything and hears everything becomes brighter.Then, the five, six or seven thieves scream out of fear:‐ It’s a witch! A likundu!As they run away and disappear into the night, they leave eight small diamonds wrapped in a washcloth on the floor.Yangba climbs up the mango tree again to hide herself in the ox’s skin.Now she is rich. She has found eight small brilliant diamonds.

When morning comes, Yangba isn´t selling her cookies.

On the main street of the city, she sells a small diamond, just one, in exchange for which she is given big banknotes.

Now she can fulfil her dream: buy a beautiful pair of shoes.

She then goes to the neighbourhood by the great river Oubangui. Her stepmother wants to hit her, but Yangba’s new shoes run faster than the wind and she disappears.She wants to go to school so much...In what corner of the world will Yangba be by now?In the neighbourhood, some say that her shoes made her run into the middle of the sky and into the world.Others say that she just flew to the other side of the river, holding her kaya by a string, and that she finally fulfilled her dream: join the children who learn to read and write.

But I know she’s out there ... I heard that she went to a beautiful placeand that, finally, she now goes to school with other boys and girls.

They say she is very happy ... If you could see her...

Try to find her! She is your friend.