Kalulu (Tabwa performance)

Kalulu has no clothes, but tells his wife that they will soon be wealthy. He visits the lion’s children while their father is away and invents an uncle who demands bark cloth by the next day. The children carry the message to the lion, who is puzzled by the claim of kinship but makes the cloth anyway. When Kalulu returns, he takes it and has the children tell the lion that the uncle has thanked him.

The lion then calls the animals together to discover who sent the demand. As they travel to the gathering, Kalulu gives the garment to bushbuck, warning that he should not arrive naked. Before the assembled animals, Kalulu points to the clothed bushbuck as the supposed uncle. Bushbuck tries to explain that Kalulu gave him the cloth, but the others silence him. The lion orders him punished, and bushbuck dies. Kalulu survives. The performer ends the episode by repeating that the lion was fooled by Kalulu’s trick; the story’s closing turn is also its cost, since bushbuck bears the fatal consequence of the deception.