The lion roared at him, but Tunjur stuck his spear right into the lion’s mouth, so that it choked.  The spear penetrated the lion’s brain and killed it.  The lion fell, and Tunjur hacked its body to pieces with his hatchet to make quite sure that it would not revive again.  Then he picked up Mandoko, who had fallen too.

“Mandoko,” he asked, “what are your plans?”  “My plans?”  “Yes, where are you going to spend the night?”  “In my stepmother’s house.”  “Your stepmother wants to have nothing to do with you.”  Mandoko insisted on going to her stepmother’s house, but the old woman did not open the door:  “Go away, you dirty girl, you smell of wild animals, you eat frogs, lose my property, walk with lions like a witch, I don’t want you in my house ever more!”

Finally, Mandoko agreed to go with Tunjur to his house and spend the night there, since she had nowhere else to go, nobody wanted her.  In Tunjur’s house she found everything prepared:  An orphan has to look after himself because no one else will look after him.  There was water, firewood, ground millet, and milk, so she could cook a delicious porridge for the two of them.  She has been doing that every night since then, for she married him that night.

Famine

The kind woman fed the boys and brought them water, but told them they couldn't stay because her husband loved to eat people.

It had been a bad season; soon there was famine in the land.  A woman said to her husband, a woodcutter, “We have three children and we cannot feed them.  Take them away into the bush and lose them.  We shall have other children later.”

The husband agreed reluctantly, and the next morning, after their mother gave them their last ball of porridge for the journey, their father said to the children, “I want you all to come and help me carry firewood.”  So they set out together, quite unaware of their parents’ intentions. 

The smallest brother began to feel suspicious, so he crumbled his porridge ball and dropped the pieces one by one.  Suddenly, after many hours of walking, the father said:  “Here you must wait for me.”  They waited and he went back home by a roundabout way.