In the spirit of romance, love and union, I decided to revisit an old folktale I came across some year back about how the world came to be. For a good while, I believed that this was the Shona, world creation story. I’d later find that there were different versions of it, all written with the bold claim of being the single story of how the Shona lore described the creation of the world, each with the same characters, Musikavanhu/Nyadenga (God), Zuva (the Sun), Mwedzi (the moon), Hweva (Morning star) and Morongo (Evening star). 

This story I’ve shared is a blend of all the versions I’ve encountered, enjoy ❤ …

This story goes…

Many years ago, before the great hammer hit the ground and before the world came to be, there was Nyadenga, who sat in constant contemplation. A moment came when he decided to move, in this moment he felt a great joy followed by an intense desire to share this experience. So he created to Zuva, full and fiery with a portion of Nyadenga’s greatest sense of passion and joy. 

After a time, it became clear that Zuva could not relate to Nyadenga, he had a loneliness about him which saddened Nyadenga. On a certain day, Nyadenga shed a tear at the sight of a lonesome Zuva, who’d been yearning for something he’d never known before. Nyadenga kept this tear and breathed life into it. Giving birth to Mwedzi, a companion for Zuva.

The two shared a beautiful romance, and Nyadenga delighted in it. He gave them the ability to realize this love through creation. Together they were amazing creators, Zuva would create beautiful plants and vegetation and show them to Mwedzi, and Mwedzi would create insects, birds and many gentle animals to show to Zuva. The more they created and shared in the beauty of their creations, the more their love grew. Nyadenga had been gifting them with inspiration when they created and stoking their love when they were apart, it gave him a sense of whimsy to do this for them in secret, and the amusement he felt when they’d each come and talk about the other in their private times with Nyadenga, filled him with more gratification than he’d ever anticipated.

Gradually, they grew more and more distant from Nyadenga, relishing only in their union. No longer speaking to their creator, leaning into a vanity over the works they had done.

Nyadenga grew furious at this, after all, the entire reason he created them, was to share the joy of life with them.

He watched as their vanity transformed their love into arrogance, believing they had done it all on their own. He leaned further back when they no longer sought to create as a mark of affection and their once heartfelt devotion to each other turned into competition. 

Their new commitment to outshine each other increasingly became fuelled with spite. Each one determined to prove that their creations were more beautiful, more important, more useful than the other. 

In a moment of rage, Zuva, knowing that Mwedzi’s animals fed on his plants, began to lace some with poison, and sure enough, the animals began to die off. A grief stricken Mwedzi, not knowing how to deal with this deception grew angry at her creations, she had often bragged that her animals were stronger because they could move freely as they pleased and that she could easily command them to stomp on Zuva’s motionless plants if she wished. She never imagined that he would poison them, or that they could succumb to the attack of a motionless creature. Soon after she created more violent animals to hunt down and kill the ones that had embarrassed her. 

This war that grew between Zuva and Mwedzi was felt by their creations. The plants vowed never to speak, fearing their father would set them ablaze. The herbivorous creatures grew more anxious, and uncertain, not knowing why they were punished with such violent siblings. And the carnivorous animals turned on each other, those who revelled in their roles as predators making a sport of attacking those who had sunken into shame and guilt for their violent nature.

Nyadenga could no longer bear the chaos. He called Zuva and Mwedzi and showed them the pain they had been causing. But they were too caught up in their strife to truly care about the harm they were causing to their creations, only choosing to blame each other.

So one day, Nyadenga took from Mwedzi’s smaller carnivores, the snake, which at the time only hunted for mice, and he filled it with poison from one of Zuva’s plants and set it loose. As Zuva paced and inspected his garden, he grabbed this snake with careless rage, mistaking it for a fallen branch and it’s hiss for an expression of disrespect, he had believed the plants honoured him with their silence. 

He felt the poison shoot up and without much time he was with Nyadenga.

Mwedzi would meet a similar fate, when she grabbed the snake to return it closer to the mice after seeing it wonder near Zuva’s garden.

The two pleaded with Nyadenga, begging to be sent back, Nyadenga wouldn’t have it, but he allowed each of them a single ask for their eternal lives in Nyadenga’s house. Mwedzi begged for them to be able to watch over their creations. Nyadenga granted this with the condition that they never do this together, that they were to spend eternity watching over their world apart, and were to never directly interact with their creations as they did before. 

After hearing that their union would not continue in eternity. A teary eyed Zuva begged for a chance to work on one last creation with Mwedzi, as a monument to their love. She accepted this, it hurt her too that their relationship would end, even though it had become so bitter. Together, with the help of Nyadenga they spent time creating mankind and womankind, pouring bits of themselves and their shared love and knowledge into them, and placed them on earth to help keep harmony amongst all creatures.

Soon after they were done, they shared a final kiss and a teary farewell then Nyadenga kept his word and separated them. Calling Zuva’s watch time day time and  Mwedzi’s watch time night time.

They drew nearer to Nyadenga, in their separation and the love that they had shared for each other resurfaced. So Nyadenga, not wanting them to suffer the lonesomeness that had once caused a heartbreaking isolation in Zuva, allowed them to send messengers; Hweva and Morongo, between each other, while keeping the vow that they never meet again.

The End