THE GIRL WHO

SOLD COOKIES

Yves Pinguilly
Peggy 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 fried
banana cookies, the
makara ti Ndongo.

She lives with her father,

her father’s wife, and the
daughters of her
father’s wife.
She hardly ever sees her father, because
he 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 of
fabric 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 a
bracelet.

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 and
crushes 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 place
and 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.