•  A long time ago in Uganda lived Walukaga,
the finest blacksmith in the land.

•  One morning a messenger from the king arrived and told Walukaga that the king had a job for him. Walukaga excitedly
put on his best clothes and hurried off to the palace.

•  Walukaga was ushered into the palace's inner courtyard
where the king grandly sat on a throne carved from a tree trunk. Walukaga bowed and rose.

•  The king clapped his hands and servants staggered in with odd-shaped pieces of iron. The king told Walukaga that
his task was to make the metal into a living man.

•  A shocked Walukaga saw that the king was serious.
Deadly serious. Those who failed to obey the king's orders
were put to death.

 •  Walukaga meekly obeyed the king and slunk
after the servants who carried back the metal
to Walukaga's smith shop.

•  People wondered why Walukaga looked so grim.
In the evening, they fell silent
as Walukaga told them what the king ordered.

 •  Walukaga could not eat nor sleep and fell ill as he worried over his problem. Nobody could help. Walukaga groaned out his thoughts as he wandered alone in the bush.

 •  Suddenly, Walukaga stumbled on to a madman and
realised that the man was his friend from childhood.
The hermit invited Walukaga to eat the berries and honey
he had just collected. As they ate,
Walukaga told his old friend his dilemma.

 •  The hermit told Walukaga to ask the king for one thousand loads of charcoal burnt out of people's hair.
The other special ingredient Walukaga needed was
a hundred pots of tears from the king's people.

•  Walukaga dubiously accepted the madman's advice and
rushed off to the king's palace. The king agreed
to get Walukaga's special ingredients.
The king commanded that everyone shave their heads and
cry into water pots the next morning.

 •  The people shaved their heads and cried as much as
they could, but they could not even make
one load of charcoal nor fill two water pots.

•  The king sighed as he heard the results and
sent for Walukaga.
A sweating, weak-kneed Walukaga
wobbled towards the king.

 •  But the king was smiling and told Walukaga
he was free from his task because the special ingredients
were impossible to get. Walukaga confessed that
the king's task was also impossible and
was allowed to go home.

•  Everyone laughed when they realised how cleverly
Walukaga escaped his fix.
But Walukaga remembered that it was his friend's advice
that saved him and made sure the madman
never went hungry again