A long time ago, there lived a woman and her son in the middle of the forest. Being a widow, the woman always reminded her son how to behave himself all the time. Each time the boy would be sent out on errands by relatives and this made the woman to be satisfied that the boy was growing up properly.

Life in the village was about struggling and people had to do without food because of prolonged drought. This particular year, there was a severe drought that made all the crops that had been planted to dry up. Locusts came by and all the green vegetation was eaten up and all people could see were dry patches of grass in the fields.

This brought particular suffering to the livestock and the woman had to resort sending her son to work for other people, looking after livestock to be able to get some food for the two of them. Life became very difficult that at one moment, the boy would have to walk many kilometres before getting water and grass for the animals he was looking for.

For him, life was a torture because he would look at boys of his age who would sit around their homes doing nothing and he would feel very angry about the situation at his mother’s homestead.

There was a constant reminder that he was a child of a single parent because his father had died a long time before and it was always going to be very difficult. But for him, life was difficult and each time he woke up early in the morning to go to other people’s homesteads to collect the livestock that he would look after for the day, anger built up in his chest and at one moment he could cry for long moments.

He could go back home and tell his mother about how lonely he had been in the forest looking after the livestock but all she could say was that he was now the man in the homestead and had to take his responsibilities.

"One day my son, you will come to see that this work you are doing has been helpful. There is nothing else one can do besides working hard these days especially when there is drought.

"You see, we are poor people because your father died early and we had no one to accompany other men whenever they went out to raid neighbouring tribes," she would say.

It was the tradition of this particular tribe for young men to go out and invade their neighbours and get the cattle from them. The cattle would be used to pay bride price and if there were any left, the owner would have property to start his life with and in many cases this was the basis of riches that one could accumulate.

It so happened that during one of these raids, this boy’s father was shot by poisoned arrows and his friends left him behind when being pursued by their enemies. They killed him off and brought his body and dumped it next to the village.

Although there was no more fighting between the two tribes and peace was made, many people believed that this boy’s father had been given out as the sacrificial lamb for the peace to be reached.

It was not strange for a person to be killed and blood shed before peace came as this was the normal belief that for peace to be achieved, blood of an influential villager was supposed to be shed.

But something that at times troubled the woman and her son was that no one seemed to care about their plight and always when problems arose like in this particular season, they were supposed to fend for themselves and find food on their own.

It had been survival throughout and each time this woman saw her son complaining, she would hide her emotions but would understand that this was going to be the nature of their lives for as long as they lived.

One day as the boy sat in the quiet forest, he started to think about the ways he could attract people’s attention. According to him, they had neglected him and his mother and there was a way they could attend too them, besides forcing him to look after livestock for small rations of food every day.

So one day, as he sat in the forest, he looked at the goats that were particularly very troublesome. They could wander away and he was time and again forced to abandon the cattle and follow them so that wild animals could not eat them up.

One day he became so angry at life that he decided to call out for help. He shouted at the top of his voice that a lion had attacked the livestock and wanted people to come over and help him.

Hearing the call for help, people who were in the fields preparing them for the sowing season after rains had showed signs of starting ran to his rescue. They rushed with their spears and bows and arrows to attack the lion that they thought had attacked their herdsboy.

But when they reached to the scene, there was no sign of a lion and because of the explanation he gave that it was approaching and when he called out, it backed off, the people went back to the fields without any more questions.

A few days later, the boy called out again for help and the people who were in the fields ran to his rescue again but like the previous occasion, there was nothing and they quietly went back to their chores without any complaints.

But as this trend continued, they started to realise that this boy was just attracting their attention when there was no danger at all. They realised that all he wanted was attention which always pulled them away from their work in the farms.

In the evenings, his mother would try to talk sense into him by discouraging him to stop what he was doing but on each day, he would cry out for help that a lion had come to attack him and the livestock.

It reached a point that the villagers got tired and would always ignore it when he called for help. But much as they tried to ignore him, he would still shout, just to entertain himself. At one moment, the village elders called him and tried to warn him against shouting for help but he continued without heeding the advice.

But one day, as her sat there looking after the livestock, a lion came out of the forest and attacked the animals he was looking after. He tried to shout for help but everyone in the fields thought he was just joking and ignored him. The animals dispersed into the forest and since the lion had not been able to kill any of them, it went for the boy who could not run as fast as the animals had.

He wailed in anguish but the lion continued with its lunch, tearing his body to pieces. Later in the evening, the boy did not return and a group of young warriors went out to the forest to look for him but all they found were the livestock wandering about without any direction. They reached the place where the boy normally sat and found pieces of human flesh and blood spilt all over the place.

Though the village regretted that they had not been able to help the poor boy, the blame was put on him because he had turned this whole thing into a joke and never heeded to advice to stop it.