Masai

(map)

Tumbainot, a righteous man, had a wife named Naipande and three sons, Oshomo, Bartimaro, and Barmao. When his brother Lengerni died, Tumbainot, according to custom, married the widow Nahaba-logunja (whose name derived from a high narrow head, a mark of beauty among the Masai). She bore him three more sons. But they argued about her refusal to give him a drink of milk in the evening, so she left and set up her own homestead.

The world was heavily populated in those days, and the people were not good, and they refused to follow God's commands. Still, however bad they were, they did not murder, until one day a man named Nambija hit a man named Suage on the head. This was more than God could bear, and he resolved to destroy mankind.

However, the pious Tumbainot was loved by God, and God commanded him to build an ark of wood and take into it his two wives, his six sons and their wives, and all sorts of animals. When they were all aboard, and Tumbainot had laid in a great stock of provisions, God caused a flood with a great long rain, and all other men and beasts drowned. The ark drifted for a long time, and provisions began to run low. At last the rain stopped.

To ascertain the state of the flood, Tumbainot let loose a dove. It returned tired, so Tumbainot knew that it had found no place to rest, and the flood must still be high. Several days later, he loosed a vulture, but first he attached an arrow to one of its tail feathers so that, if the bird landed, the arrow would hook on something and be lost. That evening, the vulture returned to the ark without the arrow, so Tumbainot inferred that the vulture had found some carrion to land on, and the flood must be abating.

When the water ran away, the ark grounded on the steppe, and its occupants disembarked. As he left the ark, Tumbainot saw four rainbows, one in each quarter of the sky, signifying that God's wrath was over.

Frazer, 1919, 330-331.