Pa Toroki - The Heavenly Banquet

This book by Prince Dr. Anyangwe Ngassa, a surgeon by profession from Cameroon, is a classical African fairytale which is setup in a period when all animals used to live together in the same locality. Prince Dr. Anyangwe Ngassa vividly narrates the adventure of Pa Toroki, the head of the tortoises. In the African mythology the tortoise is often portrayed as being very intelligent but also crafty. One day the birds, which are also very clever, get a message from God inviting them and all the other animals to a banquet in heaven. The birds egoistically decide to restrict the number of potential attendees to God's heavenly banquet. So they inform only a selected group of animals, thereby deliberately avoiding to tell Pa Toroki and his kind. However, as destiny would want it, Pa Toroki gets to learn about the news and promptly embarks on carrying out a well worked out plan which he calls OPERATION HEAVENLY BANQUET. His aim is to attend the heavenly banquet against all odds. Would he succeed? This fairytale is very beautifully illustrated by the Cameroonian artist, Tanka Fonta, who understands how to capture the imaginations of the author and conveys them detailly in typical African colours. Both the master paintings and the vividly narrated fairytale keep the reader and listeners spellbound from the beginning right to the end of the story.