Young children in Russia, barely rising to their feet in the cradle, already know from their parents how difficult it is for their grandfather, grandmother and their animal assistants to pull a turnip out of the ground. What adventures await Masha in the house where three bears live. And as if on a golden chain walks-a learned cat wanders around the age-old oak tree. When they are older, they will learn about the heroes of fairy tales of European peoples - Bremen Town musicians, the Snow Queen, the Persistent Tin Soldier, Pinocchio, known here as Pinocchio....

What fairy tales do African mothers tell their black children? Surprisingly, the world knows almost nothing about it. Of course, there are such fairy tales, and there are many of them. But almost all of them are passed down by word of mouth for many generations, often tens or even hundreds of years. They are not written down either on paper or on palm leaves, or on other "improvised materials", since most tribes where such tales are known and told to children are simple... there is no written language, which means that oral speech is the only way to convey the content of fairy tales to young Africans.

And what-without exaggeration-is simply terrible in Africa because of the constant mixing of languages of different, especially small, tribes, the long-term introduction of any state language, and recently also English or French, many children's fairy tales and quite "adult ""legends of deep antiquity" are simply forgotten and, probably, they have already disappeared from the people's memory. In fact, a whole layer of culture that is little known to the world is being" washed out", which cannot but cause regret...

This regret is expressed in the preface to their short book "Tales of Ndonde and their Neighbors "(Moscow, Publishing House "Klyuch-S", 2016, 104 p.) by Professor N. V. Gromova and Associate Professor M. R. Urb, teachers of the Institute of Asian and African Countries of the Lomonosov Moscow State University.

In 2015, they conducted a one-month field study of the Ndonde language in the United Republic of Tanzania. This language is on the verge of extinction: if in 1987 it was spoken by about 33 thousand people, in 2007-only 2458. Even those who retold fairy tales to Russian researchers did not remember many words of their native language, and it was not easy to understand the content of some fairy tales. However, the scientists themselves asked their interlocutors to retell the texts in the much more common Swahili language in these places - the official language of Tanzania.

Of course, this book is intended primarily for specialists in linguistics and African historians, but it was hard not to wonder: will our Russian children understand and be interested in the fairy tales of a small African nation? In my opinion, they are very interesting. To a large extent, this is due to characters that are completely out of character in our fairy-tale tradition-elephants, lions, hyenas, guinea fowls, and the djinn's very exotic werewolf staff. But not just because of that. Almost all fairy tales have a humanistic beginning - the good in them necessarily wins over the evil. This means that they teach you to love your parents, your fellow tribesmen, and even the animals of the savanna.

So, in the fairy tale "The Frog and the Elephant", the most selfless among the tribe of frogs sacrificed herself to save tovarok from an evil and arrogant Elephant, who crushed helpless swamp creatures by the dozens, heading for a watering hole. A brave Frog crawled into the stomach of a huge animal and, with its incessant croaking, forced it to end its arrogance and change its behavior.

The collection contains several Ndonde folk tales and two more tales from other representatives of African peoples - Yao and Mwer. Stylistically, they differ little, except that they are more "moralizing" in nature.

Yao's fairy tale is called "Obey your elders". In a short fairy tale, a whole "bouquet" of adventures of girls-sisters who encountered werewolves-shaitans. And all in order for parents to advise their daughters the obvious, in general, truth: "Don't get married in a far country if you don't know anything about this land and its rules, otherwise

you'll get yourself into trouble or even lose your life. Take as your wife and choose a groom from your clan-tribe, knowing well his character."

The book "Tales of Ndonde and their Neighbors" today is mainly of scientific interest. But the time will come when it will become the most valuable bibliographic rarity, because there will simply be no other sources of oral folk art of the disappearing African tribe - it will "dissolve" into hundreds of other tribes. I'm not even sure that the very name of the tribe-Ndonde - will be remembered by Africanists in a hundred years.

This is the main value of the book by two Russian scientists. And also in the fact that these African fairy tales can be read to children in Russia. For many of them, this will be the first acquaintance with a different culture, different way of life and customs. And, perhaps, the first step to understanding how diverse the world of which we are a part is.

And one more thought comes from reading the book by N. V. Gromova and M. R. Urb. How many languages do you think are spoken in the small African country of Tanzania? About 150 more!!! And in terms of the number of speakers of the Ndonde language, it - this language-occupies only 140th place. It means that the little people are incredibly lucky that in faraway Russia there were two scientists who were interested in their oral work, and in a relatively narrow sector of children's fairy tales. And how many such fairy tales can be heard in many dozens of languages that have not yet attracted the attention of researchers!.. In any case, in bookstores and libraries, I did not come across books that are close to the topic of "Ndonde Tales and their neighbors."

In a brief annotation that precedes this work, it is stated that the collection of fairy tales " is intended for children... for Africanists of all genres, as well as for a wide audience." I would like to add: it is intended not only for reading, but also for continuing to study the phenomena of African culture, including oral folk tales.

It should be mentioned that the book is modestly but adequately illustrated and that the artist K. V. Milyukov managed to achieve an amazing stylistic harmony with the texts of fairy tales.

The book is published in a very small print run, and few parents will be able to get it to their children. But those who are lucky will find that fairy tales are also fairy tales in Africa.

N. I. PETROV, columnist for Asia and Africa Today magazine

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P.S. The result of a short but very intense business trip of two Russian scientists-Nelly Vladimirovna Gromova and Monica Raivovna Urb-was not only a collection of fairy tales from one of the hundreds of African tribes, but also a small book intended, in the words of the editorial annotation,"...for Bantu scholars, typologists, specialists in comparative linguistics, and anyone interested in the languages of Africa." That is, for specialists of a rather narrow profile who study the history and culture of the Black Continent. The book is called "Dictionary of Ndonde-Russian-Swahili. Russko-ndonde" (Moscow, Publishing House "Klyuch-S", 2016, 68 p.).

A dictionary is, of course, far from a dictionary: the number of words listed in it (and translated into other languages) does not exceed several hundred. But even this allows us to compare the features of languages, in particular, Ndonde and Swahili, and draw conclusions about their origin and development "in the temporal aspect".

The book is supplemented by a small map of the more or less "clustered" Ndonde settlement areas in the Mtwara region of southern Tanzania. To the above, in a review of the collection of Ndonde fairy tales, we can add with regret that these areas, most likely, are destined for a short century - the process of "dissolution" of African tribes in the general mass of the continent's nationalities is "on the rise"...

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