WAKALLE

Find Arno Atoll

  A long time ago, on the island of Arno lived a greedy man called Wakalle. When he was just a boy, people wondered his rapid growth. He was over 3 feet tall when he was just 3 years old, and by the time he was a man, he was tall as a 5 year old coconut tree and wide as a 20 year old fruit-bearing breadfruit tree. Although Wakulla was a giant, he had a brain of a 10 year old child.
         

WAKKALLE

  Wakalle was a lazy man, and he spent most of his time wondering from one village to another, in search of food. He had a peculiar way of looking for food; he sniffed the air and when he smelled food cooking, he went straight to the source. He chased the cookers and ate all of it, leaving nothing but bones and the uneatable parts. Then he sniffed the air again, and if he could not smell anything, he looked for the tell-tale signs of smoke. No matter how far or whatever the obstacle was, he would make every effort to reach that cooking fire. Sometimes he could be seen swimming across the lagoon from island to island, eating from one fireplace to another.

One day a group of men fishing on a remote coral reef on the upper north eastern side of the atoll know as “Wod ko lik”. Wakalle heard from a far off distant that those men had caught a lot of fish, so he swam all the way from “Matolen” in the south eastern part of the Arno, to the fishing ground. The fishermen spotted him a couple of miles away. They shouted aloud out a warning, “Here comes the greedy man, let’s take out the fish cuts to attract the sharks.
The fishermen quickly cleaned out their catch, and it was not long before a lot of sharks could be seen fighting for food. By the time, Wakalle was selecting the biggest and best fish from the nearest canoe; the sharks had finished all of the bait. The sharks saw La-wakalle in the water, and attacked him. La-wakalle fought with the sharks, but there were too many of them and so was killed and eaten with nothing left but one ‘part’ left.
The passage he was killed, was named after him as a reminder that greed is not a good thing. To this day, the people of Arno always refer to Wakalle if someone did not want to share their food. The islanders are well known for their generosity and kindness especially to strangers or outsiders.

All Men who Kill Wakalle