Joe+B

=**The Fire Of Dupelopa**=

The fire of Dupelopa is a story about how things came to be the way they are today, for instance, why heaven is so high, why the turtle has it's shell, and why it rains. It is quite a good story.

The Fire of Dupelopa is set in the Lesser Sunda Islands. The story has many characters, and is designed how to explain the creations of earth and how they came to be the way they are today. The main character is a giant called Bai Ngao, who is a highly-strung giant who is very tall, so tall, in fact that he frequently bangs his head on the floor of heaven. There is also a husband, Dupelopa, and his wife,Sakuete, who accidentally cause the fire of Dupelopa. One day the couple is climbing the ladder into heaven to visit some relatives, and they brought back down some coals to heat the rice for dinner. While coming down the ladder, Dupelopa slipped and dropped the coals onto Bia Ngao's head and it set fire to his hair. Bai Ngou forced the protestan Dupalopa and his wife back into heaven and then took the ladder away. Then he pushed heaven up so high that no one could see it or come back down again. Dupelopa and his wife started crying because they would never see their children again, the tears are the rain that we see today.

The wind carried the coals very far, and they eventually reached old man Turtles' hut. The roof was made of dry palms and they caught fire, and the house soon burned down. When old man Turtle came back, he saw his hut as ashes. He sat down and cried, because all he ever owned was inside that hut. The villagers took pity on him, and they helped him build another house, this time on his back, so there was no chance of it catching fire without him. To this day turtles still carry their house on their backs.

On the same day, Buffalo and Zebu, two brothers had gone into the river to bathe, because it was a hot day. Buffalo was a fat man, and Zebu was very thin. Suddenly, while they were enjoying themselves, the river became boiling hot. This was because Bai Ngao had plunged his hair into the river to put out the flames in his hair. The scrambled out of the river, and they quickly put on their clothes, because they were frightened. While they were running they put their clothes on, but in their haste, they took the wrong clothes. Buffalo had grabbed Zebus clothes and Zebu had grabbed Buffalo's clothes. The clothes were too tight for Buffalo and too loose for Zebu. That's why to this day the Buffalos skin is too tight for it's body, and the Zebu's skin hangs loose.

The story is a way of telling people why things are the way they are today, and is mostly a fable from the time before proper science in Indonesia. This story is no different from the book of Genesis, in terms of principles, as it is supposed to describe and answer the questions about why the earth is the way it is.

The story tells us little things about Indonesia, like what they ate, for instance. Dupelopa is bringing home coals to heat the RICE, which is one of the main foods people ate in Indonesia, and still to this day. Though, as I explained before, it is a way of explaining things which people did not understand, and was not specifically designed for direct entertainment, so the creator of the story didn't specifically focus in bringing in a moral and other things that will appear in a modern story today.