Once upon a town very faraway, leaves a girl named Amina, she was the youngest of her siblings and every day, she would walk along the narrow roads of the village, singing and hopping alongside the “Black River”. It was called the black river because every one that went to bath in it never came back alive, it is believed by the villagers that under the river lay a great and big creature that captures every one that went into the river. “Oh sun arise, the moon is gone, villagers heading to the market place…la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la”, she sang as she headed home. Suddenly, she heard a voice calling out from the other side of the river, “Amina, amina” the voice yield out, but the early morning waves made it hard for her to hear the voice, “Help! Please help us” more and more voices joined in the plead, she was so frighten that she ran home as fast as she could, “Amina, why are you running so fast” her elder sister asked, “Femi” she held her breath, “While I was passing by the black river today, I heard some voice calling my name and asking for help”, “Don’t be foolish” her sister interrupted her, “There is no such thing, maybe is just your imagination”, “No sister, no, I did heard some voices” she pleased. “Alright, I will go back to the river with and prove to you that there are no voices”.

Amina and her sister went back to the road near the black river, where Amina heard the voices, after a few minutes standing and waiting for the voice, “I told you Amina, there is no voice here, so come on and lets go home”, “But sister, I did heard some voices” she exclaimed, “the voice came from the other side of the river, I now I heard some voices”, “ I believe you did Amina, now lets go home” her sister said. She was still curious about the voice, she knew her sister didn’t believe her and she wanted to make her believe, so the next day, in the early hours of the morning, she came back to the river and waited for the voice, the minutes went by the hours and she still did not hear any voice, she waited and waited but there was no voice, she repeatedly came near the river every morning for two weeks but she never ones heard a voice.

She was sitting by the river one day, when suddenly, a voice called her “Amina” she surprisingly stirred at the direction the voice was coming from, “Mum, is that you” she yield out. A few weeks ago, Amina’s mum and dad was declared missing and possibly dead, the villagers believe that the black river had took them, “Amina, yes its me, your mother” the voice answered, she was so full of joy to have heard her mothers voice that she ran into the village knocking on everyone’s door, “My mother is alive!!!” she repeated yield, and every one in the village gathered together, “What is going on” the villagers murmured to each other, the elders of the villages called for silence and asked Amina to speak on why she had to wake the entire village, after a complete silence, Amina was carried onto a chair so that the entire villagers could see her, “I heard my mothers voice calling me for the other side of the black river” she addresses the villagers, “She asked me to call for help and that is why I have waked you all, please we must do something at ones”, the villagers began to murmured among themselves with disbelieve, some were saying “It can’t be, her mother was dead long time ago” while other yield out, “She is just a little girl who missing her mother, that is why she thought she heard her mother’s voice”, “No, no” she yield back, “I know I’m a little girl, but please, believe me, I did hear my mother’s voice”. The elder of the village ones again called for silence, then continued, “She might be just a little girl but Amina have never told us a lie, if she said she heard her mother’s voice, then we must all believe her and go to the black river” the elder concluded.

Every one matched to the black river to hear the voice, “Mother!” Amina yelled out to the dark and scary forest across the black river, but there was no reply, “Mother” she yield out again but there was still no response, the villagers where beginning to rage in disbelieve, “I told you there was no voice in the black river?” a villager yield out, “Lets go home, I need some sleep”, but just as the villagers where about to dispatch home, they heard some voices calling out to them, “Please don’t leave, its us, we are still alive”, the villagers where surprise, the voices continues, “The river is not deadly, please get a boat and pick us up”, immediately, the villagers got a boat and paddled to the other side of the river and found Amina’s parents and seven other villagers that had been missing for the past month, and on to the shore they dropped them, the villager was very excited and Amina gave her parents a big huge, “but what happened, why where you stuck at the other side of the river?” another villager asked, “We where trying to fetch some firewood from the forest, when our boat got lose into the river, we didn’t have a boat to ride back here, you see, at the other side of the river, there is no place to tie your boat and that is why we lost our boat” Amina’s dad answered, “there is nothing wrong with the river and we can all bath in it”, suddenly, many of the villagers including the young ones quickly jumped into the river and more and more people joined them, the villagers was so happy that they changed the name of the river from the “Black River” to “Amina’s River”. The END.