Have you ever looked down from your house and seen a sea cucumber? What's a sea cucumber? A sea cucumber is a sea creature, similar to starfish and sand dollars, that looks like a fat hot dog or a cucumber. The Monkeys & the Sea Cucumbers, is by far the world's most fascinating story about sea cucumbers and their secret defense. The Sama, boat people and people of the sea from the Sulu archipelago in the Philippines, have told this fable to their children in the comfort of their homes; houses built on stilts over the ocean. "Hey look! There's a sea cucumber under the house. Let's dive for it." You can imagine that the Sama might know a thing or two more about sea cucumbers than we do. For instance, they've observed that monkeys get really upset at the sight of a sea cucumber. This story has been passed down for generations explaining why.
The Sama are unique. They are special. They have interesting foods. They have a different way of life than us. They are talented. We've witnessed a Sama dive down 260 feet into the ocean on one breath. I wonder if he saw a sea cucumber? It is a common mistake to see unique and special as different and to use differences as a reason to degrade, disregard, and bully. As a warning to parents, this book has some examples of bullying. But we love how in the story the sea cucumbers are respectful and polite while at the same time confident in who they are and also capable of standing up for themselves. When a rude monkey takes out his aggression on a seemingly helpless sea cucumber, he and his monkey buddies find themselves in a very sticky situation. This story teaches an important lesson about how we should treat others and not to underestimate those who are different than us.
This story is a great example of the vast and entertaining oral literature of the Sama people from Southeast Asia. The publisher Kauman Sama Online is committed to preserving and sharing these stories with younger Sama and with an international audience. Our Sama Stories series prepares quality Sama folktales for publication by funding their illustration and production. By selling the book on Amazon for the entertainment of an international audience, we are able to finance more books based on Sama stories and also share the Sinama version (the language of the Sama) with Sama students in the Philippines.
We are quite proud of this story's illustrations which were a collaboration of 11 year old illustrator Danilo CG and several Sama community members who were quite knowledgeable about the various types of sea cucumbers, where you find them, what they should be doing, and how they should look like.
Translating this story and selling it on Amazon is the next step necessary in making more Sama stories come to life, also with high quality and culturally relevant illustrations. We hope that in selling the book in this global fashion, we will be able to pay for the cost of producing this book and more. Once this book has paid for itself as well as the illustration and production of one more title, we will release the images and story as Creative Commons, so that Sama and other minority languages can freely benefit from beautifully told and illustrated Sama stories.
Special thanks to Bapaꞌ Kinista, Bapaꞌ Kallilat, Bapaꞌ Armando, and Hussin for sharing their versions of this story and their knowledge about sea cucumbers. Also we are grateful to Luke Schroeder for eliciting the stories and adapting them into the English language and picture book format.