It must have been a pleasantly cool month when vegetables are at their best selves. Inside a walled tropical garden, vegetables of different sorts grew. Red Tomatoes and Salad Greens, Orange Carrots and Purple Eggplants, all flourished in neatly spaced rows.
In one corner, far from the rest, a bunch of Brown Beans blossomed too.
So it happened that when all the vegetables came out to play, the Brown Beans couldn’t get in the games.
“Beans can’t be vegetables,” said the Red Tomatoes and the Orange Carrots. “No, vegetables can’t be brown,” yelled the Salad Greens and the Purple Eggplants. So, these snooty vegetables treated the Brown Beans as if they didn’t matter.
Then one afternoon, a certain Bean McCoy bumbled into town in a jalopy. And what did he find? A bunch of Brown Beans mooching about by the garden. This Bean McCoy was a con who knew many tricks. “Such fine weather should be spent basking in the sun,” he said.
“We can’t,” the Brown Beans mourned, “for we are not vegetables, and vegetables must be red or green – not brown.”
Bean McCoy tittered. He knew he had the silly beans by the hook. “I can make you become red or green,” he said, “but you’ll have to pay … 100 kobo per bean.”
The Brown Beans didn’t have time to think, so they paid up.
Bean McCoy went to the back of his jalopy and took a bottle full of some red concoction. He made the Brown Beans stand in line, and he wrapped blindfolds around their eyes. “Drink up, my friends,” he said with a sly wink.
The Brown Beans each took a sip of the sweet red mixture. But they didn’t know Bean McCoy had sprayed them all over with red dye.
Now, when the blindfolds were removed, the Brown Beans saw they were just as red as the Red Tomatoes. “Now, we’re as red as those snooty Tomatoes,” they sang and danced.
That afternoon when all the vegetables came out to play, there was a great confusion. The Red Tomatoes, the Orange Carrots, the Salad Greens and the Purple Eggplants stood in circles, frowning and pouting and wondering how such a thing was possible. The Brown Beans were now red, and they could go on the slides and swings. That afternoon, they could play as long as they wished.
Suddenly, the sky turned grey, and a great rain poured. And all the red was washed away. And they were brown again.
But Bean McCoy had fled out of town in his jalopy. That con!
Once more the Brown Beans couldn’t take part in the games. Day after day, they stood at the stands, moping and doping while the Red Tomatoes, the Salad Greens, the Orange Carrots and the Purple Eggplants played on the slides and swings.
It wasn’t quite long before Bean McCoy, now disguised as a smarty salesman, zipped into town in a fancy sort of car. He’d perfectly changed his name to Crookie McBean, and he looked fat and round and handsome in his fancy new clothes and hat and shoes.
Of course, he knew where to find those Brown Beans – on the stands.
“My friends,” he called out from his fancy car, “I’ve just come from a faraway land with something to make your day. I’m a therapist, you see, and my job is to make you look just how you want. I can make you fit as a fiddle or the other way round – if that’s what you want. I can change your colour to green or green to blue, or blue to purple. There’s nothing I can’t do, and my price is the best in the country – a thousand kobo per bean.”
You would think the Brown Beans had learnt their lesson, but no, they couldn’t see past the end of their noses. So, they paid up.
In the back of the fancy car were pint-sized bottles of Wonder Magic Powder. There was green, orange, purple and even a hotchpotch of colours that a clown might fancy. “Rub this all over,” Crookie McBean explained. “Choose any colour that suits you.”
Now, once all of the rubbing was over, a great spectacle unfolded. Green, orange, red, purple and even clownish beans danced in glee. Again, the Red Tomatoes, the Salad Greens, the Orange Carrots and the Purple Eggplants couldn’t tell one from the other.
“We’re just like you!” the Brown Beans sneered, swinging high. “You can’t tell us apart!”
But as the Brown Beans played in the heat of the day, the powder began to wear away, for powder and sweat should never mix.
“We’ve been played again!” yelled the Red Tomatoes.
“Those are only the Brown Beans!” roared the Salad Greens.
“And we’ll have nothing to do with them!” raged the Orange Carrots and the Purple Eggplants.
Again, the Brown Beans were pushed away to their cheerless corner. Of course, they got frightfully mad to know they’d been fooled by that scoundrel. “We’ll run him out of town this time!” they cried.”
But Crookie McBean was as smart as he was crooked, for he’d zoomed out of town in his fancy car.
Days passed, and it happened that after being fooled twice, the Brown Beans got smart. One day, when they were by their corner, shut out from all the wonderful fun that went on in the garden, and not worried anymore over the small matter of their colour, or whether they were vegetables or not, they heard a strange commotion that seemed to come from the play area. And as they looked to see what it really was, they were surprised to find the Red Tomatoes, the Salad Greens, the Orange Carrots and the Purple Eggplants groaning and moaning over the mottling of their precious colours. Speckles and splotches and splodges smeared their skin. It was a terrible mess, which brought to an end all that talk about their colours.
Now as everyone knows, vegetables need each other to flourish. While some vegetables keep pesky bugs away, others bring friendly bugs in. Beans even catch the rain with their tough umbrella-like leaves and stop it from ruining the soil. But by putting the Brown Beans away, those other vegetables had left themselves exposed to all kinds of attack. So, they learned a lesson that day – that a vegetable is a vegetable no matter its colour.
Well, for Bean McCoy or Crookie McBean, or whatever new name he fancied, the swindling of the Brown Beans wasn’t his last, for he was last seen on the road to a new town where a colour chaos was raging.
Beans Can’t be vegetables by Ogbu Eme emerged 1st place winner in the 2022 Wakin Kuria Prize for Children’s Literature.
Click to see a full list of winners
