Abó Lafaek

Abó Lafaek, 'Grandfather Crocodile', is the ancestral crocodile of Timorese origin myth. In the widely told legend a boy takes pity on a small, stranded crocodile and carries it to the sea; grown great, the crocodile repays the kindness by bearing the boy on its back across the ocean, and when at last it dies it swells and hardens into the island of Timor, whose mountain ridges are the scutes of its back. Timorese therefore call the crocodile grandfather and count themselves its descendants, and it is held that a true Timorese will not be harmed by crocodiles. Told across the island, the legend is current among the Tetum and furnishes an origin both for the land and for the enduring bond between people and crocodile.

Domains

• origin of the land
• ancestral kinship with crocodiles

Powers

• become the island of Timor at death
• protect his human descendants from crocodiles

Sources

• In Timorese origin myth, current among the Tetum, an ancestral crocodile repays a boy's kindness by carrying him across the sea and at death grows into the island of Timor; Timorese call the crocodile 'grandfather' and count themselves its descendants.: Andrea Katalin Molnar, Timor Leste: Politics, History, and Culture (London: Routledge, 2010) (secondary); David Hicks, Tetum Ghosts and Kin, 2nd ed. (Waveland Press, 2004) (secondary)