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Hey there. We here at The Moth have an exciting opportunity for high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors who love to tell stories. Join The Moth Story Lab this fall. Whether for an aspiring writer, a budding filmmaker, or simply someone who loves to spin a good yarn, this workshop is a chance to refine the craft of storytelling. From brainstorming to that final mic drop moment, we've got students covered.
Plus, they'll make new friends, build skills that shine in school and beyond, and have a blast along the way. These workshops are free and held in person in New York City or virtually anywhere in the U.S. Space is limited. Apply now through September 22nd at themoth.org slash students. That's themoth.org slash students.
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Chloe Salmon, producer and director at The Moth and your host for this episode. What I remember most about my childhood are the huge feelings.
Not being able to perfect a cursive S in the third grade led me to the brink of despair. Not kidding, asked my mom. But watching the newly green trees flash by the car window at the start of spring brought me a wild joy. Every emotion felt so magnified that I wonder now how my small body held them all at the time. While it can sometimes be hard to navigate, there can be a lot of beauty in being so young and feeling so much.
This episode, we'll be sharing two stories about childhood and the big feelings that come with it. First up, we've got Madam McDonough. She told this at a story slam on the theme of disappearances in NYC. Here's Madden, live at the Moth. I don't think that I could overstate the thrill, the excitement of knowing that the Scholastic Book Fair is coming to your school. Fair assessment? Well...
If you don't know what this classic book fair is, it's this company comes and sets up a market for children in a classroom and you can buy books and toys and it happens once a year and it's absolutely thrilling to experience capitalism as an eight-year-old.
So I have two older sisters. My sister's Cassie and Elizabeth. And they had been hyping me up for years about the Scholastic Book Fair. And it was finally my turn to go in kindergarten. And my parents gave me, you know, a $5 bill, which could get you very far at the Scholastic Book Fair back in the day. And I picked out a book. And not just any book, but a book that lit up. And it made noises when you turned the pages. And it was just a beautiful book.
That day, after purchasing that book, I was hanging out in the basement with my two older sisters. Cassie, eight years older than me, so she's 13 at this time. Elizabeth's three years older than me, so she's eight years old, I guess. They could supervise me at this age, right? You know, it was the early 2000s. They're playing with each other in the basement and I'm laying on the floor absorbed in my new book.
I flip over to the back and there's like a box on it and I'm like, "What the hell is this?" So I'm playing with it, playing with it. It pops open and a battery in slow motion is falling out to my very open mouth. It was almost like taking communion at church. I'm Catholic. I had some practice. It hits the back of my throat and what do I do? Gulp. Yeah.
To give you perspective, it's like a hearing aid battery, not like a AA. So yeah, I was very easily just gulping it down. This is where the decision-making processes started coming in. It started to feel like the situation room. So I'm sitting there. I'm like, cool. Do I tell my sisters or do I just like chill, you know, figure it out later? Yeah.
Again, kindergarten, five, six years old. I decide, okay, okay, let me tell my sisters. I'll tell my sisters. I gather them around and I'm like, hey, hey, hey, so, so this book, so cool. But I opened up the back and I swallowed a battery.
Cassie is definitely old enough at this point to have the alarm bells go off and she's like, "Okay, okay, okay." Heads together again, situation room, do we tell mom and dad? "Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, we'll just like mention it, but you feel fine, so like it's not a big deal, so whatever." A few minutes later, my dad comes into the basement. "What's up, gang?"
This is where, you know, Cassie plays it really cool. She's like, oh, you know, had a great day at school. We're like playing down here. Madden swallowed a battery. Can we get pizza for dinner? Yeah. And then the ultimate decision making comes in where my dad has to put his heads in his hand and realize he has to call mom and tell her that her precious five-year-old ginger child just swallowed a battery. Yeah.
Fast forward into the ER where we meet my mother who's hysterical and very upset, obviously. I still have no idea what's going on. I feel completely fine. So we're hanging out at the ER and by hanging out, I mean I'm getting an x-ray and the doctors are very concerned. So...
I still don't know what's going on at this point, but I know my mom's upset and I want to make her feel better. So I think, okay, let me practice that dance that she just taught me. It fits perfect because we're in an ER, we're in a hospital. Stayin' alive, stayin' alive.
Stayin' alive. Inside of the ER, waiting for my x-ray to come back. Everyone's really upset. So the x-ray does come back, and you wouldn't believe it, my guts of steel have kicked in. The battery has made its way past the vital organs by the time we had gotten to the hospital. And the medical advice at that time was to just let stuff happen if you catch my drift.
And my mom had to catch my drift to make sure it came out. So that's my story on how a battery can disappear very easily inside of your body. And also the title of babysitter can disappear very quickly off your sister's resumes.
That was Madden McDonough. Madden is a native New Yorker and PR professional who lives in Astoria, Queens. Her love of storytelling comes from her Irish mother and father's gift of the gab. Her favorite job is being an auntie to one-year-old dog nephew Ollie and one-year-old human nephew Shay. If you'd like to see a very cute photo of Madden and her sister from when they were kids, check out our website at themoth.org slash extras.
Our next storyteller is Nipurko Kewa. She told this at a main stage where the theme of the night was bound and determined. As a note, this was a virtual show that we put on in 2020. So the audio is a bit different than what we'd normally share. But we think the story comes through wonderfully. Here's Nipurko live at the Moth. Thank you. Hello.
It was a really cold and really cloudy Saturday morning in a small town called Ngong on the outskirts of Nairobi. That day, my parents had told me that we were going to be visiting some family friends who lived in Ngong and they'd said that we would be eating some nyama choma, which is roast meat in Swahili. In my seven-year-old mind that day, roast meat would only mean one thing, goat ribs. You see, at our house, whenever we did a slaughter or we had a roast,
Everyone was entitled to at least one rib to taste at dinner time. So I was really excited and looking forward to eating those ribs in a few hours. I was quiet and patient in the car ride over to Ngon because I was just a really well-behaved child, I guess. You would even call me obedient. I come from the Maasai tribe where the men like to wear these red tartan-like blankets
and the women make wonderful beaded jewelry. We're also locally known for how we roast our meat and also our meat eating skills. So in that moment, on that day, I was really looking forward to those tender, juicy roast goat ribs. As soon as we arrived at the host's family home, we realized that the men had already finished slaughtering the goat.
They were busy dividing up the different parts of the goat for the slaughter, for the roast, sorry. And we were going to play all afternoon long. But that's when I spotted the ribs. Long bones with slivers of red meat dotted with white fat. I could practically hear the sizzle of the fat over the fire. I was really ready to eat those ribs.
And because it was a really, really cold day, I was warmly bundled up in warm layers. And somehow throughout the afternoon, my head, my soul, everything was filled with the aroma of roasting meat. I felt like my imagination was on overdrive. I was really, really looking forward to and anticipating eating those ribs. After some passage of time and playing all the games that we wanted to play in that space,
I realized that time had really flown and we hadn't seen any advances of, you know, when were we going to eat? When were we going to have time to eat the ribs? So I got a bit curious and I headed to the kitchen where I had seen the men carrying in platters and trays of meat and no one walking out to call us. So I walk in and I find my 19-year-old cousin busy with a knife cutting up some pieces of meat.
So I walk up to him and I ask him, "Are the ribs done? Are we gonna have some ribs today?" And he looks at me and he smiles and he says, "But I just cut them up a few minutes ago and the adults finished them all. I even had just two." So I looked at him as if I didn't understand. This guy must be playing a cruel joke because I'm younger than him, yeah? There was a covered dish on the counter next to him.
So I thought if there was any place those ribs were gonna be, it was under that dish. So I decided to uncover the dish. And as I slowly uncovered the dish, I realized there are no ribs in there. It was all the awful parts of the goat, just some liver, some ophor, some intestines and some random boiled pieces of meat, but no tender, juicy goat ribs.
So with a very sad and empty stomach, I walked back outside and I looked for my host daughters who are eight and three years old. So I rounded them up and I told them, guys, there are no ribs today. The guys have finished them all. Do you really think it's fair that we don't get to eat any ribs after being patient and not going to the fire and not looking for those ribs before now?
And then I also decided to look for a piece of scrap paper because by now my cousin was responsible for all this drama. He's the one who cut up the ribs and gave them to the adults without telling us. So he was firmly in my crosshairs. So I got my piece of paper and I wrote in capital letters, RIBS.
and I folded it and I told my friends come we're going to get ribs today if it's the last thing we do we're going to get ribs. Somewhere deep inside me I was really scared because while I'd grown up in a pretty liberal household where I could speak my mind and say whatever I felt like and express myself we were now outside of our home we were in public there are other adults there and
I don't know how it was going to go. So I risked a spanking. At worst, maybe a gentle reprimand. I never knew how it was going to go. So we walked from the compound, just the three of us, three little girls, eight years old, seven years old, three years old, chanting, ribs. We want ribs. And as we approached the kitchen, we saw my cousin in there. Perfect.
There was my number one target. I walked up to him, still chanting, and handed him the piece of paper that said, "Ribs." And we continued chanting and causing so much chaos around the house that my uncle came to find out what was going on. "Why are you making so much noise?" And we told him, "You promised us ribs. We were going to eat ribs, but they are none for us. You see,
In my tribe, culturally, the men always had the pick of the best bits of meat before everyone else. So in this case, it included the ribs and the forelegs, leaving us, the kids and the women with nothing but the other bits of the goat. I really didn't think it was fair. And I had been patient and tolerant and not asked too many questions throughout the day because I knew that we're going to get ribs.
In this case, the ribs got finished before we got to them. And that's why we decided to act. After a time of listening to us chant and cause chaos and, you know, generally just whine like little girls, my uncle finally had enough. And he said, well, what we're going to do now, we're going to slaughter another goat for you. And those ribs will all be for you three girls.
In that moment, I was more shocked than anything else. It's not what I expected when we started out. And I honestly thought I was going to get pinched or at the very least shooed and shut up. But I also realized something different, something that changed inside me quietly. After a whole seven years of being the shy, introverted, really quiet little girl,
I realized that I had a voice. I'd been living as a stranger inside myself for all that time and it had taken the failed promise of GoTrips for me to rise up within my voice and use it to demand for something that I thought was mine, that I rightly deserved. Now you might say that I really truly got away with a lot back then but honestly speaking
Learning to use my voice clearly and loudly to demand for things that I need, to demand for things that I truly deserve, has served me very well. Because I realize now, regardless of whether anyone else is listening, all I need to do is open my mouth and speak. Because it will never, ever be in vain. Thank you.
That was Naperko Kewa. She works out of Nairobi, Kenya, with women business owners who want to build communities around their brand through storytelling and content creation. To see a photo of Naperko as a kid, I promise you can really see the rib revolution spirit in her eyes, visit themoth.org slash extras. That's all for this episode. Thank you to the storytellers for sharing with us and to you for listening.
From all of us here at The Moth, we hope you have a story-worthy week. Chloe Salmon is a producer and director and an instructor for The Moth's community and education programs. Her favorite Moth moments come on show days when the cardio is done, the house lights go down, and the magic settles in. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Janess, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Solinger.
The rest of the Moss leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Cloutier, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Leanne Gulley, and Aldi Kaza. All Moss stories are true, as remembered by the storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoss.org.
The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the public radio exchange, helping make public radio more public at PRX.org.