The Mbulu is a water person from Zulu folklore.
The Legend of the Mbulu
Once there was a widow who tragically lost all her children, but for one, and so she lost her will to live. She have her only remaining daughter a stick and sent her off to her uncle’s house, instructing her to tap the ground outside his house with the stick. The mother promised if she did so all her possessions would rise from the ground. So she bid farewell to her daughter and planned to end her own life.
The girl reluctantly left home. When she had gone a little way she looked back and saw her mother’s house burning and she knew her mother set fire to the house in order to kill herself, and there was nothing she could do to help. So she continued walking. She kept upon the bank of the river and would encounter what she thought was a man sitting on a rock. When she approached he said “Whoever got wet when walking near the water must go in and bathe.” His hidden tail then thrashed in the water so hard it splashed the girls face. Obediently, she went in the river to bathe. While she was in the water, the man whom was really Mbulu took her clothes and put them on. When the girl came out she politelyd asked “Can I have my clothes” The Mbulu told her at first “I will return them when you are dry” So trustingly the girl continued to walk with him and once more asked “Can I have my clothes back?” This time he responded, “I will return them when we have arrived at the next village”
Upon arriving at the village the girl begged once more for her clothes and sill the Mbulu refused and told her to tell everyone she was his servant. Now the girl was afraid of the Mbulu for the realized she was dealing with a powerful and strange being. She obeyed him and so people imagined Mbulu to be an important woman with fine clothes and her his servant girl. They did wonder why his voice was so deep for a woman, but he said he had been quite ill.
After a while the Mbulu married a man from the village, while the poor girl was sent to work in the fields. While working she regained her voice and began to sing about her enslavement and adventures. A woman working near her heard her songs and made a plan to see if they were true.
Since it is know that the tail of a true Mbulu is always hungry, always hidden, and has a will of its own, the woman set a trap to expose the creature. She dug a hole and filled it with milk and then demanded everyone in the village jump over it. The Mbulu was reluctant, but sense everyone else was doing it, he had no choice, so he tried to jump quickly, but the tail was out of control and could not pass up the milk. Comming out of hiding the tail began to drink the milk. Outraged the villagers killed the Mbulu and buried it in the hole.
The man whom mistakenly married the Mbulu married the girl whom had been the Mbulu’s servent. She had a child and one day while it was playing a pumpkin which grew from the ground where the Mbulu had been buried tried to kill the child. The villagers hacked the pumpkin to pieces and burned it, then threw the ashes in the river.
Finally rid of the threat forever the girl regained her courage and set out with her husband and child and the stick her mother gave her, to visit her uncle. When they reached his house, she tapped the stick on the ground and all her possessions rose as promised, which she shared with her family.