A diviner prophesies that a specific child, Kambili, must be born to destroy Cekura, a sorcerer who has transformed into a man-eating lion ravaging the land; the hero is deliberately conceived, raised, and trained for this single appointed task. The epic resolves when Kambili fulfills the prophecy and kills the lion-man, closing the destiny that opened the tale.
A person's defining deed is announced by divination at or before birth, so the hero's life becomes the working-out of a fate already spoken rather than the discovery of an open future. Agency is channeled into fulfilling the prediction, and the suspense lies in how, not whether, the destined act occurs.
The epic treats the hunter-hero as made by the convergence of ancestry, apprenticeship in hunting craft, and mastery of sorcery and protective charms, not by raw courage alone. Killing the shape-shifting enemy demands matching its occult means, so the hero's strength is presented as part spiritual technology.
Because the poem exists as Seydou Camara's sung performance, the narrative is interwoven with the bard's own praise-lines, proverbs, and moral asides addressed to the present audience. Reading it as a transcript means hearing a storyteller editorializing in real time, so the meaning sits in the telling as much as in the plot.