Sadiku returns to Baroka and gives him Sidi’s reply. Lakunle, who is jealously listening, excoriates Baroka as being against progress and modernity. She glories in her photographs and says Baroka only wants her because she is so famous and has brought so much honor to the village. She paints this as an incredible honor, but Sidi laughs that Baroka is old. Sadiku, Baroka’s senior wife and head of the harem, finds Sidi and tells her that Baroka wants to take her for a wife. Later that day he stares at the pictures of Sidi and muses that he has not taken a wife for some time. Lakunle gets into the spirit of the performance. The drummers and singers and actors play out the arrival of the stranger and his camera. She pushes Lakunle to participate and act as the stranger, and the performance commences. Sidi suggests the villagers act out and dance to the story of the stranger. Lakunle is dismayed to hear this, but Sidi glows with pride. Sidi occupies a central space and is stunningly beautiful. While Sidi and Lakunle are talking, several young women run up to Sidi and tell her that the stranger-a photographer who visited the village some time ago-is back, and that he brought with him the magazine that contained within it pictures of the village and villagers.

However, she plans to marry him if he can pay the price as the village traditions necessitate. Sidi does not love Lakunle she finds him and his ideas about making her a modern, Western bride obnoxious. Lakunle loves Sidi and wants to marry her, but he refuses to pay her bride-price because he considers it an archaic tradition.

He approaches her and chastises her for carrying her water on her head and stunting her shoulders she is unfazed. Sidi, a beautiful young woman also known as “The Jewel,' carries her pail of water past the school where Lakunle, the schoolteacher and a village outsider with modern ideas, works. The play is set in the village of Ilunjinle, Nigeria.

Lion and the jewel novel