Hello all, today I am going to tell you about storytelling. When I was a kid, I spent most of my vacations in the village with my grand parents, my cousins, sisters, brothers. During the night, we would sit around a fire and tell stories or play games.
There is no art more ancient than the art of story telling. This was especially true in Africa where a story was usually accompanied by dance and music. Africans love the oral tradition. They had no written language in past times. That is why the griot was, and still is, such an important member of the community. The griot is a highly respected storyteller and musician who is responsible for passing traditions from one generation to the next.
Folktales and myths speak to a unity between ancient and present day peoples. The same emotions which people felt long ago are in us today; joy at birth, grief at death, love of parents, forgiveness, jealousy and so on. We tried to express these emotions by telling stories.
Here are some stories, I found.
“The Wise Fool”: A Folktale from West Africa
A poor peasant woman bore many sons. All except one lived normal, useful lives and did well. Naturally, their mother loved them. But one of them was born a fool, and he was neglected and left to shift for himself as best he could. All day long he worked on a large patch of sandy soil, not far from the village. Everybody laughed at him all the time.
One day the mother went to her garden and there found a baby with very long hair lying on its back under a fig tree. It was crying and kicking. It looked hungry and neglected. The woman fed and nursed it, and soon it fell asleep. She worked all day on the farm and no one came for the baby. When night fell, the woman took the child home with her. Again, the next day, no one came for the baby, so she cut its long hair and took it in.
Soon afterward, a troupe of fairy people came to the village to claim the baby. When they found that its hair had been cut, they demanded that it be put back. This of course, was impossible. They demanded that if the woman could not make the baby’s hair grow, she was to be taken away and killed. The chief of the tribe and the elders did everything in their power to appease the fairies. They offered gold ornaments, slaves, land—but to no avail. The woman was to die!
Then the fool walked up and demanded to be heard. “Listen to me. The fairies say my mother should die, and maybe this is a just punishment. But the fairies walked across my sandy plot of land as they came to the village. I demand that they rub out their footprints before they are allowed to take my mother away!” This seemed a foolish and meaningless demand and everyone said “how simple” and agreed.
At sundown, the fairies were still working on the sandy plot that belonged to the fool. Days went by. Then a week. Then another. Because just as one set of footprints were gone, another set appeared. By the end of the second week, the fairies had covered the entire plot with footprints. At last they gave up and let the woman live.
This is why even today, children who do not do well are not cast out, but treated fairly. Wisdom hides in many places.
TWO SISTERS AND AN OLD MAN:
A long time ago in a little village, there lived a man who had two wives and two daughters – one daughter from each wife. Bisi was the daughter of the first wife and was only a few months older than the second wife’s daughter, Ranti.
The family lived together in the same compound so the girls often played together but Bisi was fond of bullying her younger half-sister just like her mom was fond of being mean to Ranti’s mother. Ranti would go crying to her mother and sometimes she would tell her mother how she wished to hurt Bisi just like Bisi had hurt her. But her mother would tell her “never give bad in return for bad, nothing good comes of that”. So Ranti remained good and continued to show love in return no matter what Bisi did to her.
One cloudy day, Ranti’s mother passed away after a brief illness. Without her mother around, it did not take long for Bisi to crank up her level of meanness towards Ranti. Soon Ranti was doing all of Bisi’s chores while Bisi just lazed around, dressed up, ate, slept or visited friends. Ranti would wake up early in the morning before the cocks crowed, place a large clay water pitcher on her head while carrying another in her arms and walk to the river to fetch water for the family’s use. It required several trips back and forth before the huge water pot in the compound was filled. Then she would sweep the compound with a broom made of dried palm fronds before peeling yams for breakfast. Her list of chores stretched out until dusk by which time she would be exhausted and just collapse to sleep on her raffia mat. She was too busy to even feel sorry for herself. And everyday, this process was repeated.
One morning as she made her daily trip to the river, she saw an old man sitting by the river bank. He appeared to be covered in sores and he looked really pitiful. Ranti went to meet him “Baba, are you alright, can I get you anything?” she asked. He wanted some water which she gave to him then she washed his sores. “My child, you have a wonderful heart and you deserve wonderful things” he told her. He directed her to go to a garden just beyond the river. He told her she would find two trees – one with golden fruit which she was not to touch, and the other one with rotten fruit. He told her to take one of the rotten fruits home and once she gets home, she should break open the fruit.
She did as the old man instructed. When she broke the fruit, riches beyond her wildest imagination appeared, filling every inch of her bedroom. When Bisi discovered this, she insisted that Ranti tell her where she got the riches from.
The following morning, after several cock crows, Bisi got up from bed. She hoped the old man would still be at the river as she picked up a pitcher and headed to the river. Luckily for her, he was there looking exactly as Ranti had described him. She went to him and asked “Baba, which way to the magic garden?”. The old man showed her and he also told her to pick the rotten fruit, not the golden one. Bisi dumped her pitcher and headed to the garden. She saw the tree with the rotten fruit and the one with the golden fruit and she said to herself “That old man must think I’m stupid. These golden fruit are mine!”. She picked a couple of golden fruits, as many as she could carry in her hands and went on her way.
When she got home, she went into her bedroom and closed her doors as she did not want anyone stumbling in to discover her riches. She threw the fruits hard at the floor to break them, but instead of riches, snakes, worms, rodents and all manners of horrible things appeared.
ANANSE AND THE POT OF WISDOM.
..or NO ONE PERSON CAN HAVE ALL THE WISDOM IN THE WORLD
This is a very old story told when the world was young . It is about how Mr.. Ananse the Sly and greedy one among all the animals in the forest outsmarted himself.
As the story goes Ananse, that is still his name , but did you know that his first name was Kweku because he was born on a Wednesday ? One day Ananse collected all the wisdom in the world and decided to keep it all in a large pot for himself. Now he said “I have all the wisdom of the world for myself. At least that was what he thought being such a greedy person.
Kweku Ananse then tied the pot of wisdom around his neck with a strong vine rope and let the pot hang in front of him. But then he was afraid that someone would find the pot of wisdom and steal it.” What shall I do with my pot of wisdom” He thought and thought and at last he said,” I shall hide the pot on top of the the tallest tree in the forest.” So he searched the forest until he found the tallest tree which happened to be the thorny silk cotton tree and brought the pot of wisdom to the tree. While Ananse was trying to climb the thorny silk cotton tree his son was watching him.” Father,” he said,” "What are you doing" "Well" said Ananse , I have in this clay pot all the wisdom of the world and I am going to hang it on the top of the tallest tree away from everybody , then I will be the wisest in the whole wide world." "I have an idea." said his son " Why not hang the pot behind you instead of in front of you. Then you will be able to climb the tree”. Well the sly one Ananse hung the pot behind him and to his surprise; he was able to climb to the top of the tree with his pot.
Finally Ananse sat on a branch of the tree holding the pot of wisdom. “I thought I had all the wisdom in the world” He thought to himself.
“I thought I had it all in my pot but my own son has wisdom that is not in my pot.” Then he made a statement that we still use today.” No one-person can have all the wisdom in the world.”On his way down he dropped the pot and it smashed into many pieces and scatted all the wisdom all over the world.
If you want to read more folk tales here is a link you could check out.
http://www.allfolktales.com/folktales.php
