Introduction

Stories have been important part of Africa life for thousand years even till today, troops and entertainers has traveled from village to village to present programs of music, dancing and storytelling, often stories are told through dancing. Sometimes entertainment programs can last for 7 days.

In the beginning African tales werent written they were passed from a generation to another by the word of mouth. People who could remember stories tell them well but highly he got it round africa and it still exist.
African fokltales were used to pass an important information, ideas, tribal roles, and religious belief. Africans are the oly people who have folktales for many different reasons, some stories tries to explain things about the world. You may have heard about stories of “how come elephant have trunks” or “why tortiose nose was crooked. Intresting!!

Now my tales talk about wher folktales comes from, it is the story on:

“HOW ANANSI OBTAIN THE SKY GOD STORIES”

Sky God was the keeper of all stories, many people were willing to obtain the sky gods stories, people wet to meet the sky god but he refuse to give them the stories.

Anansi the spider was determine to get the stories, so he went up the sky to as the sky god about his stories.
He got up there then ask the sky god asked Anansi the spider that how his he worthy enough to be able to ask for his stories. Anansi the spider told the sky god was that “the only thing he wish to ask is for a chance to get his story”. Then the sky god gave him a task to bring him mohboro the honey bee, ameni the snake, and opsibo the lion for the story to be his. Anansi agreed, he drop back to the earth and set for some plans.

He started his planning by putting water into a long neck calabash then he went to mohboro the honey bee dwelling place and started the water from atop, the he called mohboro the honey bee “mohboro mohboro.. it raining!!, come into my boat and you will safe and dry!!) then mohboro the honey bee agreed and and went into the calabash. Mohboro was captured and been taking to the sky god.


Anansi went back to the earth and embark on his next plan where he got a long stick take it to ameni the snake dwelling place, he told ameni the snake that “ I told my wife that you are longer than the stick but she refuse, stretch to the stick and I will tie you to the stick to show her that you are longer than the stick”. Ameni the snake wanted to show superiority and he agreed to stretch to the stick then Anani tied him up and take him to the sky god.


Anasi again went back to the earth and plan on his last mission which is to capture opsibo the lion. He dig the ground to get a very big pit, he cover it with a big leaf grass. He called opsibo the lion to the direction, opsibo fell into the big pit. He went to the place where opsibo lies in the pit, then opsibo the lion speak “ My friend Anasi, as you can see I have fallen into a big pit, can you think of a way to get me out? Anansi replied, “YES” I have an Idea, there is a spinning big tree over there “ I will get the tree then you will tie your tail around the tree and I will release the tree slowly.
Well Anansi watch carefully while opsibo then tied his tail to the tree , instead of anansi letting up the tree slowly, he let go all once, then opsibo the lion bounced up to the sky and anansi hang on his tail. Now the sky god has watch opsibo the lion bounce up the sky, and he knew he must fulfil his promise to anasi the spider.


He agreed to give anansi his stories, but as a fun loving god, he decide to play a trick on anansi. He stuck all his stories in a bag and had earlier thought the bag will be too big for anansi to carry. He drop a nail round bush which will make Anansi fall from the sky, Anansi carry the bag and suddenly the bag was torn by the nails. The stories blew up and spread to the earth on the grass, houses, bushes, water and more and that it why we still find the stories everywhere till today. Stories in people, place and things, stories from which we can learn and enjoy.

Conclusively,

Anansi is very popular tricks in characters in west Africa folklore, he put in many stories as a spider like the one you just read. Tricksters are characters which are very clever, they use their wings for solving many problem and help people, they also play a lot of tricks on people and animal in every stories they appear. Tricksters are always found in folktales around the world.
Lastly, magical event has always been a important part of folktales because they use stories to stretch our imaginations.
Watch out for my next folktales stories in my next post….

Enjoy!!!