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    Today's Water and Other Ananse Stories: African Fireside Classics, #1
    Today's Water and Other Ananse Stories: African Fireside Classics, #1
    Today's Water and Other Ananse Stories: African Fireside Classics, #1
    Ebook59 pages38 minutes

    Today's Water and Other Ananse Stories: African Fireside Classics, #1

    By A. Sakyiama

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    About this ebook

    The trickster is on a mission!

    He is most certainly cunning and clever, but is Kweku Ananse the most clever of all? He thinks so and in Today's Water, he sets out to prove it!

    Before this tale of Ananse's quest, we see him in other tales, earning his reputation as a crafty and ingenious trickster. Along the way, we also find out why the sky is far from the ground and how it came about, that all stories, are Ananse stories.

    If you have never heard of Ananse, this collection of stories is a great introduction to him. 

    Ananse is a trickster who enjoys getting the better of anyone he crosses paths with. From a lowly lizard to kings and gods, no one is safe from his tricks. 

    He is also a shapeshifter who can turn into a spider and hide when in trouble. Sometimes he's the hero; most times, he's the villain and occasionally, he's just the narrator.

    While Ananse stories are told all around the world, this set comes from the source—from the folktales of the Akan people of Ghana, West Africa.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAso House Press
    Release dateJul 19, 2013
    ISBN9781497721487
    Today's Water and Other Ananse Stories: African Fireside Classics, #1
    Author

    A. Sakyiama

    A. Sakyiama was born in Ghana, West Africa. She grew up hearing many of the stories that she now retells for all of us to enjoy. She writes of the antics of wily folktale characters like Ananse, his son, Ntikuma and his clever wife, Aso. She tells stories of naughty and nice ghosts; scared but brave boys and girls; monsters that eat disobedient children; as well as fantastical tales about why things are the way they are.   A. Sakyiama currently lives in the USA with her family. She is also an avid gardener or more accurately, a fierce warrior who defends her territory against marauding gangs of deer, woodchucks, rabbits and crows. Visit her at www.asakyiama.com.

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      Book preview

      Today's Water and Other Ananse Stories - A. Sakyiama

      A Tower of Mortars

      A person who will not take advice gets knowledge when trouble overtakes him.

      — Akan Proverb

      LONG LONG AGO, when the world was still young, Nana Nyankupong, the Supreme God lived very close to the earth. Anyone could go directly to him for help on all sorts of matters. As a result, this was a time of peace and great prosperity.

      At this time, there was a certain woman who was bigger and stronger than your average person, even though she was quite old. In fact, some said that she had been around for as long as people had been around. In any case, she had so many children, practically everyone in her town was related to her. This old woman developed an appetite for fufuo. She loved it so much that she had to have it every day.

      So everyday, she would make a pot of soup, boil up some plantain and cassava. When it was all ready, she would roll out her giant wooden mortar and fill it with the plantain and cassava. With her wooden pestle, she would pound it all into a large sticky ball of fufuo. Then, she would eat the fufuo with her soup.

      Phoom phoom phoom, was the sound of her heavy pestle as she pounded. Not only was her pestle heavy, it was also quite long. Every time she lifted it, it would knock up against Nyankupong.

      In the beginning, Nyankupong did not pay much attention to the jabs. As the old woman pounded in the same spot day after day, into weeks and months, he found it more and more irritating.

      One afternoon, Nyankupong just stopped answering questions and ordering the lives of those who had come to him. Instead he asked:

      Every evening, near meal time, I feel something knocking up against me. Why is this?

      No one knew what was causing the knocking. Finally, near the end of the day, a little boy figured it out and sang:

      "It is the old old woman,

      My grandmother,

      the old woman.

      She pounds pounds fufuo,

      In her big big mortar,

      with a long, long pestle.

      It her pestle,

      Nana Nyankupong,

      That is hitting, hitting you.

      It is the old, old woman,

      making her food."

      Go and tell her to stop making this type of food because it hurts me, Nyankupong commanded. The boy ran home and sang to his grandmother what Nyankupong had said:

      "Grandmother, Grandmother,

      Nyankupong has sent me,

      Your pestle, your pestle,

      You lift it, you lift it,

      It hits him, it hits him,

      It pains him, it pains him,

      The fufuo and soup,

      You must stop eating today.

      The old woman stopped for a while, but her craving for fufuo grew until she could no longer resist it. Against the advice of her family, she started pounding fufuo again and knocking against Nyankupong in the process.

      To make matters worse, she also began to cut bits off the part of Nyankupong that hung close to her hut. She used the bits to flavor her soup.

      Nyankupong was angry. He had put up with many annoying things, like the smoke from cooking fires getting into his eyes, just so that he could remain close to the earth and its people. Now he had to put up with the old woman jabbing him everyday. He had had enough of that. He decided that it was time to move his home elsewhere. Before he left, he summoned the old woman and everyone in her town. When they were assembled, he scolded the old woman quite harshly for her actions. At the end of his rant, he declared:

      "Because of what you have done, I am going to take myself away. I will go high into the sky and make my home out of the easy reach

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