Week 6 Storytelling

(sun photo, by Simon)

Author's Note: I'll come back and edit this later, but basically this story is based off of the story of Anansi and Nothing. Anansi meets Nothing, a rich man, on the road one day and they go off to town to find a wife. Shenanigans ensue. I really will come back and edit this, but I wanted to get it posted....

Source:  West African Folktales by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).

In the late morning, during the second month of my stay in Ghana, I knocked on the door of the woman Abena, whom I had met only the night before. The morning was clear and cool, and a breeze ruffled my skirt as I stood there on the threshold, only my racing heart betraying my impatience. Behind me, the city rumbled and screeched along its daily path through the streets.

She answered the door with a child on her hip and worry in the lines of her face. “Oh!” she said. “The anthropologist. I did not expect you this morning. Maybe tomorrow morning?”

My hopes sank. “Tomorrow” often meant “some indefinite time in the future”, and I only had a few more weeks before I needed to start writing my report. I could feel the hole lurking in my argument as I spoke. I’d attempted to chase down several of the people who told me “tomorrow” before, and they kept pushing me off. I’d sworn that I wouldn’t be pushed off today. “Of course I could come back tomorrow,” I said. “But if even if you only have a few minutes, I would be happy to hear what you have time to tell me.

Another child came to her side. “My friend,” she said, again “perhaps now is not the best time?”

I took a deep breath. My heart was racing very, very fast—I didn’t want to mess this up, but I’d been trying to get somebody to tell me this story for a month now—to no avail. [] Had seemed perfectly willing to tell me last night. What had changed her mind? “Of course,” I heard myself saying, like I had so many times before. “I’ll come back tomorrow. I—“

Right at that moment, something crashed in the street behind me. A man had knocked over the trash can that stood by the road as he walked by. When I turned back to look at Abena, the lines in her face had deepened—not with worry, but with something I could only describe as annoyance. She looked at me, and then back at the man, who hadn’t even stopped to pick up the trash can but who was making his way down the street with his shoulders thrown back. She shifted the child on her hip.

“My friend,” she said, “you said you wished to hear a story. Please come in, and I will tell you one.”

When we had settled down at the worn table in the kitchen, the dim light from the window washing the wood and the cup of tea she had made for me gold and silver, she took a deep breath. “You said you wished to hear a story,” she said. “I cannot tell you the one you asked for, but I will tell you one about a man who was unkind to his wife, and how it fared for him.

“But—“ I said.

She cut me off. “My friend, listen to me. I will tell you this story, or you can go and ask someone else for the one you keep asking for. Will you listen to mine? Or will you leave now?”

I shoved down my impatience. Nobody ever got anywhere, in fieldwork, by being impatient. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m listening. Please tell your story.”

For a moment, there was silence while she stared at the table and stirred her tea. I thought she wasn’t going to say anything. Then, slowly, she began her tale. “This is the story about a man who was unkind to his wife,” she repeated, “and another man, named Nothing, who was kind to his. It goes like this: one day, a businessman who was down on his luck met another businessman—his neighbor—on the road to the city. The first businessman was poor, so he wore ragged clothes, while his neighbor wore very fine ones, but they got to talking and found that they were both going to the city to look for a wife. They decided to go together.”

Somewhere in the house, something banged and a child shrieked. Abena glanced worriedly towards the door, but relaxed when she heard the glee in the child’s voice.

I shifted in my chair. “What happened then?” I asked.

“The poor businessman tricked the rich businessman into trading clothes with him. He said that he wanted to feel rich for a day—and of course, being rich, the other businessman understood. But the poor businessman tricked the rich one, and didn’t give his clothes back before they reached the town. When the got to the square where all the girls were, the girls only interested in the poor businessman. They didn’t know he was poor, because of his clothes.

“The rich businessman was named Nothing. He didn’t get any attention, because he was wearing the ragged clothes. Only one girl wanted to speak with him, but she was the most beautiful of them all, and the most kind. The rest of them had no use for him.

“The poor businessman negotiated a marriage with the kindest girl’s best friend, who was the second most beautiful of all the girls in the square. He kept the rich businessman’s clothes, so that she had no idea he had no money, or that he was a trickster, before the wedding. So she married him.”

She stopped, and gazed steadily at me for a few moments. “You should not be tricked by poor businessman in rich clothes,” she said, finally. “That is my story, my friend.”