Ananse and his Shadow. Once upon a time, there lived a greedy spider called Kwaku Ananse. Such was his greed that he did not care about his wife and children, he thought of only himself. It was always Ananse, Ananse, everything must be for him.
One day Kwaku Ananse saw three ripe mangoes on a tree by a river. His mouth started watering and he yearned for the mangoes so he decided to go and pluck them at once. He climbed the tree and soon got to the top. He plucked the first and second mangoes and he was going to the third when he looked down into the river. Ananse saw his reflection in the river and thinking it was another person with some more mangoes, he felt very envious. Ananse wanted to enjoy the mangoes alone so he decided to go into the river to fight with that person and collect the mangoes from him.
Splash! Ananse fell into the river. Holding his two mangoes firmly in his hands he started looking around. To his surprise there was no one else in the river. The swift currents carried Ananse away like a leaf. He struggle without success to get out of the river. Desperately, he released his hold on the mangoes and saw them floating away down the river.
Ananse drowning, he drunk a lot of water as he struggled not to drown. Finally, exhausted he came out of the river.
His appetite for the mangoes had reduced drastically with bad grace he referred to them as “sour grapes”. With bitterness and anger he went home where he took his anger out on his wife, poor Konoroh Yaa. When she saw he was angry she left him alone. This is how Ananse paid for his greed.
[…] day, Kweku Anansi went to God to complain that his wife was nothing more than an extra mouth to feed. He also complained that she was eating his share of […]