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A Nigerian Folktale Retold by Mary-Joan Gerson
In the beginning, the sky was very close to the earth. In that time, men and women did not have to sow crops and harvest them. They did not have to prepare soup and cook rice. The children did not have to carry water from the stream or gather sticks for the fire. Anybody who was hungry just reached up, took a piece of sky, and ate it. It was delicious, too. Sometimes the sky tasted like meat stew, sometimes like roasted corn, and sometimes like ripe pineapple. There was very little work to do, so people spent their time weaving beautiful cloth, carving handsome statues, and retelling tales of adventures. And there were always festivals to prepare for. The musicians practiced, the mask makers carved their masks in secret, and everywhere the children watched the preparations in wonder.
The King of the land was called the Oba, and his court was magnificent. At the royal palace was a team of servants whose only work was to cut and shape the sky for ceremonies. But the sky was growing angry because people were wasteful. Most often they took more than they could possibly eat and threw the leftovers onto garbage heaps. " I'm tired of seeing myself soured and spoiled on every rubbish bin in the land," brooded the sky.
So one morning at sunrise, the sky turned very dark. Thick black clouds gathered over the Oba's house, and a great voice boomed out from above. "Oba! Mighty one! Your people have wasted my gifts. I am tired of seeing myself on heaps of garbage everywhere. I warn you. DO not waste my gifts any longer, or they will no longer be yours."
The Oba, in terror, sent messengers carrying the sky's warning to every corner of the land. In every village, people were told about the sky's unhappiness. The children were warned never to take a piece of the sky unless they were truly hungry.
People were very, very careful- that is for a while…. Then the time arrived for the greatest festival of the year. It was the festival that celebrated the power of the Oba.
The most important dancers performed all through the night, and the Oba himself, in ceremonial robes, danced for his subjects.
By the fifth day, there was rejoicing in every home and on every street. The Oba knew, though, that with the dancing and merriment, people might forget the sky's warning. So he made sure no one took more sky than he or she absolutely needed.
Now, there was a woman in this kingdom who was never satisfied. She could barely move when she wore all the weighty coral necklaces her husband had bought her, but she still craved more necklaces. She had eleven children of her own, but she felt her house was empty. And most of all, Adese loved to eat. (ah-dess-ah)
On the very last night of the celebration, Adese and her husband were invited to the Oba's palace. There they danced and danced and ate well past midnight. "What an evening it was," Adese thought later, standing in her own garden again. "How I wish I could relive tonight- the drumming I heard, the riches I saw, the food I ate!" She looked up at the sky and, hoping to taste again the cocoyams and meat stew the sky had offered, she took a huge piece to eat. She had only finished one-third of it when she could swallow no more.
" What have I done?" wailed Adese. "I cannot throw this away. Otolo!" she screamed, calling her husband. " Come and finish this piece of sky for me." Her husband, exhausted from dancing all night and stuffed with the sky he had eaten a the Oba's palace, could take only two bites.
"Wake the children!" screamed Adese. Now, the children had spent all night at a masquerade and party after their dinner, and most of them were still too full to even nibble at their mother's piece of sky. The neighbors were called, and the neighbor's neighbors were called, but Adese still held in her hand a big chunk of sky. "What does it matter," she said finally, "one more piece of sky on a rubbish heap." And just to make sure it didn't matter, she buried the leftover in the garbage bin at the back of her house.
Suddenly the ground shook with thunder. Lightning creased the sky above the Oba's place, but no rain fell.
"Oba! Mighty one!" boomed a voice from above. "Your people have not treated me with respect. Now I will leave you and move far away!
"But what will we eat?" cried the Oba. "How will we live?"
""You must learn how to plow the land and gather crops and hunt in the forests," answered the sky. "Perhaps through your own labor you will learn not to waste the gifts of nature."
No one in the land slept very well that night. The rising sun uncovered the heads of men and women and children peering over rooftops and through windows, straining to see if the sky had really left them. It truly had. It had sailed upward, far out of their reach.
From that day onward, men and women and children had to grow their own food. They tilled the land and planted crops and harvested them. And far above them rested the sky, distant and blue, just as it does today.
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