Anansi and the wisdom pot

At a Glance

• Central figures: Kwaku Anansi, the spider and trickster of the Akan tradition, and his young son Ntikuma.
• Setting: Akan tradition (modern Ghana / Côte d’Ivoire); Anansi cycle, preserved in oral form and widely known across the African diaspora. The story takes place in the forest beneath the great silk-cotton tree.
• The turn: Anansi gathers all the wisdom in the world into a single clay pot and attempts to hide it at the top of the silk-cotton tree so no one else can have any.
• The outcome: Anansi fails to climb the tree with the pot tied to his belly. His son Ntikuma points out the obvious solution, and Anansi, furious that a child already possesses wisdom he thought he had captured, throws the pot to the ground. It shatters, and wisdom scatters everywhere.
• The legacy: Wisdom belongs to no one person. It is found in small pieces all over the world - in every village, every family, every child who opens their mouth at the wrong time and says the right thing.

Anansi woke up one morning and had a terrible idea. He would collect all the wisdom in the world - every last scrap of it - and put it in a pot. Then he would hide the pot where nobody could reach it. Then he would be the only wise creature alive. Everyone would have to come to him. Everyone would have to pay.

He found a clay pot, wide-bellied and deep. He took it under his arm and went out walking.

The Gathering

He went to the river first. The river had wisdom about patience, about wearing stone down to sand, about finding the lowest path. Anansi scooped it out and put it in the pot.

He went to the anthill. The ants had wisdom about work, about carrying what is heavier than yourself, about building a kingdom grain by grain. He took that too.

He went to the tortoise, who had wisdom about keeping your mouth shut. He went to the hornbill, who had wisdom about singing when nobody asked you to. He went to the old woman at the edge of the village, who had wisdom about grief and about yam cultivation. He went to the palm-wine tapper, who had wisdom about how to fall from a tree and survive. He took it all. Everything they knew, he took and dropped into the clay pot.

By evening the pot was full. It was so full that when Anansi pressed the lid down, a little piece of wisdom leaked out from the side and a passing beetle swallowed it. Anansi did not notice.

The pot was heavy. Heavier than anything Anansi had carried. He held it in his arms and staggered. The wisdom of the whole world is not a light thing.

The Silk-Cotton Tree

Anansi looked around for a hiding place. The silk-cotton tree stood at the center of the forest, taller than anything else, its roots as thick as a man’s waist. Its trunk went up and up and up and vanished into the canopy where the sunlight broke apart. Nobody could climb that high. Nobody except Anansi.

He cut a length of rope. He tied the pot to his belly, snug against his stomach, so his hands would be free. He gripped the bark and began to climb.

The pot was in the way.

He put his arms around the trunk and the pot pushed him backward. He tried to swing a leg up and the pot shifted. He dug his fingers into the bark, pulled, and the pot knocked against the trunk. He slid back down.

He tried again. Same thing. The pot sat between his body and the tree like a fat child refusing to move. He could not get his arms around the trunk. He could not get his legs into position. Every time he pulled himself up a hand’s width, the pot pushed him back two.

He tried a third time. He was panting. Sweat ran into his eyes. The pot made a dull sound each time it struck the bark - tonk, tonk, tonk - and it sounded like the tree was laughing at him.

Ntikuma at the Foot of the Tree

His son Ntikuma had followed him from the village. Ntikuma was small. He had been watching from behind a fern the whole time. He had watched his father tie the pot to his belly. He had watched his father fail. He had watched his father fail again. He had watched his father fail a third time and say words that children are not supposed to hear.

Now Ntikuma stepped out from behind the fern.

Father.

Anansi looked down. He was two feet off the ground. He had been climbing for an hour.

Father, if you tied the pot to your back instead of your belly, you could hold the tree and climb.

Anansi stared at his son. He stared at the pot. He stared at the tree. He stared at his son again.

The boy was right. The pot on his back would leave his chest flat against the trunk. His arms would go around it freely. His legs would grip. He could climb. Anyone could see it. A child could see it.

A child had seen it.

The Pot on the Ground

Anansi did not retie the pot. He did not shift it to his back. He did not thank his son.

He ripped the rope from his waist and threw the pot to the ground.

It hit a root and broke. It broke into seven pieces, and the wisdom that had been packed inside flew out in every direction. It scattered into the wind. It flew into the grass. It sank into the river. It drifted over the village. It blew into the next village, and the village after that, and the villages all the way to the coast, and over the water.

Anansi stood at the foot of the silk-cotton tree with the broken pieces at his feet and the rope still in his hand.

I gathered all the wisdom in the world, he said. All of it. Every piece. And my own son already had a piece I missed.

Ntikuma said nothing. He had the wisdom to say nothing.

What Scattered

The wisdom went everywhere. A farmer in the north picked up a piece and learned when to plant before the rains. A woman by the lagoon picked up a piece and learned how to read the current. A child picked up a piece and learned that adults do not always know what they are doing. That last piece was a large one.

Some pieces were small and ordinary - how to mend a fishing net, how to keep a fire through the night. Some were strange and hard to use - how to speak to the dead, how to read a spider’s web for weather. Some pieces nobody found for years. Some are still lying in the grass.

Anansi went back to his house. He sat in his web. He was not the wisest creature in the world. He was not even the wisest creature in his family. The pot was broken and the wisdom was out and there was no getting it back into any container.

But Anansi was still Anansi. He still had his tricks. Wisdom and cunning are not the same animal, and cunning does not scatter so easily.

Ntikuma walked home behind his father, stepping over the broken pieces of the pot, and did not say a single word the whole way back.