Anansi and the Make-Believe Food

Another story about Anansi tells us about a time when food was very scarce and the rivers and streams were drying up. It may even come from the days when the people of Africa were leaving the Sahara for greener places.

here had been no rain for many, many days. The crops had all withered away. The animals were starving. Anansi and his whole village were hungry too. And day after day, the sun shone down and the blue sky stayed empty of clouds.

Finally, Anansi said, “If someone doesn’t go find some food, we will all die of hunger! I am going to walk until I find a village where there is food, and bring some back for all of us.”

So Anansi started out. He walked and he walked and he walked until the sun went down. He walked all night. When the sky began to get light the next morning, he saw smoke from the chimneys of a village, far in the distance.

He walked until he reached the village. And then he stood with his mouth open. The village was full of—cassava! Cassava are vegetable roots that look like large potatoes. Anansi loved roasted cassava almost as much as he loved yams. And in this village, there were no people, just cassava—walking around in the streets, sweeping the steps of their huts, and sitting under the palm trees, talking to each other. When the cassava saw him, they all jumped up.

“A visitor! A visitor!” they said. “Would you like to eat us roasted, boiled, or fried?”

“I—I don’t care,” Anansi stammered.

“Roasted!” all the cassava cried. They jumped into the fire one by one until they were nicely roasted, and then lined up for Anansi to eat them. He was just getting ready to take a bite out of the first one when he saw another spire of smoke, far away.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Oh, that’s just the plantain village,” the cassava said.

Now, a plantain is like a banana. And Anansi liked fried plantain even more than he liked roasted cassava. So even though the cassava begged him to stay and eat them, Anansi jumped up and ran towards the plantain village.

It took him hours to get there, and by the time he arrived he was hot and thirsty and even hungrier. But all the plantains ran out to meet him. The little baby plantains danced around his feet, and the big plantains jumped up and down for joy. “How would you like to eat us?” they asked. “Roasted, boiled, or fried?”

“Any way you want!” Anansi cried.

“Fried!” the plantains shouted. So they jumped into a big pot of oil, one by one, and lined up to be eaten. But just as Anansi was getting ready to sink his teeth into the first one, he saw another spire of smoke, far off in the distance.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Oh, that’s just the rice village,” the plantains said. “Aren’t you going to eat us?”

Now, if there was one thing that Anansi liked even more than a roasted plantain, it was a big bowl of boiled rice. So even though the plantains begged him to stay and eat them, Anansi got up and began to walk towards the rice village.

By the time he reached it, the sun was setting. He was so hungry that he grabbed the first little pieces of rice who ran out to meet him and started to eat them raw. But the other rice grains squeaked, “No, no! We will cook ourselves! How would you like to eat us—roasted, boiled, or fried?”

“Any way you like!” Anansi moaned. “Just feed me!”

“Boiled!” the rice shouted. So the rice grains threw themselves into a big pot of boiling water and climbed out into a big bowl. Just as Anansi was getting ready to plunge his hand into the bowl, he saw one more spire of smoke.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“We don’t know!” the rice grains shrilled at him. “Just eat us!”

But Anansi thought, “Each village has been better than the one before! If I can get to that village, I’ll get to eat something even better than rice!” So he left the bowl of rice and ran towards the strange village.

It was night-time when he got there. He ran eagerly into the center of the town—and stopped. It was his own village, and there was no food anywhere to be seen.

Anansi fainted. When he woke up, the people of his village were all gathered around him. “Here,” they said. “We boiled a fish bone and made you some fish-bone-and-water soup. It’s all we have. Where have you been?”

Anansi told them all about the cassava village, the plantain village, and the rice village. But no one could ever find those villages again.

What do you think the moral of this story is? Maybe it is “Don’t be greedy—eat whatever you’re given.”

Note to Parent: The climate changed in the Sahara around 3500 BC/BCE. We know little about the cultures that flourished in southern Africa before medieval times; the second volume of The Story of the World deals much more extensively with African history.