The Old Woman and the Pestle: why the sky moved away

The Old Woman and the Pestle: why the sky moved away

The sky used to be low. Low enough to touch. Low enough that when you were hungry you reached up, tore off a piece of it, and ate — and it was sweet, and it never ran out, and nobody worked for food.

In one village there lived an old woman who pounded fufu every evening in a tall wooden mortar. She was strong and she was impatient, and each time she raised the pestle it struck the belly of the sky. Knock. Again. Knock. Every evening, all evening.

Nyame endured it for a long while, the way you endure a neighbour. Then he said: woman, stop.

She did not stop. Some say she could not — the pestle was long and the sky was low and there was nowhere else for her arm to go. Some say she was simply that kind of woman.

So Nyame gathered himself and went up, out of reach, to where he is now.

The people howled. They could not eat. The old woman, who was clever as well as stubborn, told her children to fetch every mortar in the village, and they stacked them one on another, up and up, a tower of mortars reaching toward the sky. When they were one mortar short of heaven, and there were no more mortars anywhere, she called down: take one from the bottom and bring it to the top.

They took one from the bottom, and the whole tower collapsed. The sky rose out of reach, and from that day forward people had to work for the food they ate.

If you visit Ghana. Any compound at dusk, where fufu is being pounded.