Where the Wild Things Were Kept: how sickness and hardship got loose
Nyame kept some things shut away. Not out of cruelty — because he knew what they were.
Anywhere; this is a hearth story.
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Where the Wild Things Were Kept: how sickness and hardship got loose
Nyame kept some things shut away. Not out of cruelty — because he knew what they were. In a pot, or a bag, or behind a door in the sky, depending on who tells it: sickness, hunger, quarrelling, the biting insects, the animals that hunt people, the storm.
And someone opened it.
Sometimes it is a child sent on an errand and told not to look inside. Sometimes it is a woman who wants to know. Sometimes it is Ananse, who always wants to know and is always the reason. The container is opened a crack, and the world we actually live in comes out and scatters, and the scattering cannot be undone.
What is left inside, in the gentlest tellings, is one small thing that does not fly out — and that thing is why people keep going.
If you visit Ghana. Anywhere; this is a hearth story.
Nyame kept some things shut away. Not out of cruelty — because he knew what they were. In a pot, or a bag, or behind a door in the sky, depending on who tells it: sickness, hunger, quarrelling, the biting insects, the animals that hunt people, the storm.
And someone opened it.
Sometimes it is a child sent on an errand and told not to look inside. Sometimes it is a woman who wants to know. Sometimes it is Ananse, who always wants to know and is always the reason. The container is opened a crack, and the world we actually live in comes out and scatters, and the scattering cannot be undone.
What is left inside, in the gentlest tellings, is one small thing that does not fly out — and that thing is why people keep going.