What Was in the Bag: how sickness, poverty and the wild animals got out
A sealed bag came down from the sky, and Ananse was told not to open it.
Told at night, when the reason for a hardship is being discussed.
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What Was in the Bag: how sickness, poverty and the wild animals got out
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What Was in the Bag: how sickness, poverty and the wild animals got out
There are several old Akan answers to the question of where hardship began.
The bag Ananse was not to open. Nyame gives Ananse a sealed bag to carry down to earth and one instruction: do not look inside. Ananse carries it a long way and the not-knowing becomes unbearable, because for Ananse it always does. He opens it a crack on the road — just to see — and out come the biting flies, the fever, the snake, the leopard, the thief, the quarrel between brothers. He claps it shut. Too late; everything that was in it is already loose in the world and running.
Poverty and Wealth as two brothers. They travel together, and a man meets them at a crossroads and is told to choose one to take home. Wealth is well dressed and Poverty is in rags, so the choice looks easy — but the man is warned, in most tellings, that whichever he takes, the other follows behind at a distance and will arrive eventually. The tale is about how a household treats each of them when they come. In the sharpest version, the man welcomes Poverty properly, feeds him, gives him the good mat — and Poverty, unused to being treated as a guest, leaves in the morning and does not come back.
Why sickness has no single owner. A recurring Akan explanation: the diseases were once kept, each in its own place and under its own rule, by the abosom, and were released only as punishment when a person had broken something. Then a container was broken, or a keeper was careless, and the sicknesses scattered and lost their owners. That is why a person can now fall ill having done nothing at all — and why the first question at a shrine is not "what did you catch" but "what happened."
Taken together, these stories do not explain hardship away. They give people a language for facing what cannot be controlled, and a reason to keep asking what happened.
If you visit Ghana. Told at night, when the reason for a hardship is being discussed.
There are several old Akan answers to the question of where hardship began.
The bag Ananse was not to open. Nyame gives Ananse a sealed bag to carry down to earth and one instruction: do not look inside. Ananse carries it a long way and the not-knowing becomes unbearable, because for Ananse it always does. He opens it a crack on the road — just to see — and out come the biting flies, the fever, the snake, the leopard, the thief, the quarrel between brothers. He claps it shut. Too late; everything that was in it is already loose in the world and running.
Poverty and Wealth as two brothers. They travel together, and a man meets them at a crossroads and is told to choose one to take home. Wealth is well dressed and Poverty is in rags, so the choice looks easy — but the man is warned, in most tellings, that whichever he takes, the other follows behind at a distance and will arrive eventually. The tale is about how a household treats each of them when they come. In the sharpest version, the man welcomes Poverty properly, feeds him, gives him the good mat — and Poverty, unused to being treated as a guest, leaves in the morning and does not come back.
Why sickness has no single owner. A recurring Akan explanation: the diseases were once kept, each in its own place and under its own rule, by the abosom, and were released only as punishment when a person had broken something. Then a container was broken, or a keeper was careless, and the sicknesses scattered and lost their owners. That is why a person can now fall ill having done nothing at all — and why the first question at a shrine is not "what did you catch" but "what happened."
Taken together, these stories do not explain hardship away. They give people a language for facing what cannot be controlled, and a reason to keep asking what happened.