Week 7 Reading Notes B: West African Folktales

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This is a continuation of my Week 7 Reading Notes on the West African Folktales. As I mentioned in my previous set of notes, I chose these tales because one of my best friends is from Ghana and I would love to know more about her culture. As the last set of notes were about Anansi (Spider) and his trickery, the majority of the second sections of stories were not about Anansi and were more like Aesop’s fables. A lot of these tales had important morals to be learned, and some of them were origin stories. I really love reading about origin stories because it is interesting to learn about how peoples from long ago perceived the world around them and made sense of things. I am also in an Archaeology course right now, so the course material from these classes bleed into each other in a way.
The first tale in this section, however, was still about Anansi and his son, Kweku Tsin. I think the contrast between father and son is interesting, and I would love to learn more about Kweku Tsin in the future. Anansi is a trickster who is very cunning, and sometimes his clever ways actually end up being very cruel. Sometimes he gets the outcome he desires, while other times his plans are foiled and he gets what he deserves. Occasionally, Anansi’s own son is the one to ruin his plans. Kweku Tsin is wise and intelligent. Perhaps this contrast between characters is derived from a child who desires to be nothing like his parent. In The Moon and The Stars, Anansi and Kweku Tsin encounter a dragon and are stolen away to his castle. It is Kweku Tsin who saves his father, the other people in the castle, and himself. For this, he was made the Sun, his father the Moon, and the others the Stars. In this tale, Kweku Tsin literally outshines his father.
How the Tortoise Got Its Shell is an origin story. The Tortoise, Mr. Klo, works for the king. One day, he is sent to get palm wine for a festival. Mr. Klo was a very fast individual with no such thing as a shell to hinder him. On his way back to the city, he gets trapped outside the city gates with the palm trees still on his back. There is a heavy rain and Mr. Klo is unable to remove his burden. He consequently dies, and the rain continues for two months. When the people of the city open the gates, they are surprised to find a large mound where there had not been one before. Clearing this away, they find Mr. Klo dead with mud caked onto his back. The people revive him with medicines, but he is left with a shell and is significantly slower than he had previously been. That is how the Tortoise got its shell.
It might be an interesting experience for me to try to write my own origin story in one of my upcoming Storytelling assignments.


You can read these tales here: link.

Barker, W. H., and Cecilia Sinclair. West African Folktales. C.M.S. Bookshop, 1930.

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