Anansi and the Magic Cooking Pot

Listen well, my children, and bend your ears close to the warm crackle of the fire. This is a story the old ones whispered when the moon was thin and the yams were new — a story of Anansi, who loved stories as much as like fire loves wood, and of a pot that steamed more than food.

Long ago, in a village that lay where the bush met a shallow river, Anansi came upon a travelling trader. The trader was a small man with soft, quick fingers and eyes that mirrored the road. He carried a pot — no ordinary pot — wrapped in a cloth that smelled of cinnamon and smoke. The pot sang a low hum at night as if it remembered the river.

Anansi, whose curiosity always leapt before caution, bartered and coaxed until the pot was his. “What is this pot?” the people asked when Anansi placed it in the compound. “It looks like any pot,” said Kofi the farmer. Anansi only grinned, his legs folded like an old rope. “It cooks,” he said simply, and set the pot upon embers.

The pot was magic. The first night, Anansi poured into it a handful of salt, a palm of water, and a scrap of fresh yam. He stirred with a bent stick, humming the old songs. Steam rose like a promise, and when he ladled a bowl, there was more food than his handful could have made. He ate until his belly was round like a full gourd.

Word spread like smoke. Neighbours came with empty bowls. The pot answered each bowl with more than was placed within it. The elderly woman, Ama, laughed and said: “This pot will feed an entire market if the owner is wise.” Anansi’s eyes shone. He imagined feasts, drums, and the praise of the town square.

But Anansi was not alone in his thinking. The pot was powerful, and where there is power, the heart is tempted. Night after night, the heap of visitors grew. Anansi felt pride rise inside him like the pot’s steam. He began to guard the pot behind his hut, piling stones and whispering to it as if it were a treasure chest.

One evening, while Anansi slept with dreams of drums drumming his name, a group of market women came to him and begged for food. They told of babies crying and of old men who could not chase the goats. Anansi’s fingers tightened around the pot’s lid. “This is mine,” he said, the words sharp as a thorn. “I will not share without trade.”

Now listen — the world is round and the night is long. The pot, being old magic, answered not to greed but to the spirit in the heart. It steamed and sang when fed with kindness; it lay cold when fed with a hard mind.

That night Anansi tried to make food for himself alone, muttering a string of boasts. He placed coins and small trinkets into the pot, thinking that wealth could spice any dish. The pot blew a sigh of smoke and gave forth only a single bowl, thin as a pancake. Anansi’s face fell, and shame warmed his cheeks.

He thought of the trader’s eyes on the road and of how he had bargained for the pot with a story and a string of beads. “Perhaps,” he said, “I must be cleverer.”

He called a meeting and declared a festival. He said the pot would be at the centre and that every family should bring a small offering — a bit of salt, a scrap of yam, a handful of water. They did, and the pot boiled and fed the village until the moon rested. The drums answered the sky.

But when the elders, who had wisdom like old trees, later asked to use the pot for the sick and the poor, Anansi told them it had been promised to pay for his debts. Greed again climbed like a vine.

One morning the village woke to find the pot cold and empty. Anansi banged the lid and shook it as if the pot were a sleeping animal. He tried the pot with songs of pride, with coins, with drums. The pot remained silent. That same day a child, small and bright-eyed, sat by the pot’s mouth and whispered, as children often do, what grown mouths forget to say: “Please, pot, share with my sister.”

And something like the river answered. The pot trembled and boiled over with sweet soup, enough to fill every bowl in the compound. News passed from lip to lip: the pot will answer the pure-hearted, not the loud-voiced. Anansi’s chest tightened.

He followed the child to the river and watched as the child gave the soup away, laughing. The child’s laughter cut something inside Anansi that he had not known was soft. He remembered his mother’s hands teaching him to split yams and the old man’s stories about the sky sharing its stars. He remembered that stories, like food, were meant to be passed.

So Anansi, who had once taken and tricked and stolen, tried one last deception — a show of generosity. He placed the pot in the market with the finest cloth and declared that all who came would receive a bowl, but first they must pay a small coin for the pot’s care. People paid, but the pot shivered and only offered a few bowls. Anger rose. “You trick us!” the market women cried.

The elders convened beneath the silk cotton tree. They sat with hands folded and eyes like flint. “Anansi,” they said, “you have behaved like a man who keeps the sun for himself. A community is a net: when one thread pulls, all feel it. If the pot feeds only those who pay, it will belong to no one.” They decided the pot should belong to the village and be carried in turns by each compound.

Anansi’s chest felt empty as a pot scraped of soup. But he was cunning, and he plotted to hide the pot one night. As he crept to the pot he found that his feet were heavy and his mind thick with sleep; a voice of memory washed over him. It was the trader’s voice from the road, not with trickery now but soft, “Magic answers what lives inside you, Anansi. Feed it with what you keep, and it will sleep. Feed it with what you give, and it will sing.”

Anansi fell to the earth and began to weep — laughing and crying in the same breath. He remembered every story he had told to coax a smile, every child who had listened. He lifted the pot and carried it between his legs to the village square, where the elders placed it on polished stones.

From that day the pot belonged to the people, and the people to one another. When a family had plenty, they came to the pot and added yams and water. When the rains were late and hunger crept in, the pot would sing the sweetest soup. And Anansi, who loved stories and the praise of men, learned a new song — the soft song of sharing.

So when you sit by the fire, remember this: gifts are not trophies to be held in a tight fist. They are rivers; they run and make life grow where they reach. This is why the elders say, “Obi nnim obiara — no one knows everything, but everyone has something.” Share, and the pot will sing for you.

— End —