The Wise Old Woman

Listen, my children, gather close to the fire as the evening shadows dance across our compound. Tonight, I shall tell you of Nana Ama, the wise old woman whose words carried the weight of countless seasons, and young Chief Kwaku who learned that wisdom flows not from youth and strength, but from the deep wells of experience carved by time itself.

In the days when the baobab trees were saplings and the rivers sang different songs, there lived in the village of Nkranfoa a young chief named Kwaku. Ah, but he was magnificent to behold! His shoulders were broad as the silk cotton tree, his voice thundered like the talking drums during festival time, and his eyes sparkled with the fire of a man who believed the world bent to his will alone.

“Agoo!” called the villagers when they saw him approach, their voices carrying respect born of fear rather than love.

“Amee!” he would respond, but his chest swelled with pride that sometimes made his heart small.

Now, living in a modest hut at the edge of the village was Nana Ama, Kwaku’s grandmother. Her back was bent like a palm frond in the harmattan wind, her hands weathered as the ancient rocks by the riverbank, and her voice soft as the whisper of silk cotton seeds floating on the breeze. The young men would pass her hut without stopping, for what could an old woman know of the world that moved so fast around them?

But the women—ah, the women knew better. When their children fell sick, they came to Nana Ama’s door with kola nuts and palm wine. When the rains delayed and the yam vines withered, they sought her counsel. When husbands grew distant as dry season clouds, they sat on her worn mat and listened to words that had been seasoned by seven decades of watching human hearts unfold their secrets.

One morning, when the sun painted the compound walls gold and the roosters announced the birth of another day, a stranger appeared in Nkranfoa. He came from the east, where the river Pra meets the sea, and his skin gleamed with oils that caught the light like water on stones. His cloth was rich—the finest kente that spoke of important business in important places.

“I bring greetings from the coastal chiefs,” he announced, his voice smooth as shea butter. “I come with an offer that will make your village rich beyond your dreams.”

Young Chief Kwaku’s eyes grew wide as bush fire. Here was opportunity dancing before him, wearing the face of prosperity. The stranger spoke of trade routes and salt, of gold dust and ivory, of ships that sailed to lands where the sun set into endless waters.

“All I ask,” said the stranger, his smile bright as polished brass, “is for you to provide me with workers—strong young men and women who will help establish these trade routes. In return, your village will receive more wealth than you can imagine.”

The chief’s advisors nodded like sunbirds drinking nectar. “This is good fortune!” they whispered. “The ancestors have smiled upon us!”

But as the village buzzed with excitement like bees around flowering cassia trees, old Nana Ama hobbled to her grandson’s compound. Her walking stick—carved from the wood of a tree that had seen the birth of the village—tapped against the hard earth like the heartbeat of the land itself.

“Kwaku, my child,” she said, her voice carrying the weight of years like a mortar carrying grain. “Come, sit with your old grandmother. Let me tell you what these tired eyes have seen.”

But Kwaku was young, and youth sometimes makes the ears hard as termite hills. “Nana,” he said, not unkindly but without the patience that wisdom deserves, “this is business for men. What can you know of trade and commerce? Rest yourself, and let me handle these important matters.”

The old woman’s eyes grew sad as rainy season clouds, but she pressed on. “Listen to me, grandson of my heart. I have seen strangers before who came with honey on their tongues and thorns in their hearts. In my girlhood, such men came to the village of my birth…”

“Grandmother,” Kwaku interrupted, his voice growing sharp as a new machete, “the world has changed since your girlhood. These are modern times, and we must think with modern minds.”

Nana Ama’s shoulders sagged like a shelter after heavy rains, but her spirit remained unbroken. “Very well,” she whispered. “But remember this, my child—the wisdom of the ancestors does not grow old, and the patterns of human greed are older than the hills themselves.”

As the days passed like water flowing to the sea, Kwaku made his decision. He would provide the stranger with fifty of the village’s strongest young people. The celebration that night filled the air with drums and dancing, with palm wine flowing like the streams in rainy season, and voices raised in songs of prosperity to come.

But Nana Ama did not join the celebration. Instead, she sat outside her hut, gazing at the stars that had watched over countless generations of her people. In her hands, she held a small leather pouch—inside were three kola nuts, white as truth itself, and a fragment of iron from the first tools her great-grandfather had forged.

“Ancestors,” she whispered to the night wind, “if I have lived a good life, if I have honored the old ways while embracing what is useful in the new, grant me the strength to protect my people one more time.”

The next morning dawned red as palm oil, and with it came troubling news. A young boy, barely old enough to tend goats, came running into the village with terror painted across his face like war paint.

“The workers!” he gasped, his chest heaving like bellows at the forge. “I followed them to see the great adventure! But I saw—I saw—” His words dissolved into sobs that shook his small frame.

Chief Kwaku grabbed the boy’s shoulders. “Speak! What did you see?”

“Chains,” the boy whispered. “Iron chains around their wrists and ankles. The stranger was not taking them to work—he was selling them to the ship men who steal people and carry them across the great water, never to return!”

The words hit the village like lightning strikes a tall tree. The wailing that arose could be heard in the next village, where mothers’ hearts broke for children they would never see again, where husbands mourned wives stolen by greed wearing the mask of opportunity.

Young Chief Kwaku felt his knees buckle like new bamboo in a storm. The magnitude of his error crashed over him like floodwaters breaking through a dam. Fifty of his people—gone, stolen, lost to the insatiable hunger of the slave ships because he had been too proud to listen to the wisdom of one old woman.

He stumbled to Nana Ama’s hut, his face wet with tears that tasted of salt and regret. There he found her, sitting in her doorway, her eyes holding the sadness of the ages but also a love deeper than the roots of the great trees.

“Grandmother,” he sobbed, falling to his knees before her. “I have failed them all. I have failed you. My pride has cost our people more than I can bear.”

Nana Ama reached out with hands that had comforted countless hurts and placed them gently on her grandson’s head. “My child,” she said, her voice soft as morning mist, “the young tree that bends in the storm survives, while the proud tree that will not yield is broken by the wind. You have learned a hard lesson, but you have learned it truly.”

“But they are gone,” Kwaku wept. “How can I live with what I have done?”

“You will live with it,” she said firmly, “by ensuring it never happens again. You will live with it by becoming the kind of leader who listens to all voices, especially those that speak uncomfortable truths. You will live with it by teaching your children and your children’s children that wisdom is not the possession of the young and strong alone.”

From that day forward, Chief Kwaku was transformed like iron in the forge fire. He established a council of elders where Nana Ama sat in the place of honor, her voice carrying weight equal to any warrior’s sword. He learned to listen not just to the words that pleased his ears, but to the truths that challenged his assumptions.

And when strangers came to Nkranfoa with offers too good to be true, the chief would turn first to his grandmother and ask, “Nana, what do your eyes see that mine cannot?”

For Nana Ama had learned in her long life that the patterns of human nature repeat themselves like the cycles of the seasons—that greed wears many faces but always seeks the same prize, that wisdom often comes disguised as the voice of the powerless, and that the greatest strength a leader can possess is the humility to admit when he does not know.

Years passed like leaves falling from the kapok tree, and Nana Ama’s hair grew white as cotton bolls, her steps slower than the river’s flow in dry season. But her mind remained sharp as the finest blade, and her counsel saved the village from sorrow many times over.

When at last the ancestors called her home, the entire village mourned for seven days and seven nights. But they also celebrated, for they had learned the greatest lesson an old woman can teach: that the true wealth of a community lies not in gold or land or cattle, but in the accumulated wisdom of those who have walked the path before us.

And Chief Kwaku, now grown wise in his own right, would gather the children around the fire just as I gather you now, and tell them of Nana Ama, the wise old woman whose voice was soft but whose truth was mighty as the thunder that announces the rains.

“Remember,” he would say, his voice carrying the authority of hard-won wisdom, “the ancestors speak through many voices. Sometimes they whisper through the wind in the leaves, sometimes they rumble in the drums at festival time. But most often, they speak through the words of those who have lived long enough to see the same mistakes repeated, the same lessons learned, the same truths discovered again and again by each new generation.”

So when you see an old person sitting quietly while the young ones boast and plan and dream their important dreams, remember Nana Ama. Listen for the wisdom that time has seasoned, for the truth that experience has refined. In their words, you may find the knowledge that saves not just your pride, but your very soul.

Agoo! my children. The fire grows low, and the story is told. Take these words with you as you walk your own paths, and may you have the wisdom to listen when the elders speak, for in their voices live the lessons of all who came before, and in their counsel lies the safety of all who are yet to come.

Amee!