Why The Lizard Hits Its Head On The Ground.
Lizard and his family lived in a village called Amen. They had food and everything in
abundance until one day, the village run out of food. Meanwhile, there was plenty of food to
eat at Anafo, the next village. Sadly, the people of Anafo would not share their food with
anybody.
Lizard had a trusted friend at Anafo. One day this friend gave Lizard a nice hair cut. Then
afterwards he sent him on an errand to Anafo, to fetch fire. Lizard did that but when he got to
where people were, he hit his head repeatedly on the ground to catch the attention of the
people around. It became a routine such that each day lizard entered different houses to
fetch fire simply for people to admire his hair cut. In their presence Lizard would hit his head
several times on the ground.
Then the people would ask him, “Who gave you this nice hair cut?” “Ananse”, Lizard would
reply. Their response was always, “then Ananse must cut our hair too.”
One day, Lizard led them to his village. The chief was the first person lizard led to Ananse.
“You ought to have the most beautiful hair cut, Oughtn’t you? Asked Ananse. “Yes I deserve
the nicest hair cut”, replied the chief.
Ananse told the chief that he would need the sharpest scissors in the village and it could only
be gotten from Snake. The chief then asked him how much it would cost him to get that
scissors from snake. “It will cost you a hundred and fifty tubers of yam, fifty tubers of cassava,
one cow and seven pots of palm-wine”, replied Ananse.
The chief agreed and sent for those things at once. Ananse gave him the most beautiful hair
cut ever. The chief thanked him and insisted he did that for him periodically. One after the
other, Lizard led each visitor to Ananse to have a very nice hair cut which came with a
different cost, depending on the personality of the person.
By this means, Lizard, his friend and his family had a lot of food to eat. They danced and dined
happily on that day and thereafter.
During the time Lizard was fetching the fire, he had to hit his head on the ground twice or
three times to catch the attention of the people. You remember? That destroyed his hearing
ability. Also, he gets a funny feeling in his ears and he feels quite better when he hits his head
on the ground. At other times too, he simply just forgets himself. He imagines people would
still want to ask him where he had his hair cut from.
Story by: Agyenim Foster Boateng (P4 –Qguaa SDA Primary)
Photo credit: Samuel Adjei. (P6 - Qguaa SDA Primary). Edited by Leonard Mensah
Editor: Joshua Opata (Lead Teacher Oguaa SDA Primary), Lydia Sarfo (Lead Teacher Akuakrom
Methodist) and Florence Siaw-Offei (Head Of Department Aggrey Memorial A M E Zion SHS)
Published by Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Ghana under Creative Commons License