Anansi and the Tight Pot Jolly Phonics · Step 3, Unit 6: /ie/ mixed
Practice Words
Anansi has a big plan. His face shines bright. He will go to all lands and get the wisdom. He will tip it all in one big pot. Then Anansi will be the wise one, and all must come to him.
Anansi sets off in the forest and asks all he meets for the best plans. Grey Hornbill tells him how to wait. River-crab says go side to side. Tortoise says take it on the back. Anansi tips each plan in the pot and claps the lid on tight. By the tall tree, the pot is very hard to lift.
'I will hide this pot high up in the tree,' says Anansi. He ties the rope to the pot and hugs the pot to his front. He tries to go up. He slips. He tries one more time. He slides back down to the roots. He sighs. The trunk is no help at all.
Little Ntikuma sits on a rock. He is out to get wood, yet he stops to look. 'Dad,' Ntikuma calls up, 'tie the pot on your back, not your front. Then your legs are free.' The fix is so plain that Anansi stops still on the bark.
Anansi feels hot with shame, from his top legs to his back legs. He has all the wisdom in the land in his pot. But his own small boy has a plan that is not in the pot. So the pot does not hold it all. Anansi sighs a big sigh.
'If a small boy has wisdom I do not have,' says Anansi, 'then there may be wisdom by the lake. And in the next town. And up in the sky!' He looks at the pot. He looks up at the tree. The pot does not feel like gold any more. Still, Anansi will not quit. He ties the pot to his back and climbs. His legs grip well. Up and up he goes, higher and higher.
He is almost at the first high branch when the rope slips. The pot tilts. Anansi grabs for it, lets go, and then he is falling. The pot falls fast. It hits a root with a crack, and the birds fly up in a fright. The lid spins off into the ferns.
The wisdom bursts from the pot. It shines and spins and flies off on the wind. Some lands in the lilies by the stream. Some drifts down on sleeping kids. Some blows far, far away. Anansi lands in the ferns with a soft thud. He is not hurt, but the pot sits split apart. All the wisdom is out.
Anansi sits in the ferns for a long time. Ntikuma sits by him and says nothing, because that can be the wise thing to do. The forest is quiet but for the river and the birds. Then a small bird lands on the broken pot and sings three bright notes. Anansi looks at his legs, all empty, and he feels light.
'Grey Hornbill tells me how to wait,' says Anansi. 'I do not wait. River-crab says go side to side. I go up. Tortoise says take it on the back. I do not.' He counts on leg after leg, and still there is more to count. 'The wisdom is not in the pot,' says Ntikuma. 'It is in what we do with it.' Anansi wants to fight back. Then he just smiles.
From that day on, wisdom lives in the wind, in the songs, in the daylight, and in small boys who sit on rocks. When a man thinks he has all the wisdom, a breeze blows his plan away, and all just grin. Anansi tells the story on himself. A spider who can smile at his own plan is hard to beat.
Nyame looks down from the sky and is glad. Not that Anansi fell, but that the wisdom is now in all the forest, not shut in one pot under one tree. And late at night, when a kid fixes what the big ones can not, Ntikuma is there in the fix. No one holds all the wisdom, not even Anansi. And that is a very wise thing.
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