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The Fisherman and His Wife
Then he went home, and when he arrived there, his wife was sitting on a throne that was two miles high, wearing three large crowns. She was surrounded with church-like splendour, and at her sides there were two banks of candles. The largest was as thick and tall as the largest tower, down to the smallest kitchen candle. “Wife,” said the man, giving her a good look, “are you pope now?”
“Yes,” she said, “I am pope.”
“Oh,” said the man. “It is good that you are pope. Wife, we can be satisfied, now that you are pope. There’s nothing else that you can become.”
“I have to think about that,” said the woman. Then they both went to bed, but she was not satisfied. Her desires would not let her sleep. She kept thinking about what she wanted to become next. Then the sun came up. “Aha,” she thought, as she watched the sunrise through her window. “Couldn’t I cause the sun to rise?” She then became very grim and said to her husband, “Husband, go back to the flounder. I want to become like God.”
The man, who was still mostly asleep, was so startled that he fell out of bed. “Oh, wife,” he said, “Go on as you are and remain pope.”
“No,” said the woman, tearing open her bodice. “I will not be quiet. I can’t stand it when I see the sun and the moon coming up, and I can’t cause them to rise. I want to become like God!”
“Oh, wife,” said the man. “The flounder can’t do that. He can make you emperor and pope, but he can’t do that.”
“Husband,” she said, looking very gruesome, “I want to become like God. Go to the flounder right now!”
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
