Anansi and the Wisdom Pot

Told in English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Spanish, French, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese.

Come sit with me, my dear, and let me tell you about Anansi the spider, who was known across the land for being ever so clever — sometimes a little too clever for his own good! One day, Anansi decided he wanted to become the wisest creature in the whole world. So, he traveled everywhere, gathering up every bit of wisdom he could find, and sealed it all inside one big calabash pot.

'Now,' Anansi thought greedily, 'I shall keep all this wisdom for myself, and no one else will ever be as clever as me!' He decided to hide the pot at the very top of the tallest tree in the forest, where nobody else could ever reach it.

So Anansi tied the heavy pot to the front of his body, right against his belly, and began to climb. But oh, my darling, it was so awkward! The big round pot kept bumping against the trunk, and no matter how he tried, he simply could not climb properly with it in front of him.

Watching from below, Anansi's young son called out, 'Father, wouldn't it be easier to tie the pot to your back instead, so it doesn't get in your way?' Anansi realized, with quite a jolt, that his own little son had just thought of something wiser than he had, even with all the wisdom in the world tied to his belly!

Furious and rather embarrassed, Anansi flung the pot down in frustration — and it shattered into a thousand pieces, scattering wisdom in little bits across the entire world, into rivers and mountains and villages everywhere. And that, my dear, is why no single person can ever hold all the wisdom in the world. We each carry a little piece of it, and we grow wiser only by sharing what we know and learning from each other — even, sometimes, from someone much smaller than us.