The Talking Yam

There was once a farmer named Kofi who lived at the edge of a quiet village near the Volta River, and who worked his yam field every morning before the sun grew too hot to bear. He was a practical man, not given to fancy or fright, and he had never in his life believed in ghosts or magic.

One morning, as Kofi bent to dig up a particularly large yam from the soil, the yam spoke to him in a small, dry voice. 'Leave me be, Kofi. I am not ready to be pulled from the ground yet.'

Kofi dropped his hoe and stumbled backward, his heart pounding. He stared at the yam for a long moment, but it said nothing more. Deciding he must be tired from the heat, he snatched up his hoe and his basket and hurried away from the field, walking briskly toward home.

On the path, he passed his own dog, tied loosely to a post outside his hut. 'Where are you rushing to, Kofi?' the dog asked, tilting its head. 'You look as though you have seen a spirit.'

Kofi let out a yelp and broke into a run, his basket bouncing against his hip. He had gone perhaps twenty more steps when he passed the fishing trap he had left leaning against a tree the night before. 'Slow down, Kofi,' said the trap. 'You will trip over your own feet at that speed.'

By now Kofi was running as fast as his legs could carry him, certain that the whole world had gone mad or that he himself had lost his senses entirely. He snatched his wide straw hat from where it hung on a fence post as he passed, meaning to shield his eyes from the sun, and the hat too spoke up. 'Careful, Kofi, you nearly knocked me to the ground.'

At this, Kofi threw the hat away entirely and ran the rest of the way to the chief's compound without stopping, bursting through the gathered elders and throwing himself at the feet of the chief, panting so hard he could barely speak.

'Great chief,' Kofi gasped, 'you must help me. This morning my yam spoke to me in the field. Then my dog spoke to me on the path. Then my fishing trap spoke to me by the tree. And finally my own hat spoke to me as I ran. I fear I am losing my mind, or that some terrible spirit has cursed my whole farm.'

The chief, a heavyset man named Togbe Asante, known throughout the village for his patience and his good humor, listened gravely to the entire story, stroking his chin as Kofi spoke. When Kofi finished, breathless and trembling, the chief was quiet for a long moment.

Then the chief's carved wooden stool, the very seat beneath him, spoke up in a deep, rich voice. 'That is certainly a very strange morning you have had, Kofi.'

At this, the chief himself leapt up from his stool faster than anyone in the village had ever seen him move, and went sprinting out of the compound gate, shouting at the top of his lungs, with all his startled elders and advisors running close behind him, and poor Kofi, more astonished than ever, chasing after the whole fleeing crowd, all of them together now running through the village streets shrieking about talking stools and yams and dogs, until half the village had poured out of their huts to see what the commotion could possibly be.

They ran until they reached the great baobab tree at the center of the village, where at last, out of breath, red-faced, and thoroughly ridiculous-looking, the whole crowd stopped and stood gasping in a heap, staring at one another.

It was old Mama Adjoa, the village's oldest and calmest elder, leaning on her walking stick and having watched the entire spectacle unfold from her doorway, who finally broke the silence with a dry, creaking laugh.

'Chief Togbe Asante,' she called out, 'you have been chief of this village for twenty years, presiding over disputes about land and cattle and marriage, and yet you go running through the streets like a startled goat the very moment your own stool speaks a single sentence to you? Tell me, chief — was Kofi's yam so very frightening compared to that?'

The chief, still panting, looked down at his own feet, then around at his elders, all of whom had run just as fast and just as far as he had, and finally he began to laugh, a great rolling laugh that shook his whole belly, and soon the entire crowd was laughing too, Kofi loudest of all, the fear draining out of him and turning into helpless, relieved giggling.

'I suppose,' said the chief, wiping his eyes, 'that it is easy to demand courage from a farmer when you have not yet heard your own furniture speak.'

From that day forward, the people of that village told the story often, not as a tale of ghosts or curses at all, but as a reminder that strange and frightening things become much less frightening once you discover that your neighbors, and even your chief, would have run exactly as fast as you did — and that no mystery, however odd, needs to be faced entirely alone.