The Bundle of Sticks

There was an old man named Baba Akinwálé who had seven children. They were strong, intelligent, hard-working — and they could not stand each other. They quarrelled about land. They quarrelled about cattle. They quarrelled about whose mother had been their father's favourite wife.

The old man watched and grew tired. He had farmed for fifty seasons; the politics of his own compound was harder than any harvest.

One evening he sent for all of them. He had a small fire burning. Beside the fire lay a fat bundle of dry sticks tied together with cord, and seven single sticks of the same kind laid out on a mat.

"My children," he said when they were all seated, "before I speak, I beg one favour. Break this bundle for me."

The eldest son laughed. He was famous in the village for his shoulders. He took the bundle and put it across his knee and pulled. His face went red. The bundle did not break. He stood up and tried again, growling. Nothing.

One by one, all seven children tried. The strongest sister tried. The youngest, a boy of fifteen with arms like a long-distance runner, tried. The bundle would not yield.

When they had all sat back down, sweating, Baba Akinwálé picked up the bundle, untied the cord, and laid each stick separately on the mat.

"Now," he said quietly, "each of you take one stick."

They did.

"Break it."

Seven sticks snapped at the same time, like the bones of small birds.

The old man looked into the fire for a long moment. Then he looked up.

"My children. As long as you remain bound together, no enemy can break you. No drought, no chief, no debt, no betrayer. You can fight, you can disagree, you can choose seven different roads — but as long as the cord that ties you holds, the bundle holds. The day you untie yourselves to argue about whose stick is the longest, every one of you will be broken on the knee of the first stranger who tries."

He placed the broken pieces back into their hands.

"Keep these. When you next quarrel, look at them and remember: I broke this in one breath, and you could not break the bundle with the strength of seven."

It is said that in that family, when the seven became old themselves, each one still carried a piece of his own broken stick wrapped in a cloth in his pocket. And the children of their children grew up in one of the most peaceful compounds in the whole region.