The Cracked Shell

There was a season when Ìjàpá the tortoise woke up one morning and decided he was the wisest creature in the forest. He had outwitted the lion. He had cheated the leopard. He had even tricked Esu, the messenger of the gods, into giving him a free meal. "Truly," he said to himself, "I am the bowl into which all wisdom has been poured."

Then a worry came to him. "If I am the wisest," he thought, "others will come and beg for wisdom every day. They will tire me. The best thing is to gather all the wisdom in the world into one calabash, and hang it where no one else can reach."

So Ìjàpá went up and down the country. He sat under the iroko with old men until they grew tired of him. He listened to market women bargain. He watched the hunter read the bush, the farmer read the soil, the midwife read the cry of a baby. Every clever thing he heard, he poured into a great gourd, and when the gourd was so full that a fly could not have squeezed in, he tied it with rope and started for home.

In his compound stood the tallest palm tree in the village. "There," said Tortoise. "At the top of that tree I shall hang the calabash, and from this day no one but me shall taste of wisdom."

He tied the gourd to the front of his chest with a strong cord and began to climb.

But the gourd was fat and round, and it pressed against the trunk, and every time Tortoise tried to move his foot, the calabash pushed him back. He climbed and slipped. He climbed and slipped. The sun rose high. Sweat ran into his eyes. Still the gourd of wisdom would not let him pass.

Now a small boy had been watching from under the tree, chewing a piece of sugarcane. At last he could hold his tongue no longer.

"Baba Ìjàpá," said the small boy gently, "why not tie the calabash on your back instead of your chest? Then the tree will not be in its way."

Tortoise froze on the trunk. His mouth opened and closed. He looked down at the small boy. He looked at the great calabash supposed to hold all the wisdom in the world.

A terrible understanding came to him: he had walked the whole country, he had emptied every elder, and still a child standing under his tree knew something he did not.

In his anger and his shame he tore the cord from his chest and flung the calabash to the ground. It struck the earth and burst open with a great sound, and all the wisdom inside flew out in a thousand directions — into the river, into the wind, into the bush, into the houses of strangers, into the songs of birds, into the dreams of children.

That is why, even today, wisdom is scattered everywhere. You will find a little in your mother's proverb. You will find a little in the way a farmer plants. You will find a little in the silence of an old woman. No one of us has the whole calabash. We must gather, gather, gather — from elders and from children, from kings and from beggars — and even then we shall die with the gourd still being filled.

As for Ìjàpá, he climbed down that palm tree slowly, and that is the day his shell got its first crack. Every time a tortoise hides today and pulls his head into his shell, he is remembering the moment a small boy was wiser than him, and he is ashamed all over again.