Finding our stories…
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When I was a child, one of my favourite times was when someone told me stories—Ananse stories. Anasesem captured my childhood imagination while passing on important lessons.
As I discussed giving with the elders and traditional leaders in Essikado and Kumasi, they shared their stories—stories about their own childhoods, how others had told them stories, and how those tales had stayed with them. Today, western knowledge has overridden our indigenous knowledge. In school, we heard some Ananse stories, but the books we read mainly featured European tales. The “better” the school, the more European or Western stories filled the curriculum.
I encountered characters like Rapunzel, Goldilocks, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Jack and the Beanstalk. The poems and rhymes I learned included “Sing a Song of Sixpence” and “A Pocket Full of Rye”—I had no idea what rye was, and I still don’t know what it looks like. I remember driving through the countryside in Oxford in 2021, seeing sheep in the miles of green meadows, barns, cows, and haystacks, just like the pictures I had seen in my school reader where I read about Little Boy Blue! I exclaimed! That rhyme finally made sense: “Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn, the sheep in the meadow, the cows in the corn; Where is that boy who looks after the sheep? Under the haystack fast asleep.” I was 50.
I learned it by rote in nursery school, and it made no sense because I could not relate to it. Yet, because I could regurgitate it, others deemed me brilliant. It’s no wonder our kids grow up disconnected from our indigenous knowledge and context, only able to reproduce what the “white man” has taught them, with no understanding of our own. How can we expect to progress and develop as African countries when our educational systems, media, and every space where our children need to hear our stories are dominated by another culture? Why are we surprised when the concept of beauty for us now equates to white skin, long hair, and even blue eyes? Yes, people wear contact lenses to change their eye colour. We shouldn’t be shocked when many see the pinnacle of success as a trip to the land of the queen (now king) while knowing very little about our own heritage.
My husband still teases me about the story of the Princess and the Pea. I couldn’t sleep on a bed with anything on it; it had to be very smooth. I claimed I was “a true princess.” Even though I laughed when I said it, why did that ridiculous idea take hold in my mind? Because I had read that story about the princess and the pea in my childhood, and it had sunk so deeply into my subconscious that, whether I believed it or not, it became my frame of reference.
As I write about giving from the indigenous Akan perspective, it continually strikes me that it’s all in the stories—our stories, those of our family, our clan, our community, and our ancestors. Yet, we tell so few now, if any at all. The more we lose these stories, the more we lose our identity.
Let’s bring back our stories.
About the author
Dr. Nana Asantewa Afadzinu is the Executive Director of the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI), driving civil society capacity building in the region. A lawyer with an LLB from the University of Ghana, a Master’s in Law from New York University, and a PhD in Africa Philanthropy from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Nana has extensive experience in governance, human rights, and gender advocacy. She is also a Core Team Member of the groundbreaking Reimagining International NGOs (RINGO) systems change initiative. Nana also serves as a Trustee of Oxfam GB and a Board Member of Resource Alliance. She has held leadership roles with OSIWA, IBIS West Africa, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, among others. Nana is also a member of the Ghana Bar Association and several gender-focused networks, championing initiatives on legal empowerment and policy advocacy.
