Creation Story Benin

God Wulbari

by Justin W.

Another famous set of African (and Carribean) folk tales is based on the spider 'Anansi'. Here you can read some Anansi Folktales.

This story was based in West Africa, in the city-state of what is now Benin and Ife. The god Wulbari was the god of the sky. His blueness stretched over the entire sky.

He was the god of the people. He watched over them night and day. They told him their deepest secrets. He watched over them when they hunted and gathered, when they ate and slept. He looked over the village of Asase Ya. They spoke to him and told him things.

Wulbari loved all his people, so he lay as close to them as he could. The people of Asase Ya could just walk upright without bumping their heads against him.

But after a while they started to take him for granted. They came to him with their worries and bothers at all hours. Then they forgot to thank him.

One day the people of the earth were preparing their evening meals. They were cutting meat, mixing dough, and stirring soup. Then one family went outside and started ripping chunks off Wulbari's blueness. They then put it in a pot and mixed it in with the soup. They ate the soup. It was so good they ran over to all the other houses and told their neighbours about the new excellent tasting soup.

Wulbari woke up in pain. He didn't know what happened. The god was so mad he decided to rise higher into the blue. Then after dinner the children came out of their houses. They stood on a chair and wiped their hands on Wulbari's skin. They didn't mean any harm but Wulbari was mad, he wiped off the hand prints and rose higher.

Next day he was watching the people preparing wheat. There was an old woman that lived at the edge of the town. She took extra care in grinding. She spent longer grinding and she used an extra long beater. The beater rose, fell, rose, fell rose. The beater hit Wulbair in the eye. He was furious he began to rise higher, higher, higher until he was as high as he could go. It was only then that the people realised that the god was gone.

They were upset. They went indoors and wept. But of all the people the old lady was the most upset. She tried to think up a way to pay the people back for what she had done. Then she had an idea.

She called a couple of her friends to her house to tell them the idea. They were going to try and build a pile of mortars up, and up, and up, till the tower reached their god. So her friends ran round to all the houses and told of the plan. They collected all the mortars in the world. They started to pile them on top of each other. When all the mortars were piled up they were just one mortar short. The people were upset, had all their work gone in vain.

The lady had an idea. Why don't we take a mortar form the bottom and when we get to the top we can add it on up there." The lady took a mortar from the bottom. No sooner had she done this the whole tower collapsed, killing everyone in the village. And to this day no matter how hard people try, they are still one mortar short of Wulbari.

Read about the art of the African griot (storyteller) and a legend from Mali, Sundiata, which inspired the Disney film The Lion KIng.