Umoja Village

"It would take months, maybe years!" Vane shouted. "We needed this yesterday! The client is impatient."

Here is a short story in the African oral tradition, incorporating elements of the call-and-response style and a clear moral lesson, focused on community and humility.

In a time when the animals spoke and the spirits walked openly among men, in the village of Umoja, nestled beneath the great baobab tree, lived a man named Chike. Chike was a fine farmer, with strong arms and a quick mind. His yam mounds were always the tallest, his harvest the most abundant. But Chike had a flaw: he was proud and boastful.

"Look at my yams!" he would shout in the market. "They are so big, even the sky-god Nyame must be jealous of their size!"

The elders would shake their heads. "Pride goes before a fall, Chike," Elder Okoro would warn. "The earth provides for all, not just for the strong."

But Chike did not listen. He built a new hut for himself, bigger than anyone else's, and often turned away neighbors who came for help, telling them to work harder like him. He forgot the meaning of Ubuntu—that we are all connected, and a person is a person through other people.

One season, a terrible drought came to the land. The sun baked the earth until it cracked like a dry calabash. The river dried to a trickle, and the crops withered. Fear spread through the village.

All the villagers came together, sharing their last stores of grain and digging deep communal wells. All except Chike. He had a private well, deep and cool, and a large storehouse filled to the roof with yams from the previous, abundant harvest.

"They should have planned better!" Chike declared to his wife. "My family will be fine."

But as the days grew hotter, a mysterious illness struck Chike's household. His wife and children grew weak. Their skin was hot with fever, and their bodies ached. The water from the well did nothing to help them.

Chike, desperate now, ran to Elder Okoro’s hut. "Elder, my family is sick! The water from my well is not enough!"

Elder Okoro looked at him with sad eyes. "Ah, Chike. You closed your heart when your neighbors were thirsty. The medicines of our healers need a strong fire to work, and we have no wood left."

"I have wood!" Chike cried.

"They need fresh water from the sacred spring," another villager added, "but it is far, and our runners are weak from hunger."

"I am strong!" Chike insisted, realizing too late the web he had woven. His strength, which he had only used for his own gain, was now meaningless without the support of the community.

The villagers, despite his past selfishness, did not turn him away. They gathered the wood from Chike's shed and drew the water from his well. They cared for his family, using traditional medicines and the strength of their collective will.

Chike's family recovered. When the rains finally returned and life began anew, Chike was a changed man. He gave away half of his remaining yams and tore down the fence around his private well. His new hut, when he built it, was the same size as all the others but his heart was the biggest muse in Umoja.