Childhood Nights of Alo Apamo: Stories That Shaped Us

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Childhood moments were fun especially when it came to stories time which we do call Alo apamo in Yoruba, it is one of the moment we do wait for especially before going to bed, back in the days, they told us, children would gather under a tree at night and the oldest person in the area will tell them olden days stories, culture or war histories and even animal stories just to give them things to learn from, but in our time, we don't have trees or moonlight, we just gather in a corner with lantern on incase there is no electricity listen to stories. Most of these stories were always about the mischievous tortoise, who is always cunning and greedy, always finding how to scam other animals and he was tagged the wisest of them all. At times, I wonder who made up those stories, if these stories are real or if people were just exaggerating but one things is important, no matter the stories, we always learn one or two lessons from it.

One story I could remember was how Tortoise got it rough shell. we were made to understand that tortoise once had a smooth shell but lost it due to his greediness. The story went like this

The tortoise was known to be the wisest animal in the whole kingdom and he was friendly to all, one day, his closest friend who was the bird planned to get married and they need to visit their in-law and they need to fly to the location but tortoise demand that he want to go with them on this journey since the bird is also his friend, after contemplating on how to take him to this location since he couldn't fly and they couldn't carry him on their back so he wont fell off, tortoise decided that they should all contribute one feather each for him which will give him the ability to fly with them, they were glad with the decision and they all contributed one feather each for him and they all went for the journey. When they reached their destination, tortoise who see himself as the wisest of them all made a suggestion, he told them that, he want to change his own name, instead of calling him tortoise, they should call him "All of you", they accept the new name because they didn't see any harm in it at first.

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After the meeting and it is entertainment time, they brought food and said the food is for "All of you", when they were about to eat, tortoise told them that they should remember his new name is "All of you " and all the food is for him alone, he took everything for himself and they were angry at him, so they decided to teach him a lesson since there is no way he will return home without their feathers, when he asked for it, they refuse to give him and he begged them when they return to land, they should tell his wife to bring out all the soft things they had in the house so he can jump from heaven and land safely on it, but instead the birds told tortoise wife to bring out all the hard things in the house which she did. Tortoise jumped and landed on it which shattered his shell, we were told that black ants came to remould the shell but never smoothen it.

Honestly, the story felt somehow as time goes by, I do wonder how it is possible for birds to contribute feathers for him to fly with, how he manage to fly with it, how he even jump from heaven without dying, different questions without real answers but we just accepted the story like that but we learnt that being greedy is a bad thing and it can kill, also don't deceive people just for your own benefits