***
Now while my mother spoke, I kept wondering what the story had to do with my missing eggs and bacon, but my six-year-old mind was so fascinated by the story of talking apes and a poor shabby hunter that I stuck to it excitedly.
The apes in Ajasha were now no longer satisfied with being apes anymore; they wanted to be men. But how could they get a single bunch of banana to have as much as five hundred bananas on it? No ape had ever gotten such bunch from the plantations before, not even at the peak of harvest.
They began to toil. They tilled the ground and dunged the soil, they fought the pests and cleared the weeds, they planted banana suckers on every inch of space they could find. And when the harvest came, they painstakingly counted the bananas on every single bunch, but none of it came close to five hundred. For the first time they were no longer satisfied with just having tall trees and sunshine and the crystal clear streams, and bananas; no, the number on each bunch was now all that mattered, it was to determine whether they were succeeding or failing, and they knew they were failing, for none of them had found The Bunch That Mattered.
After every harvest, the laborious counting began. All hands were on deck. They taught their children early enough how to count using pebbles—one, two, three—and they helped them understand that, once they had mastered the art of counting, the most important thing they should look forward to counting was bananas in the field. The young apes mastered it fast and also got involved in the toil of counting bananas; if it was less than five hundred, it wasn’t worth rejoicing over—yet it was always less, and they were always sad.
Then one day the three patriarchs called for a meeting of all the apes.
“It’s been thirty full moons since fortune brought the Wandering Man our way,” Dayo explained, “and ever since then we have all laboured tirelessly in search of the bunch that matters. We seem to be coming closer with each harvest, and we perceive success is just a breath away. But we the patriarchs have been thinking and deliberating an issue of great concern. Should the bunch that matters be found in the near future, whose will it be? To whom shall it go? We have thought much about it, and this is our conclusion: Henceforth, we share the land, and every ape works on his portion, whatever comes from any portion belongs to the ape that owns the portion, and if it be the bunch that matters, then so be it.
The apes gladly agreed to this, but then they had a little problem; the patriarchs had to decide how much land each ape got. This was very difficult for them to decide, as no ape wanted to be cheated out of what he believed to be his fair share of land. The patriarchs deliberated and threw several options at the apes. First it was proposed that lands should be apportioned according to body size. The gorillas excitedly accepted this, but the little tree monkeys vehemently protested, and so the idea was dropped. Next it was proposed that lands should be apportioned according to physical strength, and again the gorillas and orangutans rejoiced at this, but the smaller and more feeble monkeys protested. The apes spent days and weeks proposing and protesting and protesting and proposing, till it was finally decided that every ape old enough to till the ground would be tested and assessed by the patriarchs, and lands would be apportioned according to the outcomes of the tests. This was done, and every ape got what the patriarchs judged right, and that day, the jungle of Ajasha, which once was a single field owned by all, was suddenly divided into multiple portions owned by many.
The search for the bunch that mattered continued. Every ape minded his own portion of the jungle; toiling, tilling, sowing, reaping and counting, silently hoping he would be first to get what his neighbour was looking for. Each ape concentrated his energy on his portion of the ground, hardly finding time or reason to attend to that which belonged to another. Apes now owned banana trees from which other apes were not permitted to eat. They now owned plantations upon which swinging through would be considered trespassing. And since having a larger area to cultivate increased the chances of harvesting the bunch that mattered, the apes with larger lands had more chances than the apes who received smaller portions.
But the larger lands came with their own problems; as every ape was now focused on tilling his own land, apes with large lands found themselves with more land than they could cultivate all by themselves. Seeking help from other apes was out of the question, for every ape was now too busy with his to help the other.
The apes with smaller portions wished they had more land, and the apes with more land wished they had more hands. Mother apes now had to join the father apes in the fields while the little apes were busied at home with counting exercises that was to prepare them for their future. The apes with smaller lands finished early from the fields and had some spare time to spend at home, but this was considered a total waste of time. They had come to understand that time was bananas, and to waste time was to waste bananas. Yet time used to be more than just bananas in Ajasha; before Saka the Man arrived, time used to be clans, time used to be strength, time used to be life; but now time was bananas and it couldn’t be wasted on those other things. Wives urged their husbands to work twice as hard so they could get two bunches—one for Wife and the other for Husband. Young apes desired that their parents got enough bunches to make them all humans, and if that was not possible, each sibling desired that at least they found a third bunch for him or her.
Noticing the idleness of the apes who had smaller lands, as they spent the evenings at home with their wives and children, the apes with larger lands made them an offer: they could come till their lands, on the agreement that the second bunch found would be theirs. This was a great offer for the apes with smaller lands; they no longer had to waste time at home telling stories to their young or sharing jokes with their wives; all apes were now fully employed. Ajasha never brought forth more bananas in all the years gone by than she did in these thriving times of productive activity.
Many full moons passed than the apes could count, and the long sought-after bunch that mattered was still not obtained, but every bunch they harvested gave them hope that they were closer to their goal. If they were to plot a graph of their harvest every harvest time, it would certainly be very similar to those crooked lines that go upward and forward on our spreadsheets and make investors happy. The previous year, an orangutan harvested a bunch with four hundred and forty-eight bananas. Dayo the patriarch chimp harvested a bunch of four hundred and seventy-six. Bayo harvested a bunch of four hundred and eighty-two. Many apes had recorded similar figures, but of what good was it, they just were not good enough. Yet the increasing figures was a flicker of hope.
Many, many full moons passed and there was no breakthrough in Ajasha; none had found the bunch that mattered. Another harvest season arrived and the apes went out with all the hope they had always gone out with, their optimism had not dropped one bit despite all the near wins. Ayo sat at a corner on his plantation, by a hip of harvested bananas, his wife and many children sat at several other hips scattered at different corners of the plantation. It was business as usual, till the counting grew louder from one of the hips,
“Five hundred and one, five hundred and two, five hundred and three...” It got louder with each count, and all the apes abandoned their hips for the hip from where the counting came. One of Ayo’s children had harvested a bunch of six hundred and five bananas! It was counted and recounted over and over again to be sure there was no mistake, and sure enough there was none. The bunch was handed over to Ayo as the head of the clan. An ape had finally succeeded! The jubilation ended fast and all the apes hurriedly returned to their hips. Not long afterwards, loud countings came from many hips across Ajasha.
“Five hundred and sixty-seven!”
“Six hundred and two!”
“Five hundred and eighty-four!”
“Five hundred and ninety-two!”
“Six hundred!”
The excitement kept increasing from hip to hip, from plantation to plantation.
The harvest had smiled on them, and almost every plantati
on had several bunches with over five hundred bananas on them.
Bayo, Ayo and Dayo called for a meeting that day, and it was announced that, since they had found the bunch that mattered, it had to be saved for the day the ape god appeared. A signal was given that was to be noised through the entire jungle by whoever it was that first saw the ape god when he arrived.
Time went by, and many harvests kept yielding bunches with over five hundred bananas on them, to the point that it was almost certain every ape in Ajasha will become human when the time came. Thus the competition between the apes disappeared and the unity they once enjoyed slowly returned back to the Jungle again.
A good place to end the story, but my mother didn’t end it there. Shuttling between the frying stew and the boiling rice, she warmly continued her story...
One day, Saka the Man came visiting to see how the apes were doing.
Ayo, Bayo and Dayo gave him a full briefing of all that had happened. They told him they all were now ready and waiting for the ape god to come. He inquired about the provisions they had made for their lives as humans, but the apes didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, so Saka went on to explain.
“Once you become men, you can’t go on living as apes do. You!” He said, pointing to Bayo, “The minute you become a man you are going to be needing clothes. You can’t go on naked as you’ve always done; you will be needing clothes. And the better your clothes the higher you are esteemed among men. You wouldn’t want to go about in cheap clothes, would you? You wouldn’t want to be treated like a scum by other men.
“And you!” He pointed at Bayo, “Where would you live when you become a man? You can’t go on living on trees; the minute you become a man you would be needing a house. And the bigger your house the higher you are esteemed by other men. You wouldn’t want to live in a little run-down apartment, would you? You wouldn’t want to be treated like a miserable pauper by other men.
“And you!” He pointed at Ayo. “How are you going to get around? The minute you become a man you are going to be needing something to take you from place to place. You can’t go on walking on foot and swinging on trees. You will be needing a car. And the bigger your car the higher you are esteemed by other men, and you must have lots of them, not just one. You wouldn’t want to be treated like a beggar by other men, would you?
“And what about your children? You can’t just have them sit at home all day. They will have to be taught by other men, and you will have to pay for that, and the more money you have to pay the better schools your children will get to attend, and the better schools they get to attend the better their chances of growing up to have good clothes and big houses and big cars and to send their own children to big schools too!
“And that’s not even a half of it! You apes must understand that everything changes the minute you become men, and you will have to be very prepared for that change. That’s how it goes, the humans who fail to become rich will end up as servants to the humans who refused to remain poor!
“So what do we do?” The patriarchs asked.
“Bananas are very expensive where I come from. You must gather as much of it as you can while you are still apes. When you become men, they will be your life-saver. You will sell them, and you will be paid good money for them. You must know that the more bananas you gather the more money you make, and the more money you make the better clothes you wear, the bigger houses you buy, the bigger cars you drive, and the higher honour you get. If I had not known what I now share with you while I was still an ape, I would have made the same mistake you now make and I would have ended up a poor miserable man.
“Gather as much bananas as you can, and when you become men, they will be your greatest capital for your new life.”
Saka the Man left that night, and the patriarchs called for an emergency meeting.
Ayo addressed the congregation of cheerful apes.
“I don’t mean to dampen your joy,” he said, “but I have to announce to you that our job is not yet done. As you are all aware, the Wandering Man came around today, and he brought to our notice a few things we had never given thought to.”
Ayo went on to explain to them how everything would change as soon as they became humans, and how some humans would be treated as scum by other humans, and how some of them would end up as servants to other humans, spending the rest of their human lives cleaning their homes and attending to their petty needs; he explained to them how they would be needing a whole lot of things the minute they became humans.
The only hope they had of living the life they all desired, he explained, was to start gathering as much bananas as they could while they were yet apes so they could sell them as soon as they became men, and have all the money they would be needing for their new life.
And so the apes went back to work again, each ape, once again, focusing on every inch of what was his—tilling, planting, harvesting and storing all the bananas they could. The apes built large barns with mud and sticks, and stored as much bananas as they could in them. When their barns got full, they built more barns to take in the increasing harvest. They toiled, they tilled, they piled, father ape, mother ape and young apes. The harvest kept booming, with each harvest bringing more bananas than the previous. The apes could see themselves living the best lives humans could ever dream of, they saw themselves having the best of things that men could have, they even saw themselves having servants that would attend to their petty needs.
So once again Ajasha became a beehive of activities, the apes could not have prayed for better times; though they missed those days when apes woke up in the mornings and spent time with each other like it was a jungle ritual, they missed those days when they visited each other and strengthened family ties, they missed those days when they played with their young and told them the stories their own parents had told them when they were young. They missed those days, but they had to do what they had to do. Everybody understood that. When they became men, they could take life easy, but for now, this was the price they had to pay.
My mother always told me the best things in life are free, and I should be wary whenever I have to pay for them. Whenever I asked her what the best things in life were, she always smiled and said, “Son, the best things in life are not things at all. Always start from there and you will be sure to find them.”