AFRICAN STORYTELLING- Who Is Anansi?

Several of the folktales and fairy tales that we will read feature a character that is always playing tricks on other characters in the story and always fooling around.  In African folk tales and fairy tales, this trickster's name is Anansi. He appears in stories in many different forms but the two most popular are as a spider and as a human.  In the Akan dialect, which is one of the languages of the West African country Ghana, the name Anansi means spider.  Anansi is often referred to as the most important of all the West African gods.  This may be due to the fact that he is present in so many stories and because many of the tricks he pulls are on behalf of his father, the sky god Nyame.  One of the honest jobs that Anansi performs is to bring rain to the earth to stop fires.  What story or song do we know of that mentions spiders and rain?


Anansi is also the keeper of stories.

Ever wonder why spiders have 8 thin legs? Here's a story that will may explain it for you.