Why Women Have Long Hair African Folktale
Why Women Have Long Hair is a wonderful African folktale about loving yourself inside and out.
Read with your child and share wonderful African folktales, children enjoy listening to many types of African folktales learning from the wisdom and rich tradition of African storytelling.
Why Women Have Long Hair African Folktale
Two
women quarreled, and one of them went out secretly at night and dug a deep pit
in the middle of the path leading from her enemy’s house to the village well.
Early
next morning, when all were going to the well for water with jars balanced on
their heads, this woman fell into the pit and cried loudly for help.
Her
friends ran to her and, seizing her by the hair, began to pull her out of the
pit. To their surprise, her hair stretched as they pulled, and by the time she
was safely on the path, her hair was as long as a man’s arm.
This
made her very much ashamed, and she ran away and hid.
But
after a while, she realized that her long hair was beautiful, and then she felt
very proud and scorned all the short-haired women, jeering at them.
When
they saw this, they were consumed with jealousy and began to be ashamed of
their short hair. “We have men’s hair,” they said to one another. “How
beautiful it would be to have long hair!”
So
one by one they jumped into the pit and their friends pulled them out by the
hair.
And
in this way, they, and all women after them had long hair.