Folktale: Playing Smart

Hello read.cash family. I bet we've all heard the saying that it is more productive to work smart than to work hard. I mean sometimes we see ourself sweating it all out to achieve something. We put all our hardwork into doin something and then someone comes and achieve what you have been trying to achieve without doing much work. It is mostly because they worked smart.

There is an African folktale that focuses on the concept of working smart. It is the story of the race between the turtle and the hare.

In the animal kingdom, the hare was known as one of the fastest animals while the turtle was one of the slowest. They were the opposite of each other in terms of fastness.

The hare would always rub it to the turtle's face that he was faster than him. He would always taunt him saying, "even if you were one meter away from your house, it willp eventually take your three days to enter your room". This always got the turtle infuriated.

One day when the animals in the king's were in a meeting, the turtle was unfortunately late. The hare taunted him saying, "I know that you left home before every other animal, but because you are sluggish, you were the last to arrive at the meeting venue". This made the turtle more annoyed so he challenged the hare to a race. He said to the hare, "if I win this challenge against you, you will have no other option but to be my servant". The hare proudly accepted the challenge. The animals who were present at the meeting fixed a date for the running contest. The hare was confident that he would be the winner.

When the turtle got home, he was at a loss for what to do. He had proposed the challenge in a fit of anger. He knew he could not win against the hare and he would loose face if he called off the challenge. He had to play smart.

On the day of the contest, the turtle came very early to the venue. When the other animals arrived, they were split in two. Half would be at the competition take off point while the other half were to stay at the finish line and wait for the winner of the race.

Prior to the beginning of the race, the turtle made his family to stay at strategic positions in the race. His family all looked alike, so no one would be able to suspect a thing. Besides there was only one rule to the race, 'there are no rules'.

When the race started, the turtle took of very slowly, soon the hare passed him. After sometime, the hare saw another turtle running in front of him. He was shocked. He thought it was Mr Turtle. He ran as fast as possible to over take the turtle. Towards the end of the race, he still saw the turtle running ahead of him, he ran as fast as possible to over take the turtle. This kept happening to him until the turtle crossed the finish line before him.

The turtle was declared the winner of the race. This was surprising to the animals. No one had suspected that the turtle played smart on them.

In this folktale, the turtle was able to win in the race against the hare because he was smart. The hare had put in all his effort and even exhusted himself, yet he still lost to a slow animal.