Folktales: disadvantage of greediness.

In one way or the other, you must have seen people who have fallen victims to their only greediness as well as people who has fallen victims to other people's greediness. To be greedy is to always have the intent to covert things into your pocket. A greedy person always thinks of himself and what he would gain.

Because greediness is not a good value, as it causes harm to people, it is discouraged. There's an African folktale that was coined for the purpose of warning people about the dangers of being greedy both to oneself and to the people around you. The folk tale of the greedy woman who chased god away from Earth.

It goes like this. At the earliest time of life, the heavens and the earth we are super close to each other. It was such that a person standing on Earth could raise his hand and touch the sky. It was said that man could climb up to heaven to seek help from God.

Even though the heavens was so close to Earth, the inhabitants of Earth still cultivated and toiled for whatever they ate. It remains so until a time when the habitats of a could not rely solely on the works of their labour to eat. They turned to God for help. In a bid to help them, God made the cloud edible. Soon, people stop spoiling for food and relied solely on cloud for food.

Then came a time when God decided to make a pact with them on how cloud should be consumed. this was because he discovered that people began to take more than they could finish and ended up throwing away the rest. He gave the inhabitants of Earth the instruction that if they intend to rely on cloud as a source of food, the nobody is allowed to take more than he or she can finish for the day. The people of Earth agreed to his condition.

There lived a woman on earth who was fond of wasting food. Even after the instruction given by God, she still continued to take more clouds than she could finish. This got God infuriated. He then send a message to earth threatening that if anybody ever takes more cloud that he could finish again, he will take the cloud away from them.

The woman still felt that taking excess cloud was better for her. she thought that it would be better to always have extra cloud in the house even though she was not eating it. Besides it was a free gift that she did not have to pay for.

The next day, the woman still wasted more cloud. Out of anger, God took the cloud away from Earth. The following day win people of Earth woke up, they discovered that the cloud was too high for their reach. They sent delegates to God to plead on their behalf. Because he could not afford to see the human starve, god decided to send the cloud back to them.

The greedy woman still did not learn her lessons. She continue to waste the cloud. This time, she began to get triple what she could eat. Out of anger, God took the cloud farther away from the people. It was too high that delegates could not be sent to heaven anymore to plead for more cloud. The people of Earth knelt down and prayed to God to bring the cloud back to them but he never listened.

Because of the greedy woman, man went back to toiling and struggling for what he would eat.

I do not need to remind us that day today the cloud is still far away from us.

It was the greedy nature of the woman in this folktale that led to God taking away the source of food that he had given man. So you see, the consequences of being greedy sometimes does not befall the person who has been greedy. It can affect the society. the people in the folktale had to pay the price of the greediness and stupidity of one woman.

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