Spider-women

african Story from the night after the thousand and one night

A griot ------

High up under the eaves of millet straw that covered the simple mud huts of Burkina Faso sat a spider in its intricately woven web. It was no ordinary spider, because whenever an insect got caught in its web, it spoke soothingly to the little animal, which wanted to free itself from the chains with all its strength and with panic fear of inevitable death. She calmly told him clever and instructive stories that she had heard from other crawling creatures and that she had woven into her web with her shimmering threads. She was a story collector, if you will, a fairy tale woman, a griot singer and musician in Africa telling people instructive and entertaining stories that grew somewhere in our heads, were never written down and only come to life again through people who tell stories. When a griot dies, a whole library dies with him, unwritten only in his memory, as people in Africa know. That's why one likes to listen to spread this knowledge further. Maybe you like this story too, so that you want to remember it and tell it to others.

Well, our spider woman, the story collector, let's just call her "Scheherazade" encouraged her prisoners to talk about their own lives and asked them with reserved curiosity what, in their opinion, was the meaning of their lives. So the captive bee told her of the industriousness with which she procured food for the royal offspring and of all the delicious honey she was privileged to prepare for the aristocratic feasts. The haystack told her about the life-fulfilling feeling of competitive sports, when the adrenaline was pumped violently through his veins of chitin, but with such overflowing excitement that it almost threatened to burst his little heart out of sheer happiness. The jump of his strong little hind legs had been 4 meters high, who, at the height of happiness, had dropped him right in the middle of the spider's safety net. The malaria mosquito boasted full of pride of the fulfilling happiness of life, alone by the fear of your almost painless kiss robbed hundreds, yes thousands of people of their sleep with their almost inaudible Ss.. SSs.. sweet singing or to the nocturnal rest behind much larger nets hide than she, the little spider, could possibly ever weave. The butterfly enthused to the always very sedentary weaver how wonderful it was to flutter through the world, drunkenly to lie in the made bed again and again with other wonderfully beautiful flowers and to suck the wonderful nectar from her tender lips. But he would have gotten tired now, said the unsteady Fluttermann, so tired

This is how the spider experienced with almost all of the animals in its web that after a fulfilled life, a look back at the meaning of life that you had chosen yourself, from exhaustion, from tiredness, almost tiredness with the whole overabundance of life and all the suffering languages ​​that such a fulfilled life probably brought with it. So the hayhopper complained about his painfully overstrained joints, the mosquito about an always annoying pulling in the shoulder joints, which no longer let her the high tone of the dreaded Ss.., Sss.. Ssss.. reach credibly correctly and the bee confessed to her, Unfortunately, she suffers badly from diabetes and can no longer carry out this responsible job really well for her own satisfaction and that of others.
After all the prisoners had finally been able to pour out their hearts to someone, they mostly fell asleep with the fondest dreams, remembering old times. The spider then tenderly wrapped her in warming webs for cuddly rest in the protective cocoon.

The little weaver had read many, maybe even a thousand stories from the lips of the stranded animals, collected them and woven them into her web with ingeniously expressive motifs. So she, who hadn't really seen much of the world herself in her firmly anchored net, was able to tell so many beautiful and soothing stories that her little prisoners slipped off to sleep as if hypnotized by themselves. When I look around and look deep into your eyes, I notice that your songs have already become difficult because of all these stories and you too want to slip into your cozy bed like your cocoon. But now that I can't tell you a story for a thousand nights like Scheherazade did,

The One Thousand and First Story of the Morning Before the One Thousand and One Night.

The morning had broken, it was getting dark and the inhabitant of the hut in Africa came out of the entrance a little shivering. He pulled the mosquito net from the entrance a bit unhappily, he hadn't slept well because the annoying creatures with their eternal ss.. sss... sss had poked him hard and robbed him of the relaxing sleep. He almost thought he had heard one of those tsetse flies last night, which transmit sleeping sickness and with a much lower pitched sound Ss.. Sss.. Sss frighten us in our sleep. Sleep is good, but then sleeping forever and ever is too much of a good thing, after all he had so much work to do today. Sullenly, he threw his arm up where the spider had finished weaving another of those nasty webs. He slipped his plastic sandals to the large water-filled calabash in the middle of the yard to wash himself. Startled by the noise and the imperceptible shaking of the tamped clay floor, one of those black cockroaches, which had been able to recover overnight in the damp of the spilled water, ran across the yard at an almost unbelievable speed.
She could scarcely avoid all the tumbling tales that had been smashed out of the spider's elaborate web of stories by the human being's surly swipe.

Again, much of the wisdom passed down to living beings only through oral tales and artistic imagery was lost in the filth of human carelessness. The spider felt like crying, how could it get together new stories about the meaning of life so easily, since every story was the result of a whole life and was only woven into the web at the price of a whole life. With tears in her eyes, she followed the course of the dark cockroach out of the human sphere of influence: "I am the animal, whose existence will be for a long time, when the course of time has long since swallowed everything else, I who live out of the rubbish past millions of years. You stupid person, don't you see in your arrogance and hubris Your carelessness for nature and the environment, what should you make the meaning of your life?”... screamed the fleeing insect, panting, in the direction of the waterhole. "I, who will live forever and will survive even the worst environmental catastrophes that you will bring about, you drove me out, the crown of creation, the real mistress of the animals!" the spider heard the black crawling lady moan from a panting chest , while she fled into the bush, and soon the spider couldn't hear it anymore.

The one thousand and one night, as far as we haven't miscounted here

Full of indignation at the injustice she had done, the cockroach crawled, ran, ran non-stop far into the steppes until it slowly got dark and all the wildlife came to life. She had never experienced such bottomless disrespect from any of the other animals! She desperately needed someone to whom she could calmly pour out her heart. The noises in the grassland were varied and could only be understood by trained animal ears. The cockroach loudly trumpeted that the strongest of all animals was very close by. The insect quickly scrambled up into a tree, the leaves of which the elephants prized very much. Just as the big bull was about to grab the tender leaves with his elongated nose, the cockroach dropped, so that it fell through the nostrils far far down the narrow tube of the trunk to the very end. There, where the elephant with its fine nose probes and assigns all the different nuances of smell of the leaves, right there the cockroach let out a terrible destructive fart, which inflicted the most terrible pain on all the fine sensitive olfactory nerves of the elephant.

If you know that the stench of the big black cockroaches is their very worst weapon that they can use, then you can understand how instead of the triumphant fanfare tone, only a most pitiful whining came out of the mighty king's throat: "I beg you You with all my heart, mightiest of all animals, great indomitable cockroach, set your most humble servant free again, so that he can forever proclaim the greatest king of all time with his trumpet!" With great pride in its chest, the little insect climbed out again the long trunk. After bravely defeating the largest of all animals, she should actually be a little proud of herself. The little animal, however, now stood boisterously on its two rearmost feet, he pushed everyone else on his side, pushed out his chest and tried to yell in his deepest voice: Ha, look here, I'm the hero of the day, the true king of the beasts. Even when there was really nothing else to be heard than a very, very bright, quiet little voice, the cockroach was far from satisfied in her arrogance and continued to try it one or the other time. Now in no way discouraged by this, but rather encouraged in her imagination, she then made straight back on the way to the water gourd at home. There she wanted to find enthusiastic listeners for her heroism. Long was the path that the cockroach had covered on the last day, full of anger and indignation, only panting. Now she was filled with pride and seemed to almost fly over all obstacles with a light heart. At the end under the gourd she looked for a soft, damp corner and slept peacefully until morning.

Roughly woken up by a moderate earthquake triggered by the slurping splashing of cheap plastic sandals, she fled in spite of renewed courage in her heart. However, she didn't get very far this time. She could have told the spider so much more. But then a suddenly audible crack from your hard shell, triggered by a soft foam plastic flap, ended your still young life. The spider had followed the process attentively with each of its 6 eyes and now, for the hundredth time, it began to repair all the damage to its beautifully woven story cloth caused by the repeated careless blow of the human animal. Be that as it may, she thought: Much lost, but at least a new story gained.

Our beautiful exhibition of insect drawings by the artist duo Otto and Gabriel Schorer will be taken down at the end of this current week. The exhibitions with jewelery from foreign countries, from which the photos come, can unfortunately no longer be visited from now on. The world musician Niamy Sitson from Cameroon takes over our small studio in the House of Cultures and Mask Museum Diedorf for a while to give melody to his beautiful stories on African instruments as a griot and to give courses in African music. Njamy has been trained as an influential and experienced shaman and healer in his hometown over the last few years. He also wants to pass on this gift and this knowledge about the sensitive handling of our mother nature and the future of the earth in seances and seminars. Contact us under :