Ananse Mission

The Ananse mission IV is a combined Global effort to connect the diaspora to Africa through the web of Ananse. This project involves the creative skills of participants in the field of music, animation, storytelling, art, scriptwriting, producing, directing, legal advice, advertising promotion etc.

The conference started with a narrative of an ananse story.The guitar was played as the story was told. It was on why ananse is always found in a web in the ceiling. In this story,Ananse made a public spectacle of lion by tricking him to ride on his back.

One of the speakers, Mirto Lacle, a linguistic specialist from Aruba spoke on “Compa Nanzi’s chronotopical voyage:from Ghana to the Caribbean’ including Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao(1952-2010)”. Compa Nanzi means Anansesem. It is how the Ananse story has travelled all around the world from Ghana. According to Mirto, research has proved that wherever enslaved people were sent to, there are people who speak a kind of language called Creole. This is the name given to language that is developed as people who speak different languages try to communicate with each other. For example, Papiamento. It is spoken on the Caribbean island of Aruba. The ananse story has also been told around these areas. It is believed that the enslaved that were brought here were from Africa.

Surinam, a country where creole languages are spoken have proverbs on ananse. Some are "When the spiders unite they can tie down the lion". "For a lot of knowledge you may have, there is a lack of knowledge"."All people will die, only ananse will live".

He said that the ananse story narrated at the beginning of the event is told in Aruba as ananse riding on the tiger. The same is told in another place as ananse riding on the horse. As ananse stories travelled, it is adapted to suit their way of life.

Videos were shown of countries where the ananse story has been adapted.

For more information on how far the ananse story has travelled, you can go to www.anansimasters.net.

Camille Abraham, the director of the Ananse Mission from Trinidad and Tobago also elaborated on the voyage of the ananse story and its significance in different cultures. The ananse mission is more than just the ananse story.

The possibilities of the ananse mission are to create research and archiving. Provide links to books, animations, arts and entertainment and development of contemporary stories.