How Women Got Their Long Hair

Once, a long time ago, there were two women who got into a really big fight. That night, while the rest of the village slept, one of the quarrelling women, Omotola, dug a deep, muddy, hole outside the house of the other woman, Yemisi.

In those days, women got up very early in the morning to get water from the river to cook with. So, when Yemisi set out for the river the next morning, she fell into the deep, muddy hole Omotola dug and she couldn’t get out.

Afraid she was going to be trapped there forever, She cried out “Help!! somebody please help me out of this hole”. Hearing Yemisi’s cries, The other women tried to pull her out but the slippery mud made this really difficult. Eventually, they grabbed Yemisi by the hair and started to pull.

They pulled with all their might and as they pulled, Yemisi’s hair began to stretch. The harder they pulled, the longer her hair became. By the time they got her out of the hole, her hair was almost as long as her arm. “Look at Yemisi’s hair” the women whispered. For they had never seen anyone with long hair before. This made Yemisi very ashamed. So she hid herself especially when some of the other women made fun of her can called her hair ugly.

A few weeks later, Yemisi was getting water from the river before the other women had woken up, when she saw her reflection in the water for the first time. “I really like how my hair looks now” she thought to myself “I know it’s different from the others but it’s also more beautiful“.

So from that day on, she walked confidently through the village making all the other women feel jealous. “I want long flowing hair like Yemisi” said one woman. “I would decorate mine with colourful beads” another said. “It would be great not to look like the men” responded the third.

And one by one the women of the village jumped into the muddy pit and pulled each other out by the hair, stretching them in the process. Since then, women have been able to grow their hair long and even decorate them in different ways.

The Moral of the Story:

The moral of the story is to love yourself regardless of what others think.