CASSAVA STORY

CASSAVA STORY 1

HOW IT ALL STARTED

Once upon a time, long long ago, the great oak who was the king in the plant kingdom sent out his town crier, the great African Oil bean tree to announce to all members of the plant kingdom to attend a special meeting in the village square because of the famine that was ravaging the human population.

The day of the meeting arrived and every pleasantries were exchanged and members who had not seen one another for a long time used that as an opportunity to inquire about other members of their extended families and others.

After the initial pleasantries, the business of the day was announced by the clerk of the house.

The King announced that there was reason he called the meeting which was to use the prevailing famine in the human family as a platform to test the popularity of each and every plant specie and to spread beyond the borders of their existing territory.

So each specie of plant was given up to the next planting season to go and get itself prepared such that by then, the famine would have been more severe and humans would be looking for anything that could satisfy their hunger and possibly eradicate the prevailing situation.

After the meeting, there was a role call and the plants present were maize, groundnut, oil palm, cassava, okra, mango, orange, pepper, pumpkin, tomato, millet, cocoa, sugar cane and others.

The final instruction was that each and every member should come with enough members of their family that humans may be able to eat and keep at least a bit for the planting season. That each should develop traits that would make them launch themselves into the human territory. Everybody left after the final greetings and bade one another farewell.