05/11/2025
You can’t steal another person’s — what’s planted with a pure heart will always grow sweeter.
🙏🏾 ♥️ 🕊️
Mrs. Lewis and Her Cassava
R. Grellmore
In the village, Mrs. Lewis grew the finest cassava anyone had ever tasted. Folks said she prayed before planting, whispering blessings into the soil itself. But others murmured different tales — that no old widow could tend such a bountiful field alone.
They said it must be obeah, that she was dealing with the devil. Yet no one could deny the taste of her cassava — sweet, rich, and somehow alive. People came from far and wide to buy it. And after they ate, laughter filled their homes, and joy seemed to ripple through the whole village once more.
One dry season, a young man named Peter decided he would find out Mrs. Lewis’s secret. “How hard could it be?” he said. “It’s just cassava.”
One night, when the moon was full and the frogs sang loud in the drain, Peter crept down to her field. He watched her from behind a breadfruit tree. There she was — old Mrs. Lewis — humming softly, her hands buried in the soil. He saw her sprinkle a little something from a calabash gourd and whisper words he couldn’t understand.
The next morning, Peter tried the same thing. He planted his cassava with the same rhythm, the same prayer — or what he thought was a prayer. But when the cassava came up, the roots were bitter and full of water. No one could eat them.
The villagers laughed and said, “You can copy her hands, but not her heart.”
Mrs. Lewis just smiled when she heard. “The secret,” she said, “ain’t in the planting. It’s in the love you give the ground.”
You can’t steal another person’s blessing — what’s planted with a pure heart will always grow sweeter.