3 Apes and a Recession Page 3

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  Many full moons passed and the apes had stored up more bananas than you can possibly imagine. But they began to notice a trend that they couldn’t explain—the harvest got smaller successively. Each harvest was now smaller than the previous harvest, and the trend continued that way. If they were to plot a graph of their harvest, it would be like those narrow lines that descend down the axis on our spreadsheets and cause investors to panic as they watch them drop. Each year the harvest got smaller and smaller, and that was enough for the apes to worry about. They lost sleep. Father apes came home feeling depressed after each harvest. Mother apes were worried that they would end up as servants if the father apes didn’t do something fast. Young apes were at the receiving end of the combination of depressed fathers and worried mothers. Apes began to suspect apes of stealing their harvest. The gorillas pointed fingers at the orangutans and the orangutans pointed fingers at the chimps and the chimps pointed fingers at the drills and the drills pointed fingers at the baboons, and there was no end to the pointing of fingers.

  Ayo, Bayo and Dayo set out to investigate what was happening. They had to resolve the matter as fast as they could and return to booming business as usual, so they could amass more as fast as they could before the ape god arrived—and they suspected he would arrive soon. They spent hours every day discussing the situation; they set guard at night watching to see if there was a thief among them. They dunged the soil; they checked the rainfall; they checked the streams that flowed through the jungle, but they couldn’t find anything. The harvest kept declining and the apes were helpless about it, then one day Saka the Man came visiting again. Ayo, Bayo and Dayo explained what was happening to Saka.

  “Just after you left,” said Ayo, “we swung into action and started storing bananas. The harvest was great and we had to build large barns to contain them. The harvest got bigger each season and we built larger barns to store them. Each harvest called for larger barns, and the least among us now has barns large enough to hold more bananas than an ape could ever wish for. We have grown rich indeed, Wandering Man, and we are almost ready for all you told us. But recently, we started experiencing a trend that has troubled us; our harvest has been declining with each cycle, and this has happened for so many full moons, we fear there will soon be no harvest at all.”

  Saka the Man asked to see their barns, and they took him round to see them. It took the whole day to go through the barns; night fell and they were not done, and Saka had to spend the night in Ajasha. The next day they completed their exploration of the barns, and then Saka asked to see their plantations. They took him round to see their farms, and within a few hours they were done.

  “That’s the problem!” Saka exclaimed. “You have built bigger barns over bigger barns over bigger barns, and you have been trading farm space for barn space, and now you no longer have as much farm space as you used to have; and every harvest you build another barn to take in the harvest, and you lose more farm ground and gain more barn ground, and the next harvest you do the same thing and you lose more farm ground and gain more barn ground, and your harvest keeps getting smaller and smaller, and it has happened for such an extended period that you apes now have in your hands one of the biggest problems humans ever face.”

  “And what is that?” Bayo asked.

  “A recession.”

  “A recession...” They chorused.

  “Declined production over two cycles of harvest is bad enough,” Saka explained, “you have had it go on unchecked over many cycles, and now I am afraid you might soon plunge into a depression.”

  “A depression...”

  “Here is what to do. You need to set up a committee very fast.”

  “A committee...”

  “Yes, a committee. Gather the best apes among you, the wisest apes, the smartest apes, the noble apes. You must sit and discuss what must be done to reverse the situation. As soon as you decide what must be done, you must gather the strongest apes among you to get to work! Take the next month to discuss this, and swing into action afterwards.”

  The patriarchs thanked Saka for his counsel and they got to work as soon as he left. They gathered other old apes who they felt were wise enough to think through matters and make sound judgements. The team of grey-haired apes, consisting of gorillas, drills, chimps and orangutans, and headed by the three patriarch apes, did nothing all day but discuss what could be done to reverse the trend. They spent many hours deliberating and thinking and talking and arguing. Other apes patiently waited for their final conclusion, which they believed would solve the problem and bring Ajasha back to its flourishing days, but nothing came from them. Days passed, worry increased, harvest decreased, deliberations increased, and hope decreased; the apes of Ajasha had never been as downcast as they now were.

  The team of wise apes decided it was best to start reassigning lands and aggregating them. A new evaluation was to be carried out to decide which apes would have to give up their lands for others.

  They reasoned that if they retrieved lands from less productive, weaker apes, and reassigned them to more productive, stronger apes, the harvest of the stronger apes would go up, and the stronger apes could give a portion of their harvest to the apes from which lands were withdrawn. They believed this to be a fair interim solution, while they waited for Saka the Man to come help them find a way out of their dilemma.

  Many of the smaller apes lost their lands in this arrangement, and had to depend on handouts from the stronger apes. They were promised that it was going to be a very short and temporal arrangement, and that everything was under control and things would soon return to normal.

  The apes who lost their lands stayed at home all day, hoping to one day hear the call to assemble at the Ground of the Patriarchs and receive their lands back, but that call never came. Their only hope was for Saka the Man to return with a solution. And Saka the Man was sure soon to come, but he wasn’t coming with a solution.

  After Saka left the jungle from his last visit and returned to his village, he gathered his fellow hunters and told them about his banana plantation in Ajasha. He told them how he had been cultivating the jungle for a very long time and storing his harvest in very large barns, and how he now had more bananas than they could ever possibly imagine.

  “But,” said he, “my barns have been invaded by some wild monkeys and I need your help to drive them off and reclaim my property before it gets too late. As it stands, I fear those miserable apes would have eaten half of my fortune already. Come with me, and I will give each of you a truck load of the best bananas you have ever seen.”

  Saka was such a poor hunter, and it took a lot to convince other hunters to follow him on the recovery of his so called fortune. They eventually agreed to follow him, and they set out the next day with their guns and bows and arrows and invaded the jungle of Ajasha. All the apes fled at the sound of gunfire, running as far and as fast as they could, till not an ape was left in sight. Saka led his team to all the barns, and they spent many days conveying his fortune back to the village.

  And so it became that Saka moved from being a poor shabby hunter to being the richest man in the village of Otun; and eventually, he was made king and reigned happily ever after.

  [Professor Williams pauses for a while and observes his audience then continues his speech]

  After the raid was over, Ayo, Bayo and Dayo led the apes back to Ajasha. They found their barns empty and their plantations stripped of every single fruit.

  Once upon a time in Ajasha lived the happiest apes ever to be seen on the face of the earth, but not anymore; now in Ajasha lived the most miserable apes ever to be seen on the face of the earth. They stood in the ruins and couldn’t believe their eyes; all they had worked for all their lives was gone, and there was nothing they could do to get it back. All the apes turned to Ayo, Bayo and Dayo, hoping to find some hope from them. The ape god could come at any moment, and they would lose their only chance of ever becoming men. There was no time to was
te.

  “Tomorrow, fellow apes,” said Ayo quite wearily, “we begin again. We start from the search for the bunch that matters. We have found it before, and we will find it again. Take your rest now, dear apes, tomorrow will be a busy day.”