On the introduction day Sola had taught Year 2 the Fulani song and so Day 3 of the project started in the hall with the children remembering the song.

Sola had brought in her own African hats and garments and the school had many percussive instruments of its own to play. The children learnt dances for men, women and both with an emphasis on nature with the West African gourd shaker being compared to the sound of crickets at night.

Sola then told the story of The Magic Fish. It is about a man and a woman who were extremely poor and lived under a tree which provided shelter from the sun and rain. The leaves from the tree made a lovely bed for them to sleep on. They lived near a river and the man caught fish from it for a living (which meant that they didn't eat if he didn't catch any fish). However, they were contented even though they didn't have very much in terms of material wealth because they were very close to nature.

One day he caught a very, very, very big fish that spoke to him.... it said "please don't eat me and I will grant you anything that you want". So the man and woman thought and then asked for a big house and when this wish was granted they were happy....

... for a while but then they thought that they should have a bigger house and so they went and asked the fish to grant them another wish.

This went on and on until they had an enormous house with lots of servants and they became really important - summoning music and dancing whenever they wanted.

But the more wealthy one becomes, the more removed from nature and they no longer remembered how contented they were under their big tree and they remembered with disdain their bed of leaves.

They no longer cared about nature and began to neglect it for now they thought that the most important thing must be to rule the whole world.

One day the sun was shining very brightly so that they had to keep turning away from it. This made them cross and so they called the fish again to ask that they could become rulers of the univese so that they could decide when the sun comes out.

But like the rest of the area, the river had become dirty because it was not being cared for and it was impossible for the fish to rise out of the river because of the pollution.

Finally the fish got so angry about this and it told the couple that they had asked for too much - THEY COULD NOT BE GOD - and so it took away all that they had wished for and returned them to their tree.

So the couple started tidying their old home up and as they put energy back into nature, so the land returned to what it had once been.

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