Sometimes everything changes, except for the spirits that lag behind - the week may have been established, but their rhythm remains the same.
A group of women were washing clothes by the river, hidden from view. They reminisced about how in the past, the month would begin with the first moon. Each of the four days, odwua, okondzo, okia, and tsono, had its own function and marked the passage of time. Going into the forest meant going to the fields or the cleared clearing where food crops ensured their livelihood. The prohibition of work on a certain day also meant the prohibition of going to the forest.
One of the women was telling a story about how there are now seven days in a week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But everyone was very careful not to work on Thursdays.
"Why not on that day?" another woman asked aloud. They all wondered how this prohibition had come about.
One of them recounted that in the time of their grandmothers, a woman had gone missing on a Thursday. This woman had not prepared the day before, on Wednesday, and the children had nothing to eat. She had decided to go to the fields on Thursday without informing her husband, who could have accompanied her. After her departure, when noon came, she had not yet returned. At three o'clock, still no sign of her. At four o'clock, the husband grew worried.
He questioned the children, "But where is Mom?"
"She went to the fields," they replied.
He became increasingly worried, fear turning into terror. He asked relatives and friends, but no one had any information. His wife did not return, neither that evening nor in the following days. Anxiety seized the village, and then the entire region. What could have happened?
Several weeks later, some villagers claimed to have seen her with a basket on her back, imprisoned in the ethereal light of the moon.