ONCE upon a time there was a little girl who was a storyteller in Africa. Then she grew up, moved to Plymouth and weaving verbal yarns became her job.

There is a lovely simplicity to the story of Abi Alao's life and every sign of a happily ever after.

Her first audience was made up of her siblings, who loved their big sister to tell stories after school and before their parents came home from work.

Today her own children are eager listeners as the Nigerian tradition continues 30-odd years and 3,000-plus miles away from where it began.

So the next generation in the Alao household will surely take up the story relay.

Even if they do not, the students she inspires as a lecturer in creative writing at Marjon will spread the word. Or others will pick up the baton, fired with enthusiasm by her Lampo education services company, which brings stories mixed with arts across the age range, from pre-school nurseries to homes for the elderly.

Best let Abi get on with her story and enjoy the West African tone and rhythm to her voice that relaxes and draws in the listener.

“My parents were very passionate about education,” she begins.

“And my father made a decision, a very strange one, that he would not invest in a television set – and he never did, until we had left home and then he only got one so he could watch (videos of) his ever-expanding number of grandchildren.

“That brought about a natural communication among the family – and I became the family storyteller.”

Freed from the distractions of the TV, the children were exposed to stories in books. “But more than that we used our minds a lot,” Abi continues.

Both her parents were out at work – they were civil servants – so after school and before mum and dad came home Abi could take centre stage in front of her two sisters and a brother.

“We were encouraged not to play on the streets but to go indoors after school, eat whatever our mother had prepared for us in the morning before she left for work, and the storytelling would begin,” she said.

“It was not just me telling a story, my sisters and brother would join in with the story and act along with it. It would go on and on and on until we heard my mum's key at the door and the others would say 'Oh no! We have got to stop!'

“My mum did not know it was happening, that we turned the house into a theatre. Time flew by.”

Abi grew up in Ibadan, a large city in the south of Nigeria. Her mother, too, had been raised in the city and Abi's stories brought to the family an experience they missed: village life, drawing on memories and tales told to her by her grandfather, who had been a farmer.

The stories were verbal but by the time the girl was 15 she had written her first script – about a village child struggling to be somebody – and her ambition even then was to become a writer.

“My mum was the only eye that saw the script,” Abi smiles. “She did not know what to make of it or how to encourage me because in those days you did not choose to go and be a writer.”

Abi's parents had high hopes that their children would achieve. “They sent us to expensive private schools. They were not rich but they struggled and they did it and they managed somehow,” she said.

“Any chance I had to be the comedian in front of the class and tell a story I would jump at it.”

Schooling was in English, the common language in a country where so many different tongues are used. She had to teach herself to write in her own language, Yoruba (the name of her ethnic group). “In the school we went to there was a culture you did not speak vernacular – what they called my language,” Abi added.

Alongside her delight in storytelling, another love was developing: teaching.

She said: “I taught my two youngest siblings to read and write. Yes, they learned at school but when it comes to a child grasping the concepts, that is their true learning.

“Today that boy is an accountant and the other sister is a maths and IT degree holder, so I must have done a good job.”

Abi was happy with her role as virtually a second mother, saying: “They were very well behaved. There was a culture of respect. Not like you hear about some children today.”

Respect on her own part helped Abi find her path in life, a husband and a new life in England. She had gone on to university and graduated in classics and stayed on to teach and do a masters when she was presented with the opportunity of going to America to work.

“My father said no. He said I was a single girl 'and I am not letting you loose in America'. He did not force me but he strongly gave his opinion,” she said.

“I was brought up a Christian and my father was a Christian and he always prayed a lot and my parents' guidance has always worked for me, every time, so I just thought 'oh well' – and then I discovered that my destiny was not America, my destiny was in England with David.”

She met her husband-to-be when they were both doing national youth service, a compulsory stint after graduation. He was a young doctor and wanted to go to England to continue his training.

So, at the age of 24 and now married, Abi left Nigeria in 1992 for Leeds, where David became a surgeon.

The young woman was excited to be heading to a country which had produced so many of her schoolteachers and had brought Christianity to Nigeria. That feeling turned to devastation when she saw how few Britons were practising Christians.

“In Africa, God and Jesus are introduced to us as people you can have a relationship with,” says Abi. “You don't leave them. They are part of you. That is why the fastest-growing churches in England are the African ones. They are bursting.

“God is a father and I speak to him every day. I knew then I had a mission to encourage people not to forget this (religious) heritage.”

When Abi moved to Plymouth in 1999, again because of David's job – he is a consultant in the emergency department at Derriford Hospital – her chance to further that mission came through the Adura Ministries, which she founded.

Adura brings together churches from different denominations for prayer sessions, conferences and roadshows.

Also in Plymouth, her storytelling re-emerged. She was a full-time home-maker to her three boys and a girl until the last of them started at school, allowing her more time and the chance to get back to work.

“I rediscovered storytelling again when I was at home. I had the problem of boys not wanting to read. I thought if I could get them to become storytellers they would want to read, and that is what happened,” she said.

“I did stories about what they did in the day, then I introduced them to wonderful stories from Jewish history and the Bible, parables, proverbs and beautiful psalms that are really poems.

“They went looking for stories like that in books, and when authors came to Plymouth to do book signings I'd take them. Now they devour books like bread.

“Then I did some storytelling at my local nursery. I was there when there was an Ofsted inspection and they loved it.”

Abi's volunteering became her work when she set up Lampo Education. The name draws on her classical education – it is related to a Greek word meaning radiating light.

The company offers a cross-curricular and multi-cultural educational service to schools, colleges and the community as a whole. She draws on freelance artists to add other elements including dance, music and crafts.

Abi has written a book, the Legendary Weaver, about a disabled African girl who finds herself and her role by discovering the art of communicating through corncrows.

Such multiple hair-braiding has a special place in African culture, Abi explains. She researched the subject after a question came up during one of her educational storytelling sessions.

“I learned there were not many cultures in Africa that name hairstyles, not even in Nigeria. It is very peculiar to Yoruba and one or two other cultures,” she said.

“When I was young we would go to the hairdresser and we would name a style, not describe it, and the hairdresser would know what to do and would make the picture pattern: a bridge, a dog sitting on its paws.”

Her book and accompanying CD of songs is in use in schools as a multi-cultural resource. She has also translated eight children's stories into Yoruba for dual-language books for use in Nigerian communities – although she was proud to find them in use in Cornwall.

Abi trained as a teacher at the University of Plymouth, where she also taught, and she now lectures in creative writing at Marjon.

Plymouth and Britain are very much her home, she says, although she still visits Nigeria to see her mother, her brother and one of her sisters (the other is a social worker in Northampton).

She found Plymouth 'beautiful, like a holiday town' and has always enjoyed her time here.

“I expected to be treated with respect and I did not expect racial discrimination,” she says. “I have been treated fairly, as an intelligent human being who has a lot to offer.”

What, then, is the lasting appeal of stories when there are so many other attractions and distractions today, from TV to computer games and the internet?

“It is said that we are connected to stories,” says Abi. “Every time of day we tell stories. Right now, I am the storyteller to you. When you write this, you will become the storyteller. When people are asleep their brains are telling stories as they dream.”

The oral tradition of storytelling is 'very much alive' in Africa and Abi also enjoys traditional Cornish stories.

“Stories help children with their listening skills and their memory and expands their vocabulary,” she says.

“Our brain thinks in pictures. If you want to remember something, tell a story.”

She loves to stimulate debate through discussion of dilemmas that stories throw up.

And if you would like your family to do likewise, consider following the practice inspired by Abi's father decades ago.

“We do have a television. But every now and again we have a TV fast, for a while, once a year or so.

“It is like a detox, like giving up chocolate. The children want it and want it and then after a few days they forget about it.”

And they start talking – and telling.

You can learn more at www.lampoeducation.co.uk and www.aduraministries.org.