A Girl Named Disaster

by Nancy Farmer

  Nhamo spent the rest of the day scouting around the area she had chosen for her camp. She found several other small streams—they had been much larger, but the rainy season was already two months past. She noted a number of mutowa trees with rough, scaly bark. Their sticky sap could be used to trap birds. She found gourd vines to make more calabashes.

  Food plants close to camp had been picked clean by the baboons, but she could forage in the woods as they did. And unlike them, she could fish and trap game.

  That afternoon Nhamo cooked the last of her mealie meal. It was damp and would spoil anyhow. She would have to conserve as much of her other stores as possible for the dry season, which was coming. It made her sad to empty the sack. Aunt Shuvai and Aunt Chipo had grown this grain; she and Masvita had ground it. It had been made with the many, many hands of the village, and when it was gone she would have no more food that had been touched by her people.

  But the bag had been woven by them. Nhamo stuffed it with dry grass and took it to the cave to use as a pillow. She could wrap her arms around it and bury her nose in its smell.

  She gathered a heap of rocks by the cave mouth because she could hear the barks of the baboons in the distance. She backed into the opening and watched the forest on the other side of the grassland.

  The baboons straggled out from under the trees in the slanting golden light of late afternoon. In little groups they came, talking and shouting. The young bounced around the adults, ambushing one another, rolling in mock battle, and shrieking for protection when an older animal lost patience and bared its teeth. Little black babies clung to their mothers’ stomachs while older, brown ones rode on their mothers’ backs. There were so many of them! Nhamo couldn’t count that high!

  They paused to drink at the stream. They jumped over the water and passed the lucky-bean trees. They found the cook-fire and stopped short. Nhamo held her breath. A large male shouted a challenge. His eyes flashed white and his big fangs yawned. The message was perfectly clear: Come out, whoever you are, so I can rip you to shreds!

  “Oh, Mother,” whispered Nhamo. She had expected the baboons to nest in the far trees. It was clear from the gathering below that they intended to climb the cliff. They would pass right by her cave. Nhamo had a sudden vision of the male baboon discovering her presence and deciding to remove the intruder.

  Nhamo wriggled out and stood on the narrow ledge at the mouth of the cave. The troop down below reacted instantly. Several males gave the loud threat call: Oo-AA-hoo! Females gathered up babies with cries of alarm. The large male by the cook-fire puffed out his fur until he looked twice as big. Oo-AA-hoo!

  “Go away!” shrilled Nhamo. She looked frantically for a quick way up the cliff. She hurled the stones she had piled at the mouth of the cave. One caught a male on the face. Wah! he barked, jumping back.

  The baboons milled around, obviously upset by the strange creature in their sleeping place. They swayed back and forth, eyeing Nhamo. Then, as the sun went down, they suddenly made up their minds and headed for the trees at the edge of the grassland. Their outraged barks floated back on the evening air.

  She had won! She had driven off a huge baboon troop. She slid back into the cave and let her pounding heart settle down to its natural rhythm. She felt like vomiting, so great had been her fear, but she had won! “I, Nhamo, have taken this cliff for my own,” she said. “And the island. This is Nhamo’s Island. I am the boss of all baboons.”

  Later, when she listened to the hoot of an eagle owl, the hiss of a genet, and the hrrr-hrrr grunt of a foraging honey badger, she didn’t feel quite as confident. The night was full of activity—some harmless, some not. A dassie screamed as it was killed by some unknown predator in the dark.

  “I’ll get started on the tree house in the morning,” she promised. The cave wasn’t really comfortable: The ceiling was too low, and she hated the feeling of being trapped. Something kept crawling over her body, flickering its antennae as it puzzled over the addition to its home. Nhamo didn’t fall asleep until the first streaks of dawn appeared in the sky.

  23

  So much work to do! Nhamo had to find food, build a shelter, dig a garden, cut down a tree, and carve it into the shape of Crocodile Guts’s boat. The boat and garden would have to wait. Even the shelter was less important than an immediate food supply. She didn’t dare use up her stores from the njuzu island until she was certain she could replace them.

  The rainy season was past and so, therefore, was the largest supply of vegetables. Still, on the stony slopes of hills she found many small tsenza bushes. Their roots could be roasted like yams or even eaten raw if she was really hungry. In the marshy ground where the stream met the lake she found dense patches of sedge. The small brown tubers under the soil would be available throughout the dry season.

  Wild spinach, mowa, was still present although sparse, and several varieties of wild beans had escaped foraging baboons. The beans were dry, but she could soak them. On termite mounds Nhamo discovered jabvane bushes with purplish black fruit, and in dense thickets near the water grew brambles with dark, sweet berries.

  She found wild loquats and waterberries, monkey oranges, and marula. All had been plundered by baboons, but quite a lot of food was left. Nhamo noticed that some trees were hardly touched, and when she tasted the fruit she understood why. The animals had so much to eat they could afford to ignore food that tended to be sour. Later in the dry season they wouldn’t be as fussy.

  Nhamo collected a basket of the pale yellow marulas from the ground and returned to her cook-fire. In the middle of each fruit was a nut that, broken open, produced three edible seeds. Nhamo craved oil, so she ate the seeds right away. Some of the white, pulpy fruit she also devoured, and some she boiled to make a drink for later.

  She found a number of large grasshoppers, pulled off the heads to remove the guts, and roasted them on a flat stone over the fire. She tossed them in a basket to knock off the wings and legs.

  In the afternoon, Nhamo harvested gourds to turn into calabashes and storage pots. She cut slashes in mutowa trees and collected a ball of sticky sap. She hacked off the outer shell of a mupfuti tree and began peeling off long strips of the inner bark.

  By sundown, Nhamo was exhausted. She lay in the mouth of the cave and wearily chewed and twisted the bark strips into twine. The bark tasted good—like raw beans—and gave her the illusion she was eating as well as working.

  The cries of the baboons echoed in the trees across the grassland, but they didn’t attempt to approach the cliff. In the middle of the night the unknown creature came out of its hiding place and whisked its long antennae over Nhamo’s legs.

  Day after day Nhamo toiled. She smeared bushes with the sticky mutowa sap and baited it with termites. In the evening she harvested small birds, which she gutted, wrapped in clay, and baked in coals. When the clay cracked, she pulled it off along with the feathers, and devoured the small morsels inside. She installed fish traps in the streams and set twine snares along small game trails. She caught cane rats, squirrels, and hares.

  Every day she spent as much time as possible constructing a platform in the lucky-bean branches.

  Nhamo cut down small, straight trees. She worked very carefully because she didn’t dare damage the panga. She hauled the poles up into the lucky-beans with Crocodile Guts’s rope, and experimented with various configurations until she had a floor that was more or less level. She bound the poles together with twine. Next she covered the platform with a thick layer of thatching grass.

  It was beautiful! Nhamo lay back on the springy grass with a sigh of satisfaction. No more cold, lumpy sand! No more feeling cramped like a worm in a nut! She began to plan all sorts of refinements: upper platforms to store food, a rope ladder, a barrier of thornbushes, a thatched roof to keep out rain.

  Rain? Nhamo stopped in horror. The rainy season was months away. She would have to be away long before it began. When the violent storms arrived, the waves on the lake would become extremely dan
gerous. Nhamo looked up through the dark, fan-shaped leaves at patches of bright sky. As long as she kept busy, she could thrust away thoughts of her real predicament. Now they rushed back.

  She was alone on this island. Now and forever. She would slowly grow old, without family or children, until she was too feeble to climb the tree. Her eyes would grow too dim to find water and her fingers too weak to dig for yams. She would starve like the baboon on the little island, unless a predator found her first.

  “No! I will build a boat and sail away!” Nhamo cried stoutly. “I am Nhamo Jongwe, whose totem is the lion and whose people are descended from kings. I am a woman, not a little girl. I have Mother and Crocodile Guts for company, and—and—the njuzu.” The njuzu still made her uneasy. For a moment she saw them gliding out of their huts with Aunt Shuvai’s beads twined around their long bodies.

  She climbed down the notches she had made in the lucky-bean trees, and went back to the boat. She had already ringbarked a thick mukwa tree to cut down later. She wandered to the tip of the large island and got a surprise. The water level had dropped during the night!*

  Even she could jump from rock to rock to the little island now. The baboon must have escaped, she thought, but when Nhamo shaded her eyes, she could still see him crouched under a tree. He watched her dully. She threw a stone to get his attention, but he didn’t react.

  “It’s not my problem,” Nhamo declared, returning to her campsite.

  She moved everything to the platform and began working on her ladder.

  “Once upon a time there was a wealthy man and wife with only one daughter,” Nhamo said as she alternately twisted and chewed the mupfuti bark into rope. She had calabashes of water and boiled marula juice, a pot of toasted grasshoppers, a basket of tsenza roots, and a small grass mat covered with ripe bramble berries. Higgledy-piggledy in the branches were wedged baskets of supplies, and on a corner of the platform, protected on two sides by branches, was Mother’s picture, weighted down with stones.

  Nhamo had to guard the picture carefully because the paper was tempting to termites. She normally kept it sealed in a jar with a tight-fitting lid, but the afternoon breeze was so pleasant she brought Mother out to enjoy it.

  “This man and wife told their daughter not to speak to any young men,” she went on. “‘You are too good for the donkeys who live in this village,’ they said. ‘You must wait until we find someone suitable.’

  “The girl obeyed. Many young men tried to court her. They brought her presents and told amusing stories, but her parents wouldn’t give her permission to speak. No matter how hard the young men tried, they couldn’t make the girl react, and so one by one they gave up and found other wives.

  “After a time the girl became discouraged. ‘All my friends are married and have children. I think my parents don’t want me to get married at all!’ But she was a good daughter. Whenever a new suitor showed up, she obeyed her parents and kept her mouth shut.”

  Nhamo considered the rope she was making. Her first attempts at a really long strand had come apart, but she was getting the hang of it. She paused to wash the taste of bark from her mouth.

  “One day, a poor boy from another village heard about the girl. ‘Please make me a pot of rice and cowpeas,’ he asked his grandmother. ‘I’m going to court the girl who won’t talk to anyone.’

  “Grandmother laughed and said, ‘What makes you think you’ll succeed when everyone else fails?’

  “‘I’ve got a secret plan,’ he replied.

  “‘If you want to waste your time, it’s fine with me,’ said Grandmother. She made him a big pot of rice and cowpeas, and he set off the next morning. He sat down next to a baobab tree near the girl’s house and began stripping off the bark.

  “After a while the girl came out and saw him making rope from the baobab bark. She walked past him several times, but he never looked up at her. When mealtime came, he ate with one hand while still making rope with the other.

  “She went home and told her parents. ‘There’s a strange boy making rope out of baobab fiber. I walked past him several times, but he wouldn’t look up.’

  “‘Put on your best clothes and jewelry,’ suggested her father. ‘Then see what he does.’

  “The girl put on her best clothes and jewelry. Her mother combed her hair and oiled her skin. The girl sat on a rock near the baobab tree for hours, but the boy never looked up. When dinnertime came, he ate rice and cowpeas with one hand while making rope with the other.

  “‘I knew it!’ cried the girl that night. ‘You made me wait so long to get married, I’ve turned into an old woman!’

  “‘Hush,’ soothed her mother. ‘Everyone knows you’re the most beautiful girl in the village. Take him some food tomorrow and see what happens.’

  “In the morning the girl again dressed in her best clothes. She cooked fine white sadza and spicy red relish. She presented it to the boy with a pot of water to wash his hands. To her surprise, he washed only one hand to eat with. He continued to roll fiber into rope with the other.

  “When she reported this to her father, he went to the baobab tree and invited the boy to visit his house. ‘Thank you, baba. I would like to do that, but I’m busy right now,’ explained the boy. ‘My grandmother’s fields are next to a den of baboons, and she is worn out from guarding them. I am making a long rope to drag the fields closer to her hut.’

  “The girl’s father was amazed that anyone was powerful enough to do that. He hurried home and told his wife to make dinner. He sent his daughter to invite the young man to stay with them.

  “‘Please come,’ she said shyly. It was the first time she had ever spoken to a young man. The boy quickly accepted. Now he spent every night at the rich man’s house. During the day he made rope and talked to the girl. They fell in love with each other.

  “‘I want to marry you, but I’m too poor to pay roora,’ the boy said.

  “‘That’s all right,’ replied the girl. ‘Just promise to pull my father’s fields closer to his house as soon as you have finished with your grandmother’s.’ The girl’s father was delighted with the offer and married his daughter to the boy at once. They went off to his village and lived there very happily. They soon had many children.

  “One day the girl’s father came to visit. ‘Why haven’t you moved my fields yet?’ he complained to his son-in-law.

  “‘Did you really think anyone could pull a field around with a rope?’ His daughter laughed. ‘That was just a trick we played so we could get married. I couldn’t stand another year of not talking! Please come and see your new grandchildren.’

  “The girl’s father was annoyed at his clever daughter, but he liked his grandchildren, so he forgave her.”

  Nhamo flexed her hands. They were getting calluses from twisting so much mupfuti fiber. She munched a few grasshoppers and followed them with a handful of bramble berries. “I wish I could tie a rope around this island and pull it next to Zimbabwe,” she told Mother.

  Mother asked when she was going to work on the new boat.

  “In a few days,” Nhamo replied. “I have to make a garden where the baboons won’t find it. I need food for the dry season.”

  Mother pointed out that the sooner she got started, the sooner she could leave.

  “To be honest, I don’t know if I can copy Crocodile Guts’s boat.”

  Making a boat is easy, little Disaster, said Crocodile Guts from his bench at the bottom of the lake. Use mukwa wood. It’s so strong the termites won’t touch it.

  “It’s easy for you,” grumbled Nhamo. “To me it’s like carving one of Uncle Kufa’s walking sticks.” Uncle Kufa made them in the shapes of snakes, animals, and people, and sold them at the trading post. Nhamo had tried to copy him, but wound up splintering the wood instead.

  Take little bites. That’s what the termites do.

  It made sense. Nhamo knew she wasn’t going to hollow out the mukwa trunk with the panga. It was too long and anyhow too vital to her survival. S
he could chip away with Uncle Kufa’s knife. Or even a sharp rock.

  But first she had to plant a garden. Nhamo put Mother away in her jar and climbed down the lucky-bean tree. She had a plan, but she had been waiting until it became possible.

  * * *

  *When the floodgates at Cabora Bassa Dam are opened, the water level drops sharply.

  24

  Nhamo shaded her eyes and looked across to the little island. At the foot of the bluff where she had built a fire lay a dark object. She squinted to be sure. It was the baboon. She sighed unhappily. She hadn’t wanted him to die, but she couldn’t carry out her plan until he was gone. The little island was an ideal place to plant a garden.

  Nhamo hopped from stone to stone, all the while searching for signs of the crocodile. When she reached the final rock, she paused. The last channel was very deep. It was almost too wide for her to cross. A few months before, she would never have attempted it, but now she could swim if she miscalculated—and if the crocodile didn’t get her first.

  She took a deep breath and leaped. She fell on the sand, scraping both knees, and scrambled to put distance between herself and the treacherous lake. She cautiously approached the dead baboon. He lay on his back with his eyes closed. His twisted foot stuck up reproachfully.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Nhamo. A few people ate baboons, she knew, but the practice wasn’t common. As precarious as her food supply was, she wasn’t even slightly tempted to cook this one. He had been alone like her, and his disability had set him apart from the other animals. She would cast his body into the water for the crocodile to find.