by Nancy Farmer
Nhamo poked the baboon with a stick. He sprang up with his fangs bared and his skeletal chest heaving. Nhamo jumped back with a shriek. She threw the stick at him and followed it with every rock she could lay her hands on. The baboon retreated, screaming. He tottered to the base of the bluff and fell over. He lay there churring with terror, his eyes wide open and unfocused.
“You horrible creature!” she yelled. “Why aren’t you dead like you’re supposed to be?” She squatted on the ground and hugged herself to stop shaking. They sat across from each other, the baboon whimpering and Nhamo trembling. After a while the baboon sighed deeply and relaxed again into the posture of impending death. He looked, Nhamo had to admit, like one of the many cholera victims she had cared for.
“You’re only a beast,” she said defiantly. The animal’s eyes were haunted with fear. He feebly scratched his chest. “Nyama, that’s all you are. Meat. If I wasn’t so fussy, I’d cook you up at once.” The baboon turned toward her voice. Oo-err, he said, like an infant calling for its mother.
“Oh, stop it!” Nhamo cried. She got up and returned to the beach. The leap back was easier—she had an idea of the range now. She could still see the baboon from the large island. “Don’t think I care!” she yelled across the water.
Nhamo walked along the shore until she reached a shallow stream. She followed this to a meadow dotted with marula trees. She filled her dress-cloth with ripe fruit and tied it onto her back like a baby-carrying shawl. Then, naked, she returned to the rocks and proceeded to cross. This time she heaved a large stone into the water first. The crocodile was a fearsome, but cautious, beast. She had seen how it fled when it heard a strange noise.
Nhamo dumped some of the marulas near the baboon and laid a trail back to the beach. She put another small heap on the first rock, and then one on each of the easier jumps all the way back to the shore. “I’m only doing it so you’ll leave my garden alone,” she shouted. The baboon didn’t react. She went off to harvest the birdlime traps.
That night she listened to the voices of the troop as they nested in the trees across the savanna. They were more agitated than usual because the moon was full. Like people, baboons were restless at such times. She heard the low, soft, rhythmic grunts of the females and cooing of the infants, the rumble of the males, with now and then a challenging bark. They had trouble sleeping in the intense, white moonlight, as did she. In the village, everyone would spend the night around the cook-fires, exchanging stories. Nhamo shook her head to keep from thinking about the village.
In the morning the marulas were all gone and the little island was deserted.
Nhamo was unable to find large patches of soil, but she found many small ones. She cleared out weeds and broke up the ground with a sharpened stick. It was extremely hard work, and a hot wind made her throat ache. Fortunately, the drop in the lake had created a small bay on the far side of the little island. She dragged branches across the narrow inlet. The water could get in, but the crocodile couldn’t hide in such a shallow place. She felt safe to draw water for her new garden.
Over the next few days she planted mealies, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes, peanuts, okra, and pieces of yam. The planting season was over, but if the weather didn’t turn too cold before the vegetables ripened, she ought to get some results. She named the place Garden Island in honor of her work. Well pleased, Nhamo bathed in the small bay and washed out her dress-cloth. She would have to be careful with it. It would be terrible if it wore out and she had to arrive in Zimbabwe stark naked! She sang:
“I have worked! I have sweated!
And now I have a great farm.
I will eat to my heart’s content,
For I am a soldier of the land,
And a warrior whose weapon is the hoe.
Even kings and ngangas respect me,
Bringer of food and preserver of nations.”
“I wish I did have a hoe,” Nhamo added, wriggling her toes. Water striders skated away on their X-shaped reflections. Tiny fish darted here and there in the weeds. Old Takawira had been a fine blacksmith, Grandmother said. He had taken red soil and melted it into iron, but that was in the old days. Now people bought such things at the trading post.
“I’ll have to make do with a sharp stick,” she sighed.
That afternoon Nhamo feasted on a guinea fowl that had become entangled in one of her traps. She had never equaled the feat of eating one a day as she had on the Musengezi. They weren’t as common here. Still, she regularly caught francolins and doves, and she was able to snare smaller birds in the lime traps. All in all, she was doing well, but she had yet to get through the dry season.
As the afternoon shadows slanted across the grass, Nhamo got a shock. The hoots and yells of the baboon troop didn’t veer off into the trees. Instead, they came straight ahead. Soon she could see little groups of animals moving toward the cliff as they had on that first evening.
“This is my home,” Nhamo shouted from her platform. She gathered rocks from her hoard and prepared to rain them down. The baboons gave her trees a wide berth, however. “I do not give you permission to visit!” she yelled. The animals glanced at her and continued their migration. The big male who had sniffed at her cook-fire that first afternoon approached and bared his frightening teeth.
Oo-AA-hoo! he shouted at the girl cursing him from the branches. We’re going to sleep here whether you like it or not! Nhamo hurled a stone at him. His fur puffed out until he looked twice as large. His eyes flashed white with rage. Abruptly, he turned and trotted after the others. Last of all came a straggler, all skin and bones, hobbling on a twisted foot. The big baboon shouted at him, and the crippled animal cringed.
“He doesn’t like me, either,” Nhamo called with grudging sympathy. She wasn’t in actual danger as long as the troop kept to the rocks, so she settled down to watch their antics. The young ones scampered and wrestled. They turned flipflops and chittered with excitement. The adults walked staidly among them, as elders should, and now and then pulled a tail to maintain order. The grassland between the stream and cliff was thick with them.
Nhamo watched with mixed feelings. They were a threat, but they were also company. The mothers nursing their tiny infants, the females who gathered around to admire, the youngsters leaping over one another all created the bustle of a peaceful village. Even the sullen males were not that different from Uncle Kufa and his friends at the dare.
“Uncle Kufa would be furious if I told him that,” Nhamo said to Mother. “But it’s true. That big one—I think I’ll call him Fat Cheeks because his beard swells up when he gets angry. And the miserable creature I rescued from Garden Island will be Rumpy because something chopped his tail off.”
Rumpy was pushed around by almost everyone. He cringed and groveled and chattered with terror, but no amount of bad treatment could drive him away. He seemed to have accepted his status as pariah. “The things people do to keep from being lonely,” sighed Nhamo.
When she woke up in the night, she could hear the baboons murmuring among themselves on their rocky perches. “I’ll put thornbushes around my trees in the morning,” Nhamo muttered as she drifted back to sleep.
Nhamo was used to hard work, but she had always depended on others for help. Now she had to do all the gardening, all the water carrying, all the hunting, and still find time to cut down the mukwa tree and carve it into the shape of a boat. From the minute the red ball of the sun lifted above the lake to when it sank again in thickening layers of haze, Nhamo hurried from one chore to another.
She finished the rope ladder and barricaded the base of the lucky-bean trees. She built small platforms higher up in the trees. When she was out, she lifted the end of the ladder with a pole and draped it over a convenient branch. She didn’t want to find baboons in her home!
Even with the correct raw materials available, Nhamo’s basket-making skills were limited. She had to depend on the calabash vines to provide most of her containers. She chopped up old termite mounds and us
ed the clay to make pots, firing them in heaps of coals. Even the ones that broke in the process were useful. She used the shards to roast termites. She spent every morning weeding and watering the garden, and every afternoon chipping away at the mukwa trunk. Between times she foraged for food. When she couldn’t face chores any longer, she explored—cautiously.
The baboons ranged far and wide on the island. Sometimes they chose to stay in another area, and then the darkness rustled with unfriendly noises. Nhamo huddled on the platform, rocks at hand. Most nights, though, the animals preferred to stay on the cliff, and then she slept easily, soothed by their incessant murmuring.
The baboons filled the days with drama. The troop erupted with shrieks when someone encountered a snake. They churred excitedly when someone discovered a large scorpion—and muttered with disappointment as the lucky finder nipped off the stinger and ate the rest of the creature! Some things—vultures, for example—made them rub their faces and watch the sky uneasily. And some things they ignored, like Nhamo, most of the time.
Other animals, too, lived in the area around the cliff. Dassies snarled at anything that attempted to invade their rocky hideouts. Their fat bodies shivered with rage and their shrill cries pierced the air. Impalas grazed around the baboons as though they were bushes. Vervet monkeys cavorted as much as their larger cousins, and the babies of both species occasionally joined in play.
The main business of the male baboons, as far as Nhamo could tell, was to shove one another around. A stronger one would stare fixedly at some inferior, slap the ground, and fluff out his fur. Then he would stand up and slowly approach. The other baboon would quickly give up his seat. The first animal sat down in his rival’s place with what appeared to be great satisfaction. Fat Cheeks was the most successful at this game and, predictably, Rumpy was the one who always got moved on.
Not all baboon activities had to do with threats, though. Babies, especially the tiny black infants, brought out the best in everyone. Even Fat Cheeks was reduced to lip-smacking foolishness when he attempted to entertain one. He lay on the grass and let the baby crawl over him, yank his beard, and put a foot in his eye without the slightest protest.
The least attractive, where infants were concerned, was Rumpy. When he felt threatened, he snatched up one of the tiny creatures and held it in front of him for protection. Sometimes it worked and sometimes, if the baby was old enough to protest, it only got him more soundly beaten.
Every morning and every afternoon, the animals busily groomed one another’s fur. This was their greatest pleasure. The one being groomed lay down, eyes closed in ecstasy, as another searched for dirt and ticks. He or she would present an arm or leg if the other baboon’s attention wavered. Everyone took part in this activity—except Rumpy. He had to sit on the edge of the gathering and morosely groom himself.
25
Nhamo tried to build an entire hut on the platform, but she soon found it was beyond her ability. Poles crashed down and calabashes shattered as she struggled to construct walls. She had watched the villagers make houses for years, but somehow, somewhere, she had missed a critical piece of information. There was a way to brace walls even in a tree, but Nhamo couldn’t remember how it was done.
After her efforts clattered to the ground for the tenth time, she gave up. She wedged a pole across the branches over her head and leaned reeds against it to make a slanted windbreak. She lashed the reeds down and covered them with bundles of thatching grass, using many overlapping layers tied in place with mupfuti twine. It wasn’t perfect, but she was too irritated to keep trying. “I’ll be out of here before the rainy season starts, anyhow,” she told herself.
Nhamo was lacking other important skills as well. How did you finish a reed mat, for example? Her attempts unraveled. She knew skins could be cured. It had something to do with soaking in mud and rubbing with ashes, but her rabbit skins smelled vile when she was finished.
The boat was the biggest problem, though. Slowly, painstakingly, Nhamo cut down the mukwa. When it finally crashed to the ground, her heart sank. How could she ever turn such a giant lump into anything useful? She couldn’t even make a walking stick. She sat in Crocodile Guts’s leaky craft all afternoon, too dispirited to try anything.
Nhamo crouched by the mukwa log scraping, scraping, scraping with a sharpened rock. It was slow work, but she was afraid of using Uncle Kufa’s knife too often. Mopane flies circled her face, landing to drink moisture from her lips and eyes. She waved them away; they came straight back. The only way to discourage them was to sit directly in the sunlight, and it was too hot for that.
She stopped to watch flecks of light on the lake. Breezes ruffled its surface, and occasionally a tiger fish leaped after a low-flying dragonfly. Otherwise the lake was devoid of interest. Blue and endless, it lay between her and freedom. She never even saw a boat on it.
“If only I could strike it with my skirt like Biri,” she sighed. Biri, a famous rain priestess, and her two brothers had founded the eland clan. They came from the north and were light-skinned like the Portuguese. “When they reached the Zambezi, Biri removed her skirt and struck the water. Immediately, it rose up on two sides like hills, leaving a dry path between,” Nhamo said aloud to whatever spirits might be listening.
“‘You will find your totem on the other side,’ Biri instructed her brothers. As they crossed over, the ancestors played mbiras and drums from the depths of the water, and after they had passed, the river came together again.
“I suppose you’d find that frightening,” Nhamo told the njuzu. “It would be like someone rolling up your house while you were living in it.” She stripped away the green, resinous wood, pausing to remove a splinter from her thumb. “The older brother ran ahead. He came upon a dead eland and immediately cut it up into steaks. ‘How could you be so foolish?’ cried Biri when she saw what he had done. ‘That was our totem. Now you will be forever unlucky.’ From that time, the descendants of the younger brother were called the Tsunga, the Steadfast Ones, because he had honored the totem.”
Nhamo tried to rock the log. It wouldn’t budge. She poked her fingers into a gap beneath to get a better grip. A pain shot through her like a knife! She jerked away, and a large black scorpion scuttled out of the hole. It danced sideways, making a hissing noise.
Nhamo threw the scraping rock at it. It squirted venom at her in a fine spray. She grabbed a stick and pounded the creature even as it rose to attack again, banging it until its body was mush with the tail twitching feebly. She sank to the ground, dizzy with shock. “Oh,” she moaned. The pain was so terrible, she couldn’t think.
Nhamo stared up at the sun stabbing through the gray-green musasa leaves. The light dazzled her eyes, and her stomach rolled with nausea. “I can’t stay here,” she whispered. If she was going to be really sick, she didn’t dare remain exposed. A jackal or honey badger could be just as lethal as a lion then. But she couldn’t bring herself to move. Instead, she studied her hand until she found the puncture on the back. It was oozing slightly.
Nhamo sucked at the wound and spat out bitter liquid. Painfully, she forced herself to roll over and crawl to the lake. She scooped up water to wash the evil taste out her mouth. And then she collapsed with her face half in the mud. She wanted to lie there forever.
If only Masvita would cover her with a blanket. She could sleep until the pain went away. Someone will look for me if I don’t return with the firewood, she thought dimly. But no, she wasn’t in the deserted village. Nowhere near it.
At sundown, Nhamo remembered, the larger animals would venture down to the lake. And waiting for them under the surface would be the crocodile.
It didn’t much matter whether something discovered her on its way into or out of the water.
She struggled to her feet. Slowly, with many stops to clear her swimming head, Nhamo crept back to the lucky-bean trees. The rope ladder was hooked over a branch. She sank down again and looked at it with despair. It seemed impossible to lift the long stick
she kept at the foot of the trees. Her hand and arm were on fire. And her heart was doing funny things. “Aunt Chipo is going to be furious if I don’t start dinner,” she murmured. At last, after several tries, she unhooked the ladder, and it flopped down within reach.
Nhamo had only a fleeting memory of how she got up. Once she leaned through the ropes and vomited on the ground. For a long time she seemed to be frozen in one place without moving at all. But eventually she dragged herself over the platform and pulled the ladder up for safety.
Her spirit had done as much as it could. Now it abandoned her and went to the place where the living walk with the dead.
Hhhuuu, she was cold! Her body was wet as though she had stood in the rain. Masvita came toward her with a blanket. “Hurry up,” ordered Grandmother. “They won’t wait all day!”
“I’ll carry your pack,” Masvita whispered, wrapping the blanket around Nhamo’s shoulders. They walked swiftly through the forest, Grandmother in the lead, until they came to a great, shining expanse of water. There, gathered at the edge, was a troop of twenty young women and twenty young men, and standing on a rock above them was a beautiful woman. Her arms and legs were weighted down with gold bangles.
“That’s Princess Senwa, Monomatapa’s niece,” whispered Masvita. Nhamo’s eyes grew round. King Monomatapa lived at the beginning of time, long before even Grandmother was born. The young women and men played drums and mbiras, but they didn’t seem joyful. And Princess Senwa’s face was drawn with grief. Masvita untied her pack and laid it respectfully at the foot of the rock. It was full of honeycombs.
“Why is she so sad?” Nhamo whispered.
“You’d be sad, too, if your husband had abandoned you for another wife,” Grandmother said harshly.
“But she’s so beautiful…,” began Nhamo.
“As if that mattered. Men are like baboons. If one mango tastes good, two must be better. Or three, or ten. They eat until they have to lie on the ground clutching their stomachs!”
