The Sleeping Baobab Tree

by Paula Leyden

  “But I think it’ll be OK. She’ll want to be back for church on Sunday, so she won’t stay longer.”

  “We only told Mum and Dad we were coming for one sleepover. We definitely can’t stay longer!” I exclaimed. “What if they come over here looking for us?”

  Fred and Madillo stared at me. “Stop panicking, Bul-Boo,” Madillo said. “Fred’s just imagining the worst, aren’t you, Fred.”

  He nodded.

  He was right to be imagining the worst with Nokokulu in charge.

  “I’m not panicking,” I said calmly. “I just want to be sure. I don’t want Mum and Dad to be worried, because they’ve enough to be thinking about, that’s all. And we have too. We need to be back here to carry on with the investigation.”

  “We will be,” Fred said, ignoring my reference to the disappearing patients. “Forget what I said about the tent.”

  As if.

  I waited until they were both asleep then wrote an entry in my notebook:

  APPROACHES TO SOLVING A PROBLEM:

  FRED

  Just forget the problem ever existed

  MADILLO

  Pretend the problem is not as big as it seems

  ME

  Accept the inevitable and go to sleep

  FRED

  Nokokulu Versus the World

  It was quiet in the house when we got up, as Mum and Dad sleep in on Saturdays. We were able to sneak out to the car without anyone seeing us. Luckily it was parked in the driveway, so our house was between the car and Nokokulu’s house. There was no way she could see us.

  I felt sorry for the twins having to get into the boot. It didn’t look particularly comfortable. They had to climb in behind the tent as well as a huge suitcase Nokokulu had put in. When I lifted it out of the way it felt empty. I don’t know what she was thinking bringing an empty suitcase.

  The good thing about it was that it would hide them from view if anyone opened the boot. They are quite small, the twins, and the back part of the yellow car is very large, so they fitted in OK. Bul-Boo says they’re only small because they had to share the space in their mum’s womb, which I suppose makes sense. Although I did tell them about a pair of really tall twins in Guinness World Records who grew to seven and a half feet tall. Bul-Boo just said, “I pity their mother,” and Madillo shrugged and added, “Well, they’re American.” As if that somehow explained everything.

  After I shut the boot I crept back into the house and back to bed so that Nokokulu wouldn’t get suspicious.

  At exactly eight o’clock she came and banged on my door. “We’re late, Chiti. Get out of bed now, you lazy boy, and we’ll go.” She must have woken everyone up with her shouting but none of them came to see us off.

  When I got downstairs Nokokulu handed me a sandwich. “We’ll eat in the car, otherwise the darkness will come and we won’t be able to find our way.”

  If the darkness had come then, it would have been the shortest day in the recorded history of Zambia: the sun had only been up for a couple of hours. But I didn’t tell her that. She already knew it, she was just looking for something impatient to say to me.

  As we walked towards the car my heart started thumping really loudly. If she found the twins now we’d all be dead meat. She turned round and looked at me, as if she could hear my terror. But she said nothing.

  We both got in, and once the doors were shut I gave a big sigh of relief.

  Too big as it turned out.

  “You have something you want to say, Chiti? Where’s your map?” Nokokulu said.

  The map. That I had carefully packed in the bag that was now in the boot. I had to think quickly.

  “Sorry, Nokokulu, I’ll jump out and get it. You relax,” I said, opening my door.

  “Me, relax? You think I’m an old woman who needs to relax?” she said, opening her door too.

  I jumped out of the car and ran round to the boot. As I opened it a hand reached out and gave me the map. Along with it I heard a Madillo giggle, which was not very helpful. I slammed the boot shut and ran back to my seat before Nokokulu had got properly out of the car. Luckily she is actually an old woman and a little bit stiff.

  “You can read this map?” Nokokulu said as we headed out of the driveway.

  “Yes. Sister taught us in school,” I said.

  Sister was supposed to teach us about maps when she taught us Geography. But she said that road maps were stupid and how were you supposed to know where you were going if there were no obvious things like trees or gates or buildings on them – things that would help you to know you were heading in the right direction. Bul-Boo told her there was north, south, west and east to do that, but Sister ignored her.

  “You think that makes me feel better,” Nokokulu said, “hearing that that mad nun taught you about maps?”

  I think Nokokulu and Sister would get on really well, because they’re both a little bit mad, but I decided not to say that.

  “I know how to get to Kariba, anyway, and it’s near there,” I told her.

  “The sun is near the moon but that doesn’t help much, does it, boy? I know where we’re going but I want you to direct me. It’s part of your training.”

  Training for what?

  The first part of the journey was torture. Nokokulu drove so slowly. She said that the car took time to warm up its engine and if we rushed it might give up on us. Imagine if all cars needed that long to warm up!

  It took us almost an hour just to get to Chilanga. That means we were driving at twenty kilometres an hour along the Great North Road, and behind us was a long line of truck drivers hooting and flashing. If I’d been driving I would have felt pretty embarrassed, but Nokokulu didn’t.

  “Ha! They can hoot and flash their silly lights, I don’t care. What’s the big hurry? It’s Saturday morning – they should all still be in bed. What’d you say, boy?” she asked, turning to look at me.

  If I hadn’t answered she might have carried on asking and looking at me and forgetting to watch the road, so I said, “You’re right, Nokokulu, they should all have stayed in bed.”

  Nokokulu just ignored my answer and stuck her arm out of the car window to shake her fist at a truck driver who had dared to pass her. I sometimes think she sees her life as a replay of David and Goliath – Nokokulu versus the world.

  Anyway, once we got to Chilanga and were passing Munda Wanga gardens she decided that right then would be a good time to go in, despite the fact that the gates were not only closed but padlocked. Even if she does have bad eyesight she must have seen that. The gates are not invisible – they are painted red and yellow.

  Before I could shout out, we hit the gates. The sound was very loud. At the same moment I heard a squeal from the back. It must have been Madillo because I’ve never heard Bul-Boo make a noise like that.

  “Stupid, stupid Munda Wanga!” Nokokulu shouted. “Why do you have a sign that says ‘Visitors Welcome’, then chase the visitors away? What’s the point of closed gates? And what was that funny noise? Like a small pig? Did we hit an animal?”

  “I didn’t see anything,” I said quickly.

  “Neither did I, silly boy. I said I heard something. Listen,” she said, tilting her head to one side and totally ignoring the fact that we had just crashed into the park gates.

  I just shook my head. “I can’t hear anything.”

  “Deaf like your father, that’s all.”

  With that she reversed and drove back out onto the road leaving behind us a pair of badly dented gates. I was worried about Bul-Boo and Madillo – what if something had happened to them? Maybe they’d been impaled on a tent peg and were lying there slowly bleeding to death.

  I had to do something.

  “Nokokulu, I need to pee. Now,” I said, trying to sound desperate. Which wasn’t hard, as I already had visions of them lying in a pool of blood, my premonition of doom finally come true.

  “Use a bottle. There are empty ones behind the seat.”

  She’s not only
wicked; she’s gross.

  “I can’t. I have to stop,” I said. “Pull over. Please.”

  She turned to look at me.

  “I’ll stop, but only because I want to stretch my legs. And only for three minutes,” she added.

  With that she pulled over into the dirt at the side of the road and skidded to a halt.

  We both got out at the same time and she walked off into the bush before I could say anything. I ran round to the boot and opened it. “You all right?” I whispered.

  “Yes, we’re fine. Shut the door,” Bul-Boo whispered back.

  I slammed it shut as Nokokulu reappeared.

  “What are you doing, Chiti?” she said. “Peeing in the boot?”

  I was sure that I heard giggles coming from the back.

  “Just checking it was closed properly,” I said.

  “Now,” she said as she climbed back in, “where are we going? I want instructions from my map reader for our next crash.” Then she started laughing and banging the steering wheel as if she’d just won the prize for Best Joke in the World. On top of everything else she finds herself really funny. “You want to make me drive into the Kafue River, perhaps, Chiti? Then we can both be eaten by crocodiles. Or we could drive into an acacia tree and forget that behind it we might find an elephant trying to reach the pods for a feast? Ha!”

  “Chirundu,” I said, trying hard to ignore how irritated I was feeling. “We need to go to Chirundu.”

  “Ha! Chirundu. Stone trees,” she said. “Stone people.”

  I knew there was a petrified forest near Chirundu, but I have never heard of petrified people. And I didn’t really care. All I could think about was what had happened at Munda Wanga. What if there were cameras there and they had photographed our number plate? Perhaps the crocodiles would escape through the gap in the dented gates and make their way to town looking for human prey. If they attacked and killed anyone that would make us Accessories to Murder and the rest of our days would be spent in prison.

  Nokokulu, probably the only real murderer among us, wouldn’t get sent there because they’d take one look at her and think she was on her last legs (little do they know). Then the twins would get off because they’re female and Dad says females never go to prison. So it’d be me. By myself. Rotting away in a cell, chained to the wall, marking off the days one by one. By the time they released me Bul-Boo would probably be married to someone else and she wouldn’t even look at me.

  Mind you, once Nokokulu discovers the twins in the back of the car, prison might seem like quite a nice place.

  BULL - BOO

  The Journey of a Stubborn Old Woman

  That was the longest journey of my whole life. Normally a trip to Kariba with Mum and Dad takes about two hours. We were squashed into the boot for more than five. The crash didn’t help either, although at least it wasn’t something crashing into the back of us.

  From what I could hear, Nokokulu ignored any instructions Fred gave her, despite the fact that he was the Official Map Reader. It would almost have been better if he’d said nothing, or if he’d said the opposite of the direction she needed to take. Each time he said “Turn right here” she would turn left. If he said “Just carry straight on” she would make a turn, left or right, depending on what she felt like.

  I don’t know how many times I heard him say, “We have only one turn to take, Nokokulu – only one, to Siavonga.” But she didn’t listen, and told him he must learn to read maps properly.

  I drew this map in my black notebook while we were driving. It kept me busy at least.

  That’s why it took five hours. I called it: The Journey of a Stubborn Old Woman.

  The journey also took a long time because Nokokulu stops for food so often. Fred had put the food bag inside the car, not in the boot, so as well as stopping to eat they snacked along the way. It wasn’t very nice hearing eating noises when we couldn’t have anything. Especially as we knew there’d be chocolate involved. Nokokulu says chocolate is good for your brain, so they always have loads of it at their house. I wish she’d tell Mum that.

  When they made their first food stop it was only about ten o’clock and the car was already boiling hot. Madillo hates it when I say it’s boiling hot, because she always imagines us in a giant puga-puga filled with boiling water, trying to climb out of the sides. I don’t mean it literally, but Madillo has difficulty understanding the difference between meaning something literally and just using words to describe something.

  It’s Sister’s fault really.

  One day in class, when Sister was pretending to be a Science teacher, she said, “If you woke up one day and decided that it would be a good day for boiling frogs, how would you make sure they didn’t jump out of your pot?”

  We all sat and stared at her. I was about to say that I wouldn’t want to boil frogs but that if I did I would put a lid on the pot. However, I didn’t get the chance, because as usual she didn’t actually want an answer from us.

  “I’ll tell you,” she said. “You put the frog in cold water and then you slowly heat it. The frog starts to enjoy it and doesn’t realize that it’s getting hotter and hotter, so he doesn’t jump out. And, lo and behold, one boiled frog.”

  When I looked this up later to check if Sister was right (she wasn’t), I also came across the fact that people have done experiments on frogs to prove the existence of a soul. As if a soul can be found. Even Sister Leonisa says the soul is an idea not a thing, and she’s a nun. I don’t mind if people believe in it, that’s their business, but don’t go boiling frogs and experimenting on them to find it. That’s just cruel.

  Madillo spent all of the journey drawing little Manga characters. She’s very good at it, but they didn’t look as good as they usually do because she was drawing in the dark and it wasn’t a smooth ride. Some sections of the road are full of potholes and that didn’t help.

  Another downside to the journey taking so long was that I had time to think. That’s not always a good thing. Even though I had been trying hard not to think about Mum’s patients who had died, I couldn’t help myself. Their names were stuck in my head. Especially Sonkwe’s, as we had seen that photograph of him. My so-called investigation seemed to have come to a standstill. I couldn’t even call it an investigation as I was spending all my time trying not to think about it and putting pretend suspects on a list, which meant that the other eight people were still in danger while I was stuck in the back of an old yellow car. And I couldn’t really call my one and only suspect a real suspect as that would mean I thought Nokokulu was a serial killer, which I definitely didn’t.

  Luckily I had my Book of Rocks with me and a small clip-on light. That helped me pass some of the time and stop thinking. Fred and Madillo have never been especially interested in rocks – apart from batholiths, and that’s only because Madillo says they sound like someone with a lisp trying to say “basilisks”. She loves the idea that a basilisk can kill someone just by glancing in their general direction. She finds that more impressive than the fact that some of the granite rocks around Kafue are 3,000 million years old – in other words, three billion years old. How cool is that? Much cooler than a basilisk because it’s actually true, not just made up.

  After many more detours and arguments between Fred and Nokokulu we stopped again. Apparently the signpost for Ng’ombe Ilede was finally in view.

  As she turned off the engine I heard Nokokulu announce, “We still have time before the sun sets. It is only when the sun sets that he comes out of hiding. We can rest now.”

  “What do you mean, Nokokulu?” asked Fred, a mixture of terror and helplessness in his voice. “We all have to be back by evening. That’s why we left early – you said that. And who’s ‘he’?”

  “Never mind who ‘he’ is. Who is ‘we all’?” said Nokokulu.

  “I mean me. I have to be back – I’ve got soccer practice.”

  “You don’t play soccer any more,” she said.

  That is true; I really, reall
y don’t know how Fred got to be such a poor liar.

  “And we left early because that is when I decided to leave. Anything could have happened on the road. We could have sunk into one of the potholes and never come out again. One of the tyres could have exploded, and then you’d have had to walk many miles to a garage to get a new one. No more questions. We’re here. We’ll rest.

  “If I start searching after the sun sleeps,” she continued, almost talking to herself, “I will be done by the time he walks again. I can feel he is out there, the Man-Beast. But we are here now. His end is coming.”

  Fred was silent. Madillo gave a little squeak. For once in my life I felt like giving a very big squeak. None of this tied in with what I was investigating. At least I didn’t think so. But something was definitely going to happen. She had a plan and it involved some kind of beast that sounded completely terrifying.

  Madillo grabbed my leg. I decided I would try Dad’s trick of pretending everything was all right.

  “The poor old lady,” I whispered to her. “I think she has finally lost her marbles. Let’s just play along and try to get home as soon as possible.”

  Madillo didn’t answer.

  “All right,” Nokokulu said, “I’m going to sleep now. Chiti, you be quiet.”

  With that there was a clatter as she let her seat go back.

  I held my breath and waited. Sure enough, within about three minutes the rumbling started. The loudest snores I had ever heard, so loud they shook the car.

  Then I heard Fred carefully opening his door and coming round to the back of the car. He clicked open the boot and peered in at us mournfully, almost as if he expected us to be dead.

  He pulled the large suitcase away, trying hard to be quiet, and we rolled forward, unwrapping our legs as best we could. We crouched down behind the car and I pulled him down next to us.

  “How are we going to do this?” I whispered.

  He shrugged his shoulders. We hadn’t thought this far.

  Madillo looked at me. “Come on, Bul-Boo,” she said. “Think of something.”