A Girl Named Disaster (16 page)

S
o 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 dangerous. 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. She 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.

N
hamo 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.

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 used 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.