The Sleeping Baobab Tree by Paula Leyden Page A

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