The Sleeping Baobab Tree by Paula Leyden Page B

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