A Girl Named Disaster: Chapters 17–24

Here, Nhamo was completely stymied.

As far as Nhamo knew, it contained no animals larger than mice, and the shore was too steep for hippos to invade. That was why food still abounded.

She had ample food for a journey, and her supplies were limited only by the size of the boat.

It was used to keep away leopards and—and—she almost had it—to keep witches from plundering graves!

If she spent the night within reach of that open door, she would be nothing but a pile of bones and gristle by morning.

Trees were silhouetted beyond the rocks, and she could see the cleft where she had hidden from the witch.

As she watched, she noticed a mouse pilfering a basket of peanuts.

It snapped up the mouse, which uttered a forlorn squeak before being hurried off to the crevice in the rocks.

She could have built her own hut to shelter from the rain and devised fishing lines to satisfy her need for meat.

The island slowly dwindled until it disappeared in a glimmer of light.

Nhamo hurried to placate the irritated fisherman.

She smiled at the shining water and tantalizing strip of land.

I am Nhamo, a mighty woman
For whom crossing a measly river was not enough!

As she unpacked the boat, she saw a furtive movement in the bushes.

The creature uttered four or five staccato cries and retreated.

She built a large half-circle of fire in front of a rocky bluff.

Some of the descendants were fine people, but some inevitably turned out to be lazy parasites.

Nhamo stopped in consternation. Tazviona’s totem was the baboon. If Tazviona ate a piece of baboon meat, she would turn into the animal, and because she had a twisted foot—

She lay back down and presently drifted off into the first of many fitful periods of sleep.

He smelled the ground where she had prepared food, and devoured the pumpkin skins ravenously.

She found a game trail that meandered until it met a wide grassland divided by a stream.

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.

On termite mounds Nhamo discovered jabvane bushes with purplish black fruit, and in dense thickets near the water grew brambles with dark, sweet berries.

“No! I will build a boat and sail away!” Nhamo cried stoutly.

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.

His twisted foot stuck up reproachfully.

As precarious as her food supply was, she wasn’t even slightly tempted to cook this one.

After a while the baboon sighed deeply and relaxed again into the posture of impending death.

“You’re only a beast,” she said defiantly.

“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 flip-flops and chittered with excitement.

The adults walked staidly among them, as elders should, and now and then pulled a tail to maintain order.

Even the sullen males were not that different from Uncle Kufa and his friends at the dare.

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.

Most nights, though, the animals preferred to stay on the cliff, and then she slept easily, soothed by their incessant murmuring.

Vervet monkeys cavorted as much as their larger cousins, and the babies of both species occasionally joined in play.

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 had to sit on the edge of the gathering and morosely groom himself.