Baobabs

I still haven’t found my picture CDs but the good news is that they are backed up on the team computer in Tanzania and I can get them when the rest of the team comes back. That will be sometime in the next couple weeks. In the meantime I thought I would tell you about Baobab trees.

I first heard about Baobab trees when I read The Little Prince. In fact, the Baobab trees are about the only thing I remember from that story. Mainly because I was reading it in Spanish and my comprehension skills at the time in that language were…non-existent. I remember that the little prince talks about weeding out Baobab trees on his planet and I assumed they were something he made up, because they were so fantastical. They were giant trees that took up massive amounts of space and overtook everything in their path. (Or something along those lines. Like I said, I was reading in a language I didn’t understand.)

So I was surprised to learn that Baobabs are real trees and they are massive. So massive in fact that people have hollowed out the trunks and put things inside like bars or bathrooms. They don’t get particularly tall (about 100 ft.) but the trunks can obviously be very big around (35 ft in diameter). They also don’t really overtake other things because they tend to grow where nothing else will, often way out in the desert. They have a special tap root that digs down really deep to get to water that other plants can’t reach. Because of this they can survive long periods of drought, which are frequent in their native lands of Africa and Australia.

They are pretty distinctive and easy to pick out of any landscape. Most of the year they don’t have leaves and their branches are short and stubby and look like they should be part of the root system. In fact there are several African folktales that reference this. One says that God gave a specific tree to every animal and whichever animal got the Baobab was so disappointed with it that he tore it out of the ground and planted it upside down. And that is how it grows to this day.

Baobabs are actually pretty useful trees as well. They can be tapped for water in dry years with little harm done to the tree. (There are actually baobabs that have survived half their trunks being cut away by elephants digging at them. It makes them look funny but they just keep growing. ) Their bark can be made into string and woven into fabric. They offer a good degree of shelter. And their seeds are encased in pith that is high in nutrients like vitamins B and C. They actually encourage kids to eat it by coating it in red sugar and making it into a candy. (It’s not very good, but that may be because when I ate it nobody told me you are supposed to spit the seed out and just eat the pith : )

When I learned that Baobabs are real I put them in my journal on my “List of Possibilities.” It’s a list I keep of things I want to do or see or experience sometime. (Not to be confused with a bucket list, which to me is a little too much like a checklist. I don’t expect that I will see or do or experience everything on my List of Possibilities before I die, but that isn’t the point. It’s about dreaming and hope and even if I never see phosphorescence on the ocean at night or a green flash sunset, at least the possibility will have existed for me.) Anyway, it was really exciting when I came across my List while in Africa and was able to make a note that I did see baobabs! Lots of them. And they are as weird and gnarly as I imagined.

So the Little Prince and I differ on our opinions of Baobabs. He went about plucking them up like they were weeds. Me? I brought some seeds home and am going to plant one. I don’t know if it will work but “climb a Baobab” is now on my List of Possibilities and maybe, with a little luck, I will get to.