Malam Zwindila who teaches in the village school praises YaTa because she knows more than all the boys. She has written the Borno State scholarship exam and now waits anxiously for her result.
At first papa's radio reports mostly Western news such as the Academy Awards nominations. Boko Haram attacks are secondary news. But soon the increasing number of attacks dominate the news. A car bomb kills at least seventeen people in Maiduguri where YaTa hopes to attend school.
One day after church, Pastor Moses's son, Success who is studying law at university, spends some time talking to YaTa, telling her about his travels and life at university. When he learns she has no books to read, Success promises to bring home books like Nancy Drew for her to read. At church Pastor Moses prays for those who are being killed by Boko Haram which wants the country to be governed by Islamic laws. Although these attacks have been going on for years they are now increasing in intensity. He also announces that his son will be getting married and the entire congregation is invited to the wedding in Jalingo. YaTa is upset because she has a crush on Success. But she eventually learns that it is Pastor Moses's oldest son, Prosper who is to be married.
As the days go by, people in the village become increasingly preoccupied with Boko Haram. Papa's radio announces that the terrorist group has attacked Izghe, a village only 190 km from YaTa's village. They learn that Boko Haram kill the men and make the women and girls "disappear". They attack public spaces by loading goats, cows and donkeys with explosives which are then placed in markets and streets. They are known to be hiding in the Sambisa forest. But there are many myths too. Such as that "A child born to any of them would automatically share its father's ideas and beliefs. It would grow up to kill, steal, and destroy."
Malam Zwindila attempts to ridicule Boko Haram's belief that if will turn Nigeria into an Islamic state. But YaTa is frightened. "What if the legends surround Boko Haram are true. " she wonders. Pastor Moses decides that the Christian community will undertake a month of prayer and fasting, hoping to protect them from the ravages of Boko Haram. Fear of the terrorist group begins to affect their daily life: when YaTa and Sarah are visiting Aisha to watch a movie, Aisha's husband Malam Isa asks them to return home before dark for their own safety.
YaTa learns from her principal, that she has been selected for the Borno State government scholarship program. The government will pay for anything she wishes to study up to a master's degree. This means that next term YaTa will be in a special boarding school, away from her best friend Sarah, her little brother Jacob who loves to chases lizards, helping Mama cook and clean. She cannot wait to share her news with Success who will be arriving soon.
In the meantime, YaTa is left in charge of the house while Mama is away for two days, traveling to Jalingo for Prosper's wedding. While she is making tuwo and vegetable stew into the living room, YaTa, and her family her what seems to be thunder. But when they rush outside after hearing men on motorbikes yelling "Allah ya'kawo ruwa!" and "Allahu akbar!" and firing guns. When YaTa's father grabs his machete, he is shot dead. After her father and brothers along with all the men and boys of the village are shot dead, YaTa and the other girls and women are forced into trucks. The dreaded Boko Haram has arrived in their village. YaTa now must struggle to survive, her life and her dreams shattered.
Discussion
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani has written a novel based on the kidnapping of 276 female students from the Government Secondary School in Chibok, in Borno state in Nigeria, on April 14, 2014 by the militant, terrorist group Boko Haram. Although fifty-seven girls managed to escape, many were kept for years, married off to Islamic fighters in the group. Boko Haram is a terrorist group raging jihad in northern Nigeria with the intent to install Islam and sharia law in Nigeria. They believe that western education corrupts Muslims, turning them away from the faith and that girls as young as nine should be married off. They specifically target Christians, killing the men and boys and enslaving the women, forcing them to convert to Islam, although Muslims too have been targeted. The kidnappings of young women in Nigeria continue to this date.
In an Afterword written by Viviana Mazza, she states that she and Nwaubani "decided to document this tragedy in a way that nobody else had done: from the point of view of the girls and their families." Both Nwaubani and Mazza wanted to write a book about what was happening, so the two women connected and began collaborating. They arranged to meet some of the Chibok families in Aduja where many have fled to safety. While Adoabi Nwaubani was able to travel to Chibok to talk to people in the town, Viviana Mazza, a white woman had to forgo the trip so as not to endanger the group.
"We wanted these girls to be seen not just as numbers but as the curious, ambitious, and lovely daughters whom their families wanted to see again.
We wanted their parents' anguish to be understood. Their daughters were taken alive, but not knowing what had happened to them was, in some ways, worse than if they had died. Their parents couldn't mourn. They lived in limbo."
Nwaubani has definitely accomplished all this and much more with Buried Beneath The Baobab Tree. The novel's narrator is unnamed, although in this post I have called her by the affectionate term "YaTa" that her father and mother use. YaTa represents every girl whose life has been impacted in some way by Boko Harum, those kidnapped and those who escaped such a fate.
The novel begins with the everyday aspects of life in a small Nigerian village, comprised of both Christians and Muslims who live peacefully, side-by-side. Life for the girls and women in YaTa's village is quite simple in some ways and yet complicated in others. YaTa has chores to do, helps her mother look after her brothers, cooks, cleans and also attends school. Like most young people throughout the world, YaTa has dreams too. Although she hopes someday to marry, her thoughts are far from marriage. Instead, she states, "I want to attend the special boarding school for girls in Maiduguri. I want to go to university and get a degree. I want to be a teacher and impart everything I know to other children like Jacob. I want to travel to the places I hear about from Malam Zwindila and from Papa's radio, countries in faraway corners of the world."
But there is pressure to marry young, meaning few women are well educated. YaTa's Muslim friend Aisha is already married and has withdrawn from school. A significant factor affecting girls' attendance at school is the lack of feminine hygiene products, something most Western women take for granted. YaTa misses days of school every month because of her period. She uses a piece of cloth carefully folded, but even then there are problems. Clothes are stained due to leakage and there is no toilet she can use at school.
Soon YaTa's community is steeped in fear because of the Boko Haram attacks. Then YaTa along with her friends Sarah and Aisha are kidnapped, their families murdered, and they make the difficult choice to do whatever they need to, to survive. They are forced to learn verses from the Quran, to "marry" Boko Haram militants and are indoctrinated with their version of Islam. But YaTa knows this is not true Islam because of the Muslim friends she has grown up with. It is this interpretation of Islam that Nwaubani is careful to repeatedly point out is radical.
Nwaubani captures the fear and intense internal conflict the girls must have felt as they struggled to survive with Boko Haram. Although YaTa hates living with Boko Haram, hates her husband who rapes her, she knows what each day will bring. But to try to escape means returning to a world she no longer knows. "But I have no idea what might be waiting for me outside the Sambisa. I have no clue how to navigate the new world out there.
A world with no Papa and no brothers. And maybe with no Mama....Maybe inside the Sambisa forest is better. Maybe the life I know is better than the one I do not know. Maybe my dreams of a different life are just a waste of time."
YaTa must also cope with the tragic deaths of her family, and her friends; Aisha dies in childbirth from lack of care and her friend Sarah is brainwashed into becoming a suicide bomber.
The baobab tree in this novel mirrors the devastation that YaTa and her community experience. The baobab tree is rightly called "the Tree of Life" in Africa. It is a symbol of life and health. A deciduous tree, it is able to absorb and store water in its trunk during the rainy season. It produces a fruit rich in nutrients including vitamin C, during the dry season, hence the description. Its leaves are edible and its bark is used to make cloth, rope, baskets and mats. The tree has an unusual appearance, looking like an upside-down tree with its roots sticking up in the air. These trees can live for thousands of years and grow quite large.
In her novel, Nwaubani makes reference to one of the many folktales surrounding the baobab tree. YaTa remembers her father's tale about the tree: " ' A long, long time ago,' he said, 'one of the gods up in the sky threw down a baobab tree from his garden. It landed upside down on Earth but still continued to grow.' " YaTa mentions how her family uses the tree for most everything, from fruit gourds to scare away lizards and snakes, to Mama making miyan kuka soup for Papa, her older brother Abraham using the powder from the fruit on his pimples. It is an important place in the social life of the village too.
"Men and boys gather under the upside-down branches of the baobab tree in front of our villaage health care center, exchanging news or deciding who to vote for in the next election.
Women and girls gather under the baobab tree near the communal well, exchanging gossip or deciding what styles of clothes to sew next."
The tree is even important for the domesticated animals and wildlife.
Later on YaTa even likens Success, the boy she finds attractive, to the remarkable baobab tree. "Like a baobab tree among the trees of the forest, so is he among all the young men in the world. I delight to sit in his shade, and his alone, and his fruit is sweet to my taste."
But in the short chapter titled, Tree of Death, the baobab tree has been turned into a tree of death. YaTa and Sarah who has been renamed Zainab, are living in the Sambisa forest, prisoners of Boko Haram and starving. While out searching for vegetables, the stumble across a baobab tree. But their initial delight turns to horror when, as they approach the tree the stench is unbearable. Buried in a hole beneath the baobab tree are the bodies of Magdalene who refused to convert to Islam and others.
Buried Beneath The Baobab Tree ends on a somewhat hopeful note with YaTa being rescued, and reunited with Pastor Moses. The reader doesn't know how YaTa's reunion with her mother went, or what her future holds or what difficulties she faced reintegrating into her life once more, a task certain to have been difficult because she is pregnant. But her story and that of many other girls has been told, and that's what is important.
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani has written an deeply moving novel that brings to the forefront the plight of these girls and the desperate situation in Nigeria. It is important that the missing girls of Chibok and other villages are not forgotten.
Book Details:
Buried Beneath The Baobab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
New York: Katherine Tegen Books 2018
330 pp.
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