18 December 2005 - 10:24
The baobob tree is a symbol of black Africa, and it grows all over the place once you get out of the Sahara and Sahel parts of the continent. It is a very unique and distinct tree – not hard to spot from a distance, and not easily confused with other species. They can grow to enormous sizes, some rivaling giant sequoias in girth.
Baobobs look like they don’t belong on this planet, like trees from an enchanted forest in a fairytale, or like a short, squat version of the Ents in Lord of the Rings. I would almost be afraid to walk through a thick baobob forest at night – the stunted, twisted branches silhouetted in the moonlight look like they are ready to reach out and grab you the minute you let your guard down. Some of them can, too, protruding from the bloated, conical trunks at bizarre angles that don’t seem quite natural for a tree, sometimes even touching the ground. In the daylight, they are less threatening – they look more like something straight out of Dr. Suess’s mind, or perhaps a tree designed by a child, awkwardly put together from blocks of clay in a kindergarten class. Even so, the trees, oddly barren for most of the year, have a peculiar beauty that makes them stand out in the African landscape.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the baobob is its fruit, green and the size and shape of elongated eggplants. They dangle from the branches, turning dark brown when they ripen, long after the leaves have fallen off the tree. They look more like they were hung there like Christmas ornaments rather than grown naturally. Hanging on barren trees, they look strange, unnatural somehow. The outside of this “monkey bread,” as it is called in English and French, is furry, almost like velvet, and can give you a rash. On the inside, you’ll find white, sweet, dry fruit with the texture of an after-dinner mint and a taste almost like candy, tangled in thin red fibers and surrounding the brown bean-shaped seeds.
Baobobs have an important place in African culture. I’ve heard people say that when the world was created, that the Creator took the baobob tree out of the ground, turned it upside-down, and stuck it back in the earth to punish it for some misdeed committed against the god. Without fruit or leaves, it would be easy to imagine the tree in that situation, turned topsy-turvy for its mistake.
Hassimi, our Dogon guide in Mali, says that the baobob trees are sacred to the Dogon people, who are traditionally animists, because they believe that when someone dies, his spirit returns as a baobob tree to provide for his people. Accordingly, the trees cannot be cut down to use as firewood, even when clearing the land for farming. The people do, however, use the trees in a variety of ways, harvesting fruit and leaves to eat and make into sauces and medicines (baobob fruit is the best way to cure a stomachache, says Hassimi) and bark to make into rope. Our guide also says that after the death of a griot, the traditional singer/storytellers that relate the oral histories of the region, he is put into one of the large holes that sometimes open up in the trunks of baobobs.
In addition to being protected by tradition, many African governments, Mali included (I don’t know about Mauritania, but due to the relatively small number of baobobs in Mauritania, I wouldn’t think they have), have guarded the baobob by law also, making it illegal to cut down the trees, most of which are older than the governments that pass laws to protect them (baobobs can live for several hundred years, I’ve heard).
It’s easy to see why Africans feel a special bond to these trees, unique in shape and long-living, surviving through colonialism and even the modern disorder facing African states. The End.
