Review of Adaobi Tricia’s Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree | Omoh Giwa

Title:         Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

Author:      Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Publisher:   Masobe Books and Logistics, Lagos

Year:  2018         

Pages:  343

ISBN: 978-978-57281-5-6

Reviewer: Omoh Giwa

The myth of the Baobab tree seems to be a core element in African folklore and legend. It is believed to have been planted or replanted upside down either by the Supreme Being himself or the devil depending on the region. A Sudanese folktale claims the devil was jealous of its importance and so decided to plant it upside down. For this reason, it is seen as the tree of death inducing fear and mortality. However, its resilience and versatility in arid, dry climates can also be a symbol of hope and life, as it survives with minimal or no rainfall.

Nwaubani is not the only author to incorporate this into her title. Gunther Holman’s Remember the Baobab: A Story of Double Redemption centres on the Baobab in South Sudan, detailing death and massacres. Nwaubani grounds her plot in myths, tales of bravery and valour while measuring strength in humanity.

The bravery of Ya Ta, a Christian school girl, with dreams of furthering her education and being the first university graduate in her family with encouragement from her father and hope of becoming a doctor, or a knowledgeable activist like the eloquent women advocating for the girl-child on their portable radio, narrates her traumatizing abduction by the Boko Haram. Nwaubani’s Beneath the Baobab Tree narrates the abduction of young girls and women by the terrorist group. Inspired by the abduction of 276 school girls at Chibok, Nwaubani gives insight into the ordeal and the resilience of survivors of terror while raising empathy.

Although Ya Ta’s community is buzzing with news of the Boko Haram conquests and destruction, they are unprepared for the attack. There’s a feeling of disbelief and denial of the terror group as people of different religions live in harmony and unity, Muslims and Christians alike cohabiting without animosity towards each other and cannot understand this hatred as exhibited by the terrorists. In the wake of Ya Ta’s scholarship from the BornoState Education Board, her village is attacked by the Boko Haram. The village is destroyed and in the usual Boko Haram fashion,the men are massacred and the women captured.Taken into the Sambisa forest, the Boko Haram stronghold, the captured Christians are given a choice of conversion or death. At the murder of Magdalene, the Choir mistress’ daughter, the unwilling accept, are robed in hijabs (Muslim veil) and begin indoctrinating lessons on conducts and expectations of a proper Muslim. The older women are molested and raped including pregnant Aisha, Ya Ta’s married classmate who laments on the destruction of their religious tenets while the under aged girls are preserved for new recruits as ‘the promised virgins for Jihad’ Ya Ta is christened ‘Salamatu’ which means safety and she hopes for salvation or escape which doesn’t happen quick enough. She is given to Osama, a mask-wearing terrorist, who rapes her and makes her watch jihadist propaganda videos including the beheading of victims done by her youngest brother, Jacob. Ya Ta’s best friend Sarah, now Zainab is completely brainwashed and is chosen to wear the suicide vests even though she has no understanding of its ability. Ya Ta is eventually rescued but shame replaces her short-lived joy at being returned to her mother soiled.

The novel is divided into four parts: Ya Ta’s life and ambitions,the violent attack and witnessing the massacre, her marriage and survival as a captive of the dreaded terrorists and finally her rescue.

This division into parts allows a chronological presentation of incidents which builds and climaxes with her feeling of shame, loss, sorrow and disappointment especially at the loss of her scholarship. The parts are demarcated with excerpts from Browning’s poem,“The Pied Piper of Hamelin”. She makes a correlation with the missing children of Hamelin and the abducted girls of Chibok. The author does not outrightly name the protagonist as Ya Ta which is loosely translated to mean ‘My daughter’ in Hausa. Not naming the protagonist produces universality adoptable by any survivor of terror.

Nwaubaniis a social critic, in the same vein where she attacks terrorism, her debut novel, I Do Not Come To You By Chance, exposes the effects of unemployment and cyber-crime. The author reflects about feminist concerns in her portrait of women in war/terror-torn societies especially developing under-aged girls who are the focus of this narration as seen in Ya Ta. Her ambitions at education and social empowerment are truncated by the kidnap as she would be unable to afford the cost and her absence could mean a forfeit of the scholarship. However, in the same vein the author seems not to be overtly feminist in the sense that she shies away from sensitive feminist topics such as under-aged marriage, patriarchal values such as Ya Ta’s father who refuses to accept women in the communal room because of an internalized belief of the unintelligence and subjugation of women.

As a result, there’s an imbalance or inconsistency in her narrative. Ya Ta’s progressive father, capable of sending daughters to get a western education with hopes of her becoming a doctor, does not allow women in his communal room to engage in discussions or deliberations on political or social issues. She also paints an excited under aged girl, Aisha married to an older man with secret desires of education that she implores her friends to bring their school notes and has an inquisitive mind strong enough to question even their teachers.

Asides this, her portrayals of the destruction of the social, physical and mental state caused by terrorism on young girls draws the actual events close to home and invokes the thought: Where are the remaining Chibok girls?

Works Cited

 Holman, Gunther. Remember the Baobab: A Story of Double Redemption. California: Createspace. 2012. Print.

Nwaubani, Adaobi Tricia. Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree. Lagos: Masobe. 2018. Print.

—.      I Do Not Come To You By Chance. London: Orion. 2009. Print.

Omoh Giwa is a PhD student of the University of Lagos working on Genocide and Literary representation in African novels and films. Her interests are African Literature, Postcolonial literature, Women and Gender studies, Genocide and War, Peace and Conflict.