A Girl Named Disaster Read online

  A Girl named Disaster

  Nancy Farmer

  ORCHARD BOOKS / NEW YORK

  AN IMPRINT OF SCHOLASTIC INC.

  To Harold

  Light of my life

  and spirit guide

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  Cast of Characters

  Maps

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Glossary

  The History and Peoples of Zimbabwe and Mozambique

  The Belief System of the Shona

  Bibliography

  Literature Circle Questions

  Other Orchard Classics

  Copyright

  PREFACE

  Many years ago I took a boat to Africa. I had read a book about Jane Goodall and how she studied chimpanzees. As far as I could tell, all it took was a tent, a sleeping bag, and a good supply of bananas. I cheerfully overlooked my lack of education and money. Friends told me that I was an idiot and would get eaten by lions, but I replied that Africans (most of them) do not get eaten by lions. They knew how to survive. I would simply ask them for advice.

  And so, armed with ignorance and $500, I landed on the continent. I was about a thousand miles from the nearest chimpanzee, but I reasoned that Africa was full of interesting creatures. I would simply find something else. Thus began a seventeen-year adventure.

  To tell all that happened would take a book ten times longer than the one you are about to read. Some of it appears in A Girl Named Disaster. Nhamo’s island is real, and so is the baboon troop. I have sat still long enough to let a baby baboon groom me, but I don’t recommend it. Those babies are strong enough to pull out all your hair. I did hide from a leopard and steal part of a leopard kill when I was low on food. I have been over every mile of Nhamo’s journey, from the village devastated by cholera to the tsetse fly camp in Zimbabwe.

  I never did become a superstar scientist. Let’s face it, I don’t have what it takes. Real scientists work like demons. If there’s a party in the next village, they don’t go. If someone suggests a moonlight cruise in a canoe, they shake their heads and say, “No, thank you. I have to work.”

  Alas, I discovered that parties and cruises were exactly what I wanted. And so, good-bye chimpanzees. Good-bye fame. But I don’t think my life has been wasted. After all, life itself is an ever changing, ever inspiring wonder. Perhaps all along I was meant to be a writer, although I came to it late. No other line of work is as enjoyable.

  I was unsuccessful for years. Most writers are. But it didn’t matter, because I was reliving those moments when the light was exactly right, and the birds were singing their best, and the people were at their finest. That’s what writing is for. Moment slip past and are gone almost before you can appreciate them. But you can put them in a book in order to experience them again and again.

  That’s what is behind A Girl Named Disaster. Nhamo sets out on her journey whenever you open the book. The lake shimmers with possibility. The door to the spirit world is always ajar, over there, in the bright haze of distance.

  I hope you enjoy her adventure as much as I did.

  Nancy Farmer

  September 2002

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  THE VILLAGE

  NHAMO: The girl named “disaster.”

  AUNT CHIPO: Nhamo’s aunt and Uncle Kufa’s wife.

  AUNT SHUVAI: Nhamo’s aunt.

  MASVITA: Aunt Chipo’s eldest daughter.

  RUVA: Aunt Chipo’s second daughter.

  UNCLE KUFA: Aunt Chipo’s husband.

  GRANDMOTHER (AMBUYA): Nhamo’s grandmother; mother of Chipo, Shuvai, and Runako.

  RUNAKO: Nhamo’s mother, who was killed by a leopard.

  TAKAWIRA: Grandmother’s brother. A very old man.

  VATETE: Uncle Kufa’s sister, who lives in a village five miles away.

  CROCODILE GUTS: A fisherman.

  ANNA: Crocodile Guts’s wife.

  TAZVIONA: Village girl, born with a twisted foot.

  THE TRADING POST

  THE PORTUGUESE TRADER (JOAO): Owns the trading post.

  ROSA: The trader’s Shona wife.

  THE MUVUKI: The witch finder.

  GORÉ MTOKO: Murdered by Nhamo’s father.

  ZORORO MTOKO: Goré Mtoko’s brother.

  THE JOURNEY

  THE NJUZU: Water spirits.

  LONG TEATS: A witch.

  RUMPY: A baboon with a twisted foot and half a tail.

  FAT CHEEKS: The baboon chief.

  DONKEYBERRY: An old female baboon.

  TAG: Donkeyberry’s baby.

  OPPAH: Woman in a village near the Zimbabwe border.

  EFIFI

  DR. HENDRIK VAN HEERDEN: Afrikaner scientist.

  DR. EVERJOICE MASUKU: Matabele scientist.

  SISTER GLADYS: The nurse at Efifi Hospital.

  BABA JOSEPH: Vapostori Christian in charge of experimental animals.

  MTOROSHANGA

  PROUD JONGWE: Nhamo’s father, who has deserted her.

  INDUSTRY JONGWE: Nhamo’s uncle.

  EDINA JONGWE: Industry’s wife.

  MURENGA JONGWE: Nhamo’s grandfather; also called Jongwe Senior.

  CLEVER: Son of Industry by his junior wife.

  THE NGANGA: Nhamo’s great-grandfather, head of the Jongwe clan.

  GARIKAYI: The nganga’s assistant.

  1

  Crouched on a branch of a mukuyu tree, a girl tore open a speckled fruit. She grimaced as ants scurried over her fingers. So many! And the inside was full of worms, too.

  Even Nhamo, hungry as she was, couldn’t eat it. She dropped it to the ground and searched for another cluster of figs.

  “Nhamo! Nhamo!” came a voice not far away. The girl rested her head against the trunk of the tree. If she was quiet, no one would find her. The thick, green leaves formed a bowl around her.

  “Nhamo! You lazy girl! It’s your turn to pound the mealies,” called the voice. Footsteps trudged along the path below.

  It’s always my turn, thought Nhamo. She watched Aunt Chipo disappear behind some bushes. She much preferred to sit in the shade and gather figs. Almost without thinking, she observed the dusty path below: Aunt Chipo’s footprints were short and wide, with the little toe tucked under. Nhamo could recognize the footprints of everyone in the village.

  Nhamo didn’t know why she had learned this. It was simply a way to calm her spirit. Her body worked all day planting, weeding, baby-sitting, washing—oh, so many chores!—but her spirit had nothing to do. It became restless, and so she gave it work, too.

  It learned how the Matabel
e ants carried their young at the center of a line while the soldiers ran along the outside. It learned that when Uncle Kufa pursed his lips as he was eating, he was angry at Aunt Chipo. It learned that the wind smelled one way when it blew from the stream and another when it came from the forest.

  Nhamo’s spirit had to be kept very busy to keep her from losing her temper.

  The other girls in the village never felt restless. Nhamo was like a pot of boiling water. “I want…I want…,” she whispered to herself, but she didn’t know what she wanted and so she had no idea how to find it.

  “Nhamo!” bellowed Aunt Chipo from directly under the mukuyu tree. “Selfish, disobedient child! I know you’re up there. I can see fresh fig skins on the ground!”

  Then she had to come down. Aunt Chipo switched her across the legs with a stick before dragging her back to the village.

  Nhamo went to the hozi, the communal storehouse, to fetch mealies. The hozi was up on poles, and in the shade beneath was Masvita, Aunt Chipo’s oldest daughter. She was making a pot from wet clay. Nhamo squatted beside her.

  “That’s beautiful,” she commented.

  Masvita grinned. “The last one fell apart when it was baked. I’ve been working on this one all day.”

  “It’s so nice! I’m sure it will be all right.” Nhamo stuck her finger into the reserve clay and tasted it. “Mmm! Termite nest!”

  “It’s good, isn’t it?” Masvita licked some of the clay off her fingers.

  “Nhamo!” shouted Aunt Chipo from her doorway.

  Nhamo climbed into the hozi and selected a basket of mealie grains. She hauled it back to the kitchen hut and poured the grains into a mortar made from a tree trunk. Stamp, stamp, stamp! She pounded the mealies with a long pole until the tough outer husks came loose. It was extremely hard work. The sweat ran down into her eyes. She had to stop and retie her dress-cloth from time to time.

  She rested her skinny arms whenever she dared and watched Masvita in the cool shade of the hozi. Her cousin wasn’t exactly idle, but she was never given the really difficult tasks. If a heavy pot of boiling porridge had to be lifted from the fire, Nhamo was told to do it.

  Once, when she was smaller, she had dropped a pot. The scalding porridge spilled over her feet. She screamed. The other villagers ran to help her. They blew on her skin, but in spite of their care Nhamo’s feet had blistered and scarred. “Such a shame!” cried Grandmother. Aunt Chipo only remarked, “Yes, but think if it had happened to Masvita!”

  Stamp, stamp, stamp! Nhamo watched her cousin in the shade of the hozi. She was beautiful, no question about it. Nhamo had seen her own face reflected in a pool. She thought she didn’t look too bad. Masvita was sweet-tempered, though, and Nhamo had to admit her own manners left a lot to be desired.

  But who wouldn’t be sweet-tempered if she could sit in the shade all day?

  When the husks were loosened, Nhamo poured the grain into a winnowing basket. She tossed it repeatedly until the breeze blew the chaff away. She put the crushed maize into a clay pot with water to soak overnight. She would dry and grind it into flour tomorrow.

  Then Aunt Chipo sent her to fetch water from the stream. Nhamo filled the cooking pots and watered the pumpkin mounds. She weeded the fields carefully with her hoe—chop, chop, chop. Next, she collected fresh cow dung for her grandmother’s floor.

  Grandmother sat in the shade outside her hut and puffed on a clay pipe. It wasn’t a nice habit for a woman, but no one dreamed of telling her so. Ambuya was old, so old! She was close to the spirit world, and everyone respected her for it. “Welcome, Little Pumpkin,” she called as Nhamo arrived.

  Nhamo swept the floor with a bundle of grass and rubbed the dung in with her hands. “If only we lived when Mwari’s voice was still heard,” sighed Grandmother. “In those days, when people clapped their hands and asked God for food, pots of porridge and honeycombs came out of the earth.”

  Nhamo smiled as she polished. She had heard the story dozens of times, but it didn’t matter. She liked being close to Ambuya.

  “At first, the ancient kings were good,” Grandmother said, her eyes dreamy, “but gradually they became cruel. Mwari withdrew into his country to show his displeasure. He didn’t want to abandon his people entirely, so he still spoke to the spirit medium Tumbale, and Tumbale told everyone what God wanted.

  “The worst king of all was called Mambo. He flew into a rage when people praised Mwari. ‘Who is this creature no one can see? How can he have more power than me?’ And Mambo hated Tumbale because he was good.

  “One day all the people were gathered in a field. They were celebrating a victory against their enemies. Mambo sat on a carved chair and accepted plates of food from his wives, who approached him on their knees. Suddenly, the grass in the field began to whisper, ‘If not for Tumbale, there would be no victory.’

  “‘What’s that?’ roared Mambo. ‘How dare the grass talk back to me! Set it on fire!’ The soldiers soon had it ablaze, and it burned to ashes.

  “Then the trees all around began to murmur, ‘If not for Tumbale, there would be no victory.’

  “ ‘Chop those trees down!’ screamed Mambo. His soldiers reduced the forest to a heap of kindling.

  “The rocks began to say the same thing, so Mambo had fires kindled on them and split them into pieces. Still the voice was heard whispering, ‘If not for Tumbale, there would be no victory.’ Now it came from the king’s youngest wife.

  “ ‘You traitor!’ shouted Mambo, but all the people gathered around and said, ‘Great chief, please do not blame her. She is only a child.’

  “The king said, ‘Let there be an end to it. Kill her!’ The soldiers killed the girl, skinned her, and used her skin to cover a drum. They burned the body. Then Mambo had the drum beaten, but the sound disturbed the hearts of the people so much that they crouched on the ground and covered their ears. A voice came out of the wind, saying, ‘You have shamed me with your evil ways. Now feel my anger. I will send armies against you. I will reduce your houses to sand and your fields to ashes.’

  “And Mwari’s voice withdrew from the people forever. Since that time people have had to work hard, and their lives have been full of strife and danger.”

  Grandmother’s voice died away. Soon Nhamo heard a gentle snore from outside and she knew Ambuya had fallen asleep in her chair. She leaned against the wall of the hut and thought about the story. Imagine having your skin used to make a drum! Would your spirit know what had happened?

  Nhamo knew that the spirit stayed close to one’s body, but Mambo’s poor wife had been burned. Except for the skin. Did that mean the girl lived in the drum?

  “Aren’t you finished yet?” exclaimed Aunt Chipo from the door. Nhamo sighed. She washed her hands and prepared to grind the maize from yesterday. Nhamo used a flat, hollowed-out stone for a base and a smaller stone for a crusher. Crunch, crunch, crunch she went, grinding the maize into flour. All this time, Masvita had been sitting under the hozi. She had two half-completed pots sitting on wooden plates to dry.

  “Come and drink maheu,” called Aunt Chipo to her daughter. Nhamo thought longingly of the cool, sour taste of the fermented mealie-water.

  “What beautiful pots! We’ll have to decorate them,” said Aunt Shuvai, Chipo’s younger sister. Masvita got up gracefully and clapped to thank them. They went inside to escape the heat.

  Soon it was time for Nhamo to gather firewood.

  2

  Most girls were afraid to gather firewood by themselves. The village was surrounded by a forest where almost anything might hide. Nhamo was afraid, too, but she had a compelling reason to venture out alone. She didn’t expect to meet elephants—although they migrated to the river at certain times of the year. She wasn’t likely to run into a buffalo—although someone had done so a few months earlier. Her most persistent worry was leopards. She feared leopards with a terror so complete that she couldn’t breathe when she thought of them.

  Her mother had been killed by one when
Nhamo was only three. The child was sleeping by the door of the hut, but the animal walked past her and attacked Mother instead. Grandmother rocked back and forth, wailing with grief, when she recounted the story. “In daylight, Little Pumpkin! With the sun streaming in the door, that disgusting beast killed my poor, poor daughter! It wasn’t her fault. It was that hyena-hearted husband of hers—may he fall into a nest of flesh-eating ants!”

  The hyena-hearted husband was Nhamo’s father.

  Nhamo couldn’t remember the tragedy, yet somewhere inside her was a memory of flowing, spotted skin and terrible claws.

  Now she followed a broad path from the village to the stream. She saw women beating clothes on rocks; their round-bellied babies were deposited on a mat in the shade of a tree. A small girl watched to be sure they didn’t crawl away.

  Nhamo followed the stream to an area of yellow sand where she could see the bottom clearly in both directions. No crocodile could creep up on her here. She waded across. The water came up to her shoulders. She always experienced a moment of panic in the middle because she couldn’t swim, but she planted her feet firmly in the coarse sand and struggled on. When she got to the other side, she scrambled up a rock and picked off a leech that had managed to fasten onto her ankle.

  She hid behind a bush to wring out her dress-cloth. The wetness against her skin was very pleasant, but she couldn’t waste time enjoying it. Aunt Chipo would be waiting for her firewood. Even more important, Nhamo had to return before dusk.

  Dusk was when the leopards came out to hunt.

  She followed an old, overgrown trail for a long time until she came out into a meadow. It wasn’t a natural clearing. A few poles remained of the village that had once been there, and a few pumpkin mounds with vegetables gone wild. Nhamo wasn’t sure who had lived here. It might have been her own people, but they no longer visited the site. Masvita said the place was haunted.

  With a nervous look at the shadows under the trees, Nhamo crossed the clearing and quickly gathered firewood from a deadfall in a dry streambed. That was the good thing about this place: The wood was easy to find. It took her far less time than Aunt Chipo suspected. She tied the wood into a bundle with vines and deposited it by the trail.