Beneath the Baobab Tree

Chapter One

The baobab tree had always been Kemi's refuge.

It stood at the edge of the village like a giant watching over the land, its thick trunk cracked with age, its branches reaching outward like arms offering shade, secrets, and silence. Some said it was as old as the gods. Others whispered that if you pressed your ear to its bark, you could hear the voices of the ancestors murmuring in the wind.

Kemi didn't know what to believe. She only knew that the tree didn't ask her to speak.

She sat beneath it now, knees pulled to her chest, her faded sandals discarded beside her. The hem of her green school uniform brushed against the dirt, and in her lap rested a battered book: The Palm-Wine Drinkard, its corners curled from too much love.

Around her, the village moved at its own rhythm. Chickens scuttled past in search of stray grains. Far off, someone pounded yam with practiced force, the wooden mortar echoing like a heartbeat. And somewhere near the school compound, boys chased a punctured football, laughing with the kind of ease Kemi had never quite learned.

She preferred this - the quiet under the tree, the wind that carried stories, the words that lived inside pages instead of mouths.

"Kemi!" a voice called in the distance. "Your mother said to bring the cassava from the drying mat!"

She sighed, marked her place in the book with a sliver of palm frond, and stood.

The baobab would wait.

It always did.

Their compound was small - a single block room with a rusted zinc roof and faded blue walls. Smoke curled from a corner where her grandmother, Iya Ronke, stirred ogi over a fire. The smell of fermented maize and charcoal hung in the air.

"E ku ile," Kemi greeted quietly.

"Welcome back," her mother, Abike, replied without looking up. Her tone was soft but worn, like a piece of cloth that had been folded too many times. "Did you hear me calling you?"

"Yes, ma."

"You spend too much time under that tree," Iya Ronke muttered, glancing over. "You'll start dreaming nonsense."

Kemi kept her gaze down and carried the basket of cassava into the kitchen area. The women in her family didn't dislike books, but they didn't trust them either - not the way Kemi did.

---

That evening, as the sun began to dip and the sky shifted to copper, a stir swept through the village.

It started with the sound of an engine - unusual, jarring, unfamiliar. A motorcycle roared down the dusty road, kicking up a whirlwind of ochre dust. Children screamed with excitement and chased after it. Women leaned out from their cooking pots. Even the old men in front of the mosque looked up.

From the back of the okada, a tall young man stepped down.

He wore a white NYSC shirt, slightly wrinkled, and his jungle boots were still too clean. A pair of glasses clung to his nose, and his bag was slung carelessly over one shoulder.

"Corper don come o!" someone shouted.

The man gave a small smile, raising one hand in greeting. "Good afternoon."

Kemi watched from a distance, tucked behind a wall of drying laundry. Her heart beat a little faster - not because of the man, but because of the way the air had changed. The village was never this excited. And there was something about his presence - like a book opening to the first page.

She didn't know it yet, but her life was beginning to change.

Later that night, Kemi lay on her thin mattress, the moonlight slipping in through the cracked window. She could still hear the voices outside - neighbors talking about the new corper, wondering where he was from, how long he would stay, and if he was a Christian or Muslim.

Her mother said nothing at dinner, but Iya Ronke muttered, "Let's hope he won't bring Lagos madness to this place."

Kemi rolled over and faced the wall. Her heart was full of thoughts she had no words for. She had never spoken to a man that wasn't family. Never imagined falling in love. But something about that stranger - the way he stood, the quiet behind his eyes - made her wonder what it would feel like to be seen.

She closed her eyes.

And in the darkness, she heard the wind whisper through the baobab leaves.

Not in warning.

But in welcome.