Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

By: Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Viviana Mazza - afterword

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Based on interviews with young women who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, this poignant novel by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani tells the timely story of one girl who was taken from her home in Nigeria and her harrowing fight for survival. Includes an afterword by award-winning journalist Viviana Mazza.

A new pair of shoes, a university degree, a husband - these are the things a girl dreams of in a Nigerian village. And with a government scholarship right around the corner, everyone can see these dreams aren’t too far out of reach.

But the girl’s dreams turn to nightmares when her village is attacked by Boko Haram, a terrorist group, in the middle of the night. Kidnapped, she is taken with other girls and women into the forest, where she is forced to follow her captors’ radical beliefs and watch as her best friend slowly accepts everything she’s been told.

Still, the girl defends her existence. As impossible as escape may seem, her life - her future - is hers to fight for.

©2018 Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani; Afterword copyright 2018 by Viviana Mazza (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Captivating

I learned quite a bit from this book. Would highly recommend, it kept me captivated from beginning to the end.

The Dead Mourning for the Dead

I have way more books than I can read so I am way behind in reading. Unless I buy a book that I just have to read right now, the books just go into my stack and by the time I get to them, I’ve often forgotten what they are about and why I bought them with the title as the only hint. With this book, the hint from the title told me it was probably set in Africa but that’s all and I’m glad that’s all I knew. It allowed me to read it without any expectations and for that reason, I’m going to divide this review into two parts so that you can have the same benefit as I if you want to read it with the same “innocence.” And it’s definitely a book worth reading and worth the surprise.

The book is narrated by a young girl called Ya Ta, though that is a nickname. She lives in a rural area of northeastern Nigeria in a very closely-knit town. The town is religiously mixed, both Muslim and Christian but both groups mix and get along together. Ya Ta is the only daughter with several brothers and her parents are proud that she is able to go to school even through high school, unlike girls of her parents’ generation and even of many girls in her village today. Ya Ta loves learning and has been studying hard for an entrance exam, hoping to be the first in her village to win a scholarship to go on to university. 

At the same time, she wonders if it will happen, especially as her schoolmate and good friend drops out of school to get married and is soon pregnant. But Ya Ta dreams of going to university, both for the thrill of learning and for the possibility of a profession that will give back to her family and society. The book is divided into very short chapters, mostly of just a few pages or less. They describe a rural life in terms that a city person would never think of and describe a world that is foreign even to a rural westerner. And yet, even in these short chapters that seem to be just describing an insignificant detail of life, the author packs in a lot of important detail that help you understand life from a completely different perspective and prepare you for events to come. And, you soon realize that much of the story is not much different from an adolescent story anywhere else in the world. There are still school gangs, violence, peer pressure, issues of religious freedom, the struggle between a desire to forge one’s own path and yet respect one’s duty to family. And there is the gradual dropping of things that sound so normal to the narrator and so shocking to us, that she worries so much that something will happen to her school books that her family could not afford to replace, that she is about ready to graduate from high school and has never read but one book outside of a textbook because that’s the only one she had access to, and how special a piece of candy is or a pair of shoes, oh, and how amazed she is when she first is given a donated sanitary pad. Her father’s most prized possession is a radio that he keeps tuned to the local news and the BBC which he listens to all day (and which they all say will not leave him until it is buried with him), and it is there where she gets a view of and desire to experience the wider world as well as a greater appreciation for the world that she enjoys while also giving her some of the news of the greater area around her village. It also means that a priority purchase even on a meager income is batteries. 

The Baobab tree pops up throughout the story. The tree is a symbol of life and protection and she enjoys its fruit. It also symbolizes many of their cultural, religious and community values. And there is the poem of Robert Browning, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” that she knows well and which comes up regularly. The book is such a refreshing story that seems simple but that can lead to a lot of deeper thinking. And, obviously there are unexpected twists as the story develops that draw you in even deeper, but suffice it to say that this will be on my list of one of my best books of the year. And, if that recommendation is enough and you want to read it with the same fresh ear as I had, then now is the time to stop reading. 

But if you want to know the major theme of the book, then keep reading. I will share the theme but try to avoid giving too much of the book away. I will note that the title of the book is not only allegorical and that the local news that starts to come up on the radio station maybe a quarter of the way into the book is about a small band of rebels in the forest north of them called Boko Haram. Then maybe you should realize that in the poem that she is so familiar with, the piper had been hired to get rid of the rats in the town (probably around the time of the plague) and then the town’s leaders reneged on their promise to pay him. So, later the piper returned and led all the children away, never to be seen again. This is not a “Hallmark Channel” type of book. It is tragic and difficult but still written in a way that I would have allowed my teenagers to read. It portrays events as they happened but without gratuitous detail, without sensationalizing, and without over-simplification. It is a story of dreams that turn into nightmares, but just as in nightmares, some of the details are blurry. They heard the thunder and were rejoicing that maybe this year the dry season was ending early and the rains would not be late as they had been last year only to find that it was not thunder but heavy weapons. She describes Boko Haram’s coming as something like death which strikes unexpectedly, she says, “… when your sleep is sweetest.” 

And it is a balanced portrayal. It doesn’t defend Boko Haram in any way, but does allow you to see the grievances and the corruption that made the growth of such a group possible. It doesn’t paint Muslims as evil. Ya Ta is a Christian but one of her good friends is a Muslim who suffers just as much and in fact more than Ya Ta at the hands of Boko Haram. It does show that evil can spring up in surprising places, sometimes even in the betrayal of a friend. And there is so much symbolism in what she calls “the voice on Papa’s radio” as it describes the news of the world, not only about Boko Haram, but other events around the world, especially in Europe and America where there are disasters and murders, but also security, progress, and prosperity coupled with ambivalence toward the rest of the world. 

The short chapters helped. It helped make it feel like you’re getting through the book so fast and it’s actually not a very long book. The short chapters also make it easy to put it down, not because it is not interesting enough, but because sometimes you just need to stop and think, to process your feelings before going on. 

The book is fictional, but is a composite based on interviews with young women who had been kidnapped by Boko Haram. At the end is an afterword by a journalist that focuses on the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of the 276 Chibok girls, the largest single kidnapping, but far from the only one. It’s been estimated that there have been as many as 2,000 people kidnapped by Boko Haram, mostly girls but also boys. This story is well worth reading. It may shake the foundations of your concept of the world. Most are never rescued, but even when finally rescued, there is no easy return to society and the memories are never freed.  As the narrator says, “We are like dead people mourning other people who are dead.”

Brings to life

This heartbreaking story brings to life the horrible deeds heaped uoon these innocent young girls. It also brings to light how easily brainwashing can take place withe a stick and carrot. The world should not ever turn a blind eye.

AWESOME

GREAT AND AWESOME, I LOVED IT. BEAUTIFUL EDUCATIONAL AND ENTERTAINING ACTIVITIES. GLAD YOUR SAFE NOW

A quick and important read; you will learn something

A solid YA book that's more mature than most and makes you think. This is a great starting point for anyone interested in learning more about Nigeria and the rise of Boko Haram. It prompted me to spend several days doing additional research on Boko Haram, their victims, and what's being done to defeat them.

This fictionalized account is told in short, vignette-style chapters that make it a quick read despite the heavy subject matter. A possible downside to this format is that the reader might not feel intensely connected to the characters.

Overall though, this is a great book that made me more aware of Boko Haram, their supposed "purpose," and tactics they used to control the young girls and women they kidnapped, including starvation, abuse, jealousy and brainwashing. The afterward was also very informative. I was left contemplating the levels of human depravity, martyrdom, brainwashing, and survival. Finally, Robin Miles' narration is fantastic as always. Highly recommend!

Lost Innocence, Boko Haram and Terror in Nigeria

The dreams of a university education, the love of learning and being the first girl from her family to go to college all vanished . . . the day that Boko Haram ransacked their village. Powerfully told and heartbreakingly honest, this story will stay with me for a long, long time.

A very enthralling follow up

A serious but enthralling take on subject matter which is cogent to African society. Loved it.

Powerful Novel!

Nwaubani did an incredible job of capturing the story of the Chibok women. As a male reader, I personally felt a deep same for the various ways women experience abuse from radicalized men.