- Besides making into soup, baobab leaves can be eaten like spinach
- Dried for use as a condiment.
- Natives eat the pulp for porridge
- Inside the seed pods, a white pulp, when mixed with water, makes the most refreshing drink
- Farmers mixed this pulp with water to treat Malaria.
- The seeds are also roasted and eaten like groundnuts and pounded they can be made into a sort of peanut butter.
- The bark may be pounded and soaked and made into rope, fishing nets or clothes.
In the Limpopo town of Musina one finds a bloated almost laughable tree resembling a hobgoblin. David Livingstone called it a 'carrot planted upside down.' This is Africa's weirdest tree - the Baobab or ADANSONIA DIGITATA.
It has been called a botanical monster by some. Baobabs are very hardy - some have continued to grow in length while lying on the ground. Cutting them down doesn't seem to exterminate them either. The roots, which may be observed forty meters from the trunk, retain their vitality even after the tree is laid low. They live for thousands of years, but grow very slowly - it takes one thousand years to reach a girth of nearly five meters.
One (25 meters in diameter) has been noted by Livingstone to have been alive before the flood. Others found on Mombassa Island were in their prime when Vasco da Gama landed there. Some still hold in their trunks cannonballs fired during battles centuries ago.
WHERE FOUND
Baobabs are widely distributed in belts across Africa. They also grow in Madagascar, India, Ceylon and Australia. They grow in many areas of Zimbabwe. In the Northern Province they are found between the Limpopo and the Zoutpansberg range. Messina is indeed a Baobab town. There is a famous 'halfway Baobab' between Louis Trichardt and Musina, a reservoir from which many have drawn. Baobabs seem to prefer hot,sandy plains.
NATIVE LEGENDS OF THE BAOBAB
Along the Zambezi, the tribes believe that when the world was young the Baobabs were upright and proud. However for some unknown reason, they lorded over the lesser growths.The gods became angry and uprooted the Baobabs , thrusting them back into the ground, root upwards. Evil spirits now haunt the sweet white flowers and anyone who picks one will be killed by a lion.
One gigantic baobab in Zambia is said to be haunted by a ghostly python. Before the white man came, a large python lived in the hollow trunk and was worshipped by the local natives. When they prayed for rain, fine crops and good hunting , the python answered their prayers. The first white hunter shot the python and this event led to disastrous consequences. On still nights the natives claim to hear a continuous hissing sound from the old tree.
In the Kafue National Park in Zambia, one of the largest Baobabs is known as "Kondanamwali" - the tree that eats maidens. This enormous tree fell in love with the four beautiful girls who lived in its shade. When they reached puberty, they sought husbands and made the tree jealous. One night, during a raging thunderstorm, the tree opened its trunk and took the maidens inside. A rest house had been built in the branches of the tree. On stormy nights, it is the crying of the imprisoned maidens that make people inside tremble - not the sounds of the wild animals.
LIVING RESERVOIRS
Across the Kalahari, runs a line of Baobabs about 96 kilometers apart. These living reservoirs have saved many lives. Life would be insupportable in some parts of Africa without the baobab. In the Sudanese wastelands, there are 30000 of these trees from which people have drawn water for centuries.
One baobab may hold as many as 4,5 thousand litters of water. Baobabs are mostly protected today - they have been exploited for making paper in the past and exported to England.
Their flowers are very large and sweet-smelling; they are like white stars against the evening sky. Baobabs are not resistant to long periods of drought and young Baobabs perish in veldt fires. When a baobab dies, it collapses into a fibrous mass as though struck by lightning, until a high wind blows away the remnants of a solitary giant that had been a landmark for centuries.
