December 4, 2024
Editorial Note
In their contribution, Wairimũ Mũrĩithi examines the controversial sale of baobab trees by Kilifi farmers to Bidzina Ivanishvili, a former Georgian prime minister, highlighting concerns of biopiracy and ethical practices. While previous reports have overlooked the cultural significance of these trees in Mijikenda traditions, Mũrĩithi proposes an experimental narrative that reimagines the story from the perspective of the ancient trees and their spirits.
Between 2021 and 2023, eight baobabs in Kilifi County were scouted, identified, paid for, trimmed back, uprooted, caged, and driven to the Kilifi port in preparation for their export. Rumour and resistance soon followed—that the farmers who had sold the trees were uninformed and grossly underpaid, that one of them even went mad from the mibuyu’s vengeance,[1] that the officials that approved the deal had been secretive and corrupt, that the ecological and cultural impact on Kilifi would be irreversible, that this was messing with some seriously spiritual shit. In response, the outgoing president, Zakayo, halted the transaction for a few months.
Public notice by the logistics company Seven Stars for the move of the Baobab trees in a local Kalifi newspaper.
Once upon a time, there was an oligarch, the ruler of a big and beautiful dendrological garden.
This story is not about him, but it is important to understand.
The garden was lush and colourful, thick with giant trees and gorgeous birds from all over the world. The oligarch had the garden grown for his own desires and obsessions, but he had long anticipated some backlash to his excess, and so he made it so that the people of the land could visit the garden whenever they wished, to make it seem like it was their own.
One day, on one of his sojourns across foreign lands, the oligarch came across a baobab. He had read about them, of course, seen them in books and movies, but he had underestimated their sheer size, their silent towering, their audacious spread across an unfamiliar land, their potential for his power. As he walked towards it, he was already calculating what it would cost him to take this tree as he had taken others. He climbed onto its jutting root. He placed his palm on its ancient trunk.
“Aren’t you afraid of the evil spirits in the tree?” one official asked during the transaction that followed, as if he did not know he was doing a deal with the devil.
But for as these things backed by money and greed go, the sale was approved.
The trees were loaded onto ships and sent along the East African coast of the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, the Aegean Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus Strait and the Black Sea, finally landing in Poti, Georgia.
On the road once again, Mtavari, a media house in Georgia, reported that power lines, road signs and tree branches were downed or damaged on the way to Shekvetili Dendrological Park, where the trees were to be transplanted under greenhouse conditions that simulated their natural habitat. In December 2023, the park’s Facebook page advertised that visitors would now be able to see the African baobabs; the accompanying images showed the trees, or a likeness of the trees, transplanted successfully…in the snowy ground.
But let’s go back to the mad farmer, or more specifically, to the alienated trees, the displaced spirits, their vindication.
A baobab’s spirit is old, much older than the smallest hint of its subterranean germination. It is, of course, a powerful being, a source of sustenance for its ecosystems and its memories, and when it is ready, a host to the wandering djinns, ghouls, ghosts, demons, mochweneba, etc. of the sky, the earth, the water beneath it. In order to occupy the tree, a wandering spirit must supplicate to its entire ecosystem, lay bare its intentions, determine its compatibility with its oldest resident.
To fell a baobab tree, umkaya, a spirit medium for the trees, must be summoned, not only to coax the spirits out of the tree and convince them to find a new home, but also to manage any volatility from the grief of separation, for, in killing the tree, a part of the resident spirit must die, too.
To dig up a baobab for export to the garden of a mighty and arrogant oligarch, many palms must be greased, drones must be flown, forms must be filled, licenses must be issued, contracts must be signed, rumours must be circulated, scandals must be raised, protests must be registered. In the speed and secrecy of it all, it crossed one farmer’s mind to call umkaya, but the oligarch’s agent was in a hurry, and he made big promises of roads and schools, and anyway, the trees weren’t dying, right?
Still, the farmer whispered a prayer each time a tree was caged, loaded on a truck and spirited away.
It could be argued that the farmer’s efforts sustained the relationship between the trees and their residents; it could be argued that this was even more cruel than letting them die. They would be, at best, splintered unevenly between their native land and their new home forever, fragments scattered in the wake of the boats that dragged them across the seas, unmoored, disconnected from the old rituals and new reincarnations. At worst, they would survive, but only barely.
Pāpāp
In trying to escape a particular harshness, Pāpāp survived the wreckage of the Utile, a French slave ship, and washed up on the East African coast, a half-drowned thing. Pāpāp’s tree was the first to go.
Tendeleka
would much rather have lived in a mango tree, but each of its attempts had been spurred, rejected, ordered to return from where it came from, your rootlessness will make our tender fruits rock hard and bitter the mango trees say. Tendeleka did not know where it came from, and it did not know its baobab from seed; Tendeleka’s baobab was recently abandoned by its own resident and was halfway between piteous and lonely.
Mishata
may be the oldest of the resident spirits in this story, but that is only an estimation, for Mishata refuses representation, refuses capture, refuses death, even, but this is something else, this is hard to understand…
Jumatano
A deaf spirit, named for the child of sorrow for it cannot hear its own loud keening. It is nighttime when the digging and cutting begins, and Jumatano weeps and howls, taking temporary control of the branches, swinging so wildly that the two men sawing at its branches are knocked off the tree. As soon as they hit the ground, Jumatano gobbles them up. Only the agent sees it happen, but he pretends not to and the next day, he has hired two new men. Jumatano is choking on the meal of its grief.
Magongwani
emerged from the mangroves, exiled by its own peers. What did you do?, its tree asks in its long, long sappling years, but Magongwani will not say. The tree goes hunched over, as if heaving under the weight of this mystery, but the tree wants to be tall. Fine, Magongwani says, and swears that it will leave this world if one of the baobab’s many residents can figure out its secret, and maybe the tree can rise from its thick, singular knee, but now it is too late…
Tshimbale
Once upon a time, Tshimbale was woken from sleep in the earth’s molten core, driven up by the making of a volcano that changed its mind when it got to the earth’s core. Where else to go but all the way up, to seize this seed, to find out how high it could reach?
Guitalo Tete
A whirlpool spirit, one of Nyami Nyami’s and Kitapo’s lost children, seven thousand times renamed. It forgot its first name when it was violently displaced in the second flooding of the Kariba Dam’s construction site, and swung from tree to tree all the way from Siavonga in pursuit of its original self. Its baobab was nearly dead from a terrible earthquake when Guitalo Tete found it, and in the centuries that followed, tree and spirit intertwined their grief and laboured towards life.
Kimwali
A shape-shifting ghoul, as per the confusing events at the time of its arrival. As it was making its case to the monkeys and the elephants, a child was left at the foot of the tree, the fifth of its kind born to desperate parents of unknown constitution, the tail of its soul snared in a world of gods fighting to capture it for their own schemes. In its negotiation, then, Kimwali was guaranteed a home if it could save the child from its vicious cycle. Kimwali agreed, possessing the child’s body and memorizing the anatomy of the tree’s other beings so it would confuse the gods. In the darkness of new moon nights, Kimwali, in the child’s form, descends from the tree’s highest branches to stretch its legs.
In August 2024, I made travel arrangements to Shekvetili to see the mibuyu for myself. We called the park to ask for directions from Tbilisi, which they happily shared. The next day, we called again to confirm we could see the baobabs. No, they said, that part of the park is closed for restoration and inaccessible to the public. I thought, the trees must be dead. I tried to find independent evidence that the trees had indeed survived their transplantation — a social media post, a story in the traditional media, a confirmation on Reddit, a text to a friend who could make some calls, an email to the filmmaker, Salome Jashi,[2] anything, really. We couldn’t. I thought again, the trees must be dead. We called back a third time to ask where exactly the trees were transplanted, if we could see it on a map, if they could give an approximate timeline for this restoration. They refused.
[Reader, by now you know the trees are dead. How did they think this story would end?]
But wait there are still 8 unhomed, furious spirits now roaming an oligarch’s garden…
[Reader, how do you think this story goes?]
The story of the century-old baobab trees being relocated from Kenya to the private garden of a Georgian oligarch is captured in Salomé Jashi’s documentary, Taming the Garden (2021). The film invites viewers to reflect on themes of power, nature, and displacement, offering a poignant exploration of the impact of this extraordinary move.
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About the Author
Wairimũ Mũrĩithi is a is a feminist reader, writer, editor, educator, zine maker, and archivist. Most of Wairimũ’s work can be found on their blog, ku[to]zurura.
[1] Natalie Sifuma, “Unearthing the Baobab Spirits,” LinkedIn, February 17, 2023, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unearthing-baobab-spirits-natalie-sifuma/.
[2] Salomé Jashi, Taming the Garden, documentary film, 91 mins, 2021.
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