By the Banks of the Limpopo

“Oh he dwells down by the banks of the Limpopo, in the hollow of a great baobab tree.  I heard he eats the fruit at night and spits the seeds into the river.  Down they go, ever so slow, down the lazy old Limpopo to the end of the earth, when the water pours over the edge in a mist-fall, down it goes, into the void.  That is why the Little Prince is always scared of the baobab trees growing on his little planet.  Because the man on the banks of the Limpopo won’t stop eating and spitting those seeds.

He’s a man from the old times, from the dawn times, and he lives in an upside-down tree and watches as the water-buffalo yonder march.  Sometimes he sees stripes in the grass, and sometimes he sees spots, oh, the man by the banks of the Limpopo sees it all.  He climbs it high, and sits on a hammock and watches the stars, and once in each while he sees the little planet go by, and the Little Prince so frantic to dig up those baobabs, oh but they’ll keep growing and growing again.  He climbs it low to sit and talk with the hippos by the water, and they don’t have much to say and he likes it that way, ’cause he’s a man from the old times, a man with nothing to say.

He live in the baobab tree, they say, and if you see him, you tell him what an ass he is for spitting those seeds, and tell him to stop before the poor child in the sky goes mad, its breaking my heart to watch.  If you see him, you tell him.  What an ass he is.”

- A conversation, recently overheard, between the Spider-god Anansi and a wanderer, by the banks of the Limpopo.