Sagal

When I was eight years old my brother and me wandered about Montepuez the village where we lived. Sometimes we used to visit a friend and played with him, who dwelled in Sagal, the name of the cotton cooperative. He had a nice toy: the «Lego» with many pieces for construction, that was new to me and of great interest. But what I most recall was when we got mounting the huge heap of black cotton seeds till we were able to touch the beams of the ceiling in the warehouse!!

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On other occasion my brother, that was four years old and was called tenderly: “the terrorist”, did something that set all the colleagues of my father laughing for many days. There was one native police of the municipality that, at correct times, played a military cornet. So my little brother, one day, decided that he wanted that thing and only when my brother was far away, the police discovered the vanishing of the cornet! Then, what all we saw was my brother running to our home with the cornet, near his size, and the police shouting after him!!

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Another day, we saw some tracks on the ground of our kitchen-garden and we decided that the tracks were of one lion that had passed by our house (at night)!! The village was too big to have lions nearby and we had already been eaten up when, concealed, picked up cassava. But our fervour of hunters was great and we spent the day tracking... a big dog!!

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It had been decided to construct another school and a huge ‘baobab’, the biggest tree of Africa, stood in the middle of the spot appointed to the new school. I always heard to say it was possible to hollow the tree and fulfil a garage for one car and the tree didn’t die. A great machine to dig, a “caterpillar”, came and started to dig around the tree. The natives said: someone will die! Someone will die! The spirits of baobab will revenge the shame! And the machine went on the dig. Many days were spent and the work became very difficult. So difficult that the driver risked his life! And the tragedy happened! The man died under the tree!! The village had plenty of ground, why they cut down the wonderful tree? The ‘baobab’ is the symbol of Africa!! The centre of a garden!! Savag...!!!