The tree in the common courtyard or behind the mud-brick house does not hide the forest, it is its symbol.
Admiring the shadows of their crowns dancing on the water's surface, the Forest Queen listened silently to the trees' complaints. "Why do people no longer call us in our languages as before, but only in Latin? Before, people came before the first cock's crow or at the full moon. They asked for a bit of bark or root for their remedies and went away. They loved us, they respected us. Now chainsaws and saws have replaced axes and hoes, enough to make you run away!
– Not all humans are like that, don't worry. You have not been forgotten, neither here nor in the city.
The music of the car radio crackled in the air as the vehicle drove through Pointe-Noire. The lyrics of the hit song by the Bantous de la Capitale escaped from the lowered windows: Nzambi a Mpungu! Beto bantu’e ga, baala ba nsaanda’e ga!
– What does it mean in the song, the children of Nsaanda? asked the young botanist to the old forestry company driver.
– Ah! But at ORSTOM there in Brazza, they didn't teach you anything? he said with a snicker.
– I just stopped in Brazza, I'm coming from Odzala! she answered, it's my first trip to the country.
– Oh, you were in the north then?
After a few meters, before the intersection of the Bole Bantou bar, parallel to Charles de Gaulle Avenue, he stopped and pointed to a tree.
– On the left in front of the plot, what do you see?
– A Ficus thonningii I believe...
– That's the tree in the song, Nsaanda. In olden times, sometimes we buried the navels of newborns under its roots saying yala bwa, yala Nsaanda, grow, like Nsaanda. If a baby was thin and weak, we gave it a bath with decoctions of the tree or the bones of a boa, then we tied bark fiber braids to its wrists and ankles.
– So it's a sacred tree? she interrupted.