It was about 5 years ago in the bushveld where we took this photo of my son next to this huge baobab tree in Alldays.  More than 1 854 km from home and a 20 hour drive. This is where we got one of the seed pods of this tree. We kept it all these years and with lockdown decided to grow our own.

This is a very strong tree but takes years and years to grow: They only grow one millimetre a month. Wonder how many years it took this tree to get so strong and tall. I am sure this tree in the picture do have many stories to tell. It can hold up to 120 000 litres of water and provides much needed oxygen to the earth. Could they be nature’s ventilators?

These trees do not grow in the South and do not like salty soil, but we will try and give our best to help this tree grow into a strong, tall tree. Soon he will join his baobab family up north and tell them how he was born:

‘I was born during the autumn of April 2020 in Cape town, more than 1 854 km from my family home. The Etzebeth family carefully cleaned the seeds and placed me in a wet cloth. It wasn’t long before I started to take shape. Slowly but surely, I started to grow. It was starting to get cooler in Cape Town and I love the sun and lots of heat, but they made sure to put me in the sun every day and took good care of me during this very fragile stage.

They promised that they will bring me home, where I belong, but that I needed to hold on till after the lockdown because of COVID-19. This was a virus humans got which was very contagious and made people very ill. The whole world came to a standstill for a few months. It was a very strenuous time for them.’

Well this is how we would like this story to begin.

Our baobab baby growing to be a strong tree, with lots of stories to tell. One of them being the year 2020 long, long ago when humans were fighting the COVID-19 virus. Lots of people got very sick and some even died, but they kept fighting and got an anti-viral treatment that same year which saved the world. COVID-19 was a terrible virus, but if it weren’t for that lockdown in April 2020, I would have never been born.

Many years later and I live to tell the story…

Take care of nature and nature will take care of you. Be kind, live simple and appreciate the small things in life.

From

The Boabab Baby in Cape Town