BAOBAB

Published By DEIA, August 11, 2011 KEPA JUNKERA

It's sure that there was a time in the awakening of man in which no one felt out of place in nature. Today, one of the biggest problems of the human being is feeling that he does not belong anywhere, neither to a family, nor to a place and not even to nature. And, curiously, I suppose that as in other rules of life, instead of searching to return to that link of union with what we are, we have tried to solve the problem by making the surroundings adapting to us, losing totally the north of the things . How have I come to this conclusion? After reading an article of a tree that lives almost exclusively south of the Sahara desert and that has lived 3,000 years, reaching its truck to measure more than 30 meters of diameter. It is the Adansonia Digitata or African Baobab. The odd thing of this tree is that it reaches those giant-sized thicknesses having grace at not having a high height. Living where this arboreal species lives it has specialized in the storage of enormous quantities of water inside, converting itself into

something like an enormous barrel, capable of containing up to 120,000 liters of the liquid element. This tree is a true treasure because we achieve monkey's bread; a fruit with great quantity of vitamin C, of the bark; a fiber with which strings and baskets are manufactured, from his boiled leaves food, while from his wet pollen glue is obtained. Because of its strange appearance, the baobab has been creditor of many African legends among them one is that everyone who drinks the water in which its seeds have gotten wet will be protected against the attack of the crocodiles or that the one who extracts a flower from the tree, will die devoured by a lion. Besides their hollow trunks have served as jail, house and even like the one of Limpopo ( South Africa ) as a bar, being able to hold in its interior 40 people. We try to subdue the surroundings to our needs, without realizing that the path is in finding what we are and in that way well be able to enjoy all the baobab of our existence has to offers us. www.kepajunkera.com