Baboon’s Fruit Shop, by Ndabezinhle S. Sigogo, published by N.S. Books, Bulawayo, (2002), 31pp

Reviewed by Khanyile Mlotshwa

BABOON’S Fruit Shop is a book for children by one of the pioneering and leading Ndebele writers, Ndabezinhle Sigogo; and it is written in English.

The book is a story of a baboon that inherits a fruit shop from its father. However the business does not thrive as in the past. This is because of the unhygienic state in which the shop is in. his shop contrasts with that of his rival, the Chimpanzee, which has customers literary queuing outside it for fruits. The two businessmen get their fruits from the same farmers of Mungo, but it defies Baboon’s logic why he has close to zero customers while his rival’s business is booming. He decides to consult a seer, Hyena, who tells him lies that it is Chimpanzee who is using magic to sabotage his business. Baboon pays him a lot of money to fix the problem without any success. He gets to hate Chimpanzee though he is warned by Hyena never to confront him. However one day when he is just deep in thought outside his shop, he sees Chimpanzee approaching and almost gets into a row with him, but Chimpanzee’s good intentions win the day. Chimpanzee tells him that it is the dirty outside and in the shop that is chasing customers. He helps him spruce up his shop’s image and from thereon things get back to normally for Baboon.

In this book Sigogo shows that he is a master story teller. This book must be understood in the context of the folktale tradition which is so strong among the Ndebele and most tribes in Africa. Sigogo is an heir to this tradition, and it is possible that as a young person he has heard more than a dozen folktales from his grandmother. These folktales may be retold time and again, but with a slight change here and there to bring freshness to the tale. It may be the ending that is altered or a certain event may be ignored but the story will still be the same. It may be a different plot altogether but the characters will still be the same and still bearing the same traits.

In a sense Sigogo’s tale is a folktale but not in the sense that he retold a story he heard around the fire when he was a child. The story is a pure creation of his mind. The fact that he decides to inherit the character of Baboon, with his fear of snakes, hyena with his crookish nature and all the other animals that form the basis of Ndebele folktales, Sigogo takes on the footsteps of oral storytellers like most Ndebele grandmothers.             

However, as he sets down his tale in writing, he makes it literature which deserves to be reviewed within the same parameters as all literature.

His sentences are simple sentences meaning that each sentence has one idea and is simple to comprehend. This is because he is writing for children. The opening paragraph shows this clearly:

“Baboon was sitting on a rock infront of his shop. The shop itself was a small old stone building. Its front wall had a big crack near the door. Its roof was covered with reeds. Some of the reeds were hanging loosely over the walls. At times snakes were seen on the roof. None was killed or chased away. Baboon ran away each time he saw a snake.” (pg 1)

had he been writing for a mature audience Sigogo could have combined some of his sentences like, “Its roof was covered with reeds. Some of the reeds were hanging loosely over the walls.” To become, “Its roof was covered with reeds, some of which were hanging loosely over the walls.”

However Sigogo wants to express one idea per sentence and he does that well through out the book making it suitable for young people, though adults can still read it and enjoy. A good story is a good story and it doesn’t matter for which age group it is written, it cuts across age barriers.

He also achieves rhythm with his style. The repetition of words in successive sentences achieves a rhythm. The example is the opening paragraph again where words like “shop”, “reeds” and “snakes” are used to achieve rhythm by means of repetition.

Sigogo also uses humour  as when he describes baboon and he says, “His forehead looked like an old cap” (pg 1).

Baboon’s forehead is of legendary humour among the Ndebele and that is a fact not lost to Sigogo. He uses it to effect in his book. Children want something to laugh about and they get a lot of that in this book. Even hyena’s crookish nature is a matter of laughing off, more so in that it doesn’t have that much effect on Baboon who at last is helped by a rival for nothing.

The ending brings with it  a sense of relief for the reader who journeys with Baboon and can feel as his problems mount. In this Sigogo manages to solicit empathy from the reader.

In a nutshell, Sigogo is master storyteller and the fact that this book won the National Artistic Merit Awards in the Junior Literature category in 2002 shows that the man who pioneered the writing of stories in IsiNdebele language is not done yet. He is still around.

As we are nearing Christmas, this book will be a wonderful Christmas present for children.