Posts Tagged ‘Brazil’

I am standing in the shade of a baobab growing alongside the ruins of the Grand Mosque at Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania. I do not know how old it is. Baobabs are notoriously difficult to age, and some live a thousand years or more. Looking at this one, I find myself wondering how much of Kilwa’s history it has seen. Some baobab, if not this one, may have stood here long enough to watch the city pass from success to sacking, from habitation to abandonment, from abandonment to excavation, from excavation to heritage site.