A Girl Named Disaster

PREFACE

Many years ago I took a boat to Africa. I had read a book about Jane Goodall and how she studied chimpanzees. As far as I could tell, all it took was a tent, a sleeping bag, and a good supply of bananas. I cheerfully overlooked my lack of education and money. Friends told me that I was an idiot and would get eaten by lions, but I replied that Africans (most of them) do not get eaten by lions. They knew how to survive. I would simply ask them for advice.

And so, armed with ignorance and $500, I landed on the continent. I was about a thousand miles from the nearest chimpanzee, but I reasoned that Africa was full of interesting creatures. I would simply find something else. Thus began a seventeen-year adventure.

To tell all that happened would take a book ten times longer than the one you are about to read. Some of it appears in A Girl Named Disaster. Nhamo’s island is real, and so is the baboon troop. I have sat still long enough to let a baby baboon groom me, but I don’t recommend it. Those babies are strong enough to pull out all your hair. I did hide from a leopard and steal part of a leopard kill when I was low on food. I have been over every mile of Nhamo’s journey, from the village devastated by cholera to the tsetse fly camp in Zimbabwe.

I never did become a superstar scientist. Let’s face it, I don’t have what it takes. Real scientists work like demons. If there’s a party in the next village, they don’t go. If someone suggests a moonlight cruise in a canoe, they shake their heads and say, “No, thank you. I have to work.”

Alas, I discovered that parties and cruises were exactly what I wanted. And so, good-bye chimpanzees. Good-bye fame. But I don’t think my life has been wasted. After all, life itself is an ever changing, ever inspiring wonder. Perhaps all along I was meant to be a writer, although I came to it late. No other line of work is as enjoyable.

I was unsuccessful for years. Most writers are. But it didn’t matter, because I was reliving those moments when the light was exactly right, and the birds were singing their best, and the people were at their finest. That’s what writing is for. Moment slip past and are gone almost before you can appreciate them. But you can put them in a book in order to experience them again and again.

That’s what is behind A Girl Named Disaster. Nhamo sets out on her journey whenever you open the book. The lake shimmers with possibility. The door to the spirit world is always ajar, over there, in the bright haze of distance.

I hope you enjoy her adventure as much as I did.

Nancy Farmer

September 2002