Chapter 21 Summary

For days, Nhamo paddles around and around the island, but she does not realize it is an island until she has gone all the way around. She yells at the island for not being Zimbabwe. Then her boat rams into some rocks and she immediately feels bad for yelling at the island. She has to fight off a baboon and steer clear of a crocodile, but she is not afraid. Nhamo repairs the boat's leaks with clay from a termite hill and waits for it to dry.

In the meantime, she tells herself a story about a man with two wives. The senior wife has only daughters, while the junior wife has only sons, and so she is more revered. The wives argue and bicker. They don't like each other. One day the junior wife puts baboon meat in the senior wife's stew...