Western man is a peculiar animal, because he is capable of not believing what he sees, and of believing what does not exist.
On the other hand, one of the most romantic and at the same time most earthly, redeeming and close to Nature and therefore to our nature, is animism.
Through ancestor worship, besides celebrating the memory, the simulacra, what they believed in and did, they are held sacred living souls of the planet such as trees, forests, mountains that the fathers of the fathers in turn had reason to venerate.
One of the most idolised hundred-year-old baobabs on the Kenyan coast is located not far from the mouth of the Sabaki River, a few kilometres from the town of Malindi.
It is a sacred tree, a kind of monument for the Mijikenda ethnic group who, precisely because so many wise men and priests made camp and found refuge there over the centuries, attribute special powers to it.
Local legends tell that the baobab at the mouth of the Sabaki is able to transform the souls of ancestors and wizards into bats, enabling them to move from plant to plant.

In the wide grooves of the huge trunk, around 1920, sheltered and lived the heroine Mekatilili Wa Menza, the first woman to challenge the oppressive laws of the British Empire in the Malindi area.
Mekatilili also represents on a national level the country's first resistance and consciousness-raising.
Imprisoned twice and transferred to labour camps in the Rift Valley, both times she managed to escape by walking over 800 kilometres.
The second time she chose the Sabaki baobab as her refuge, before retreating inland, where her shrine still stands today.
Thus, legend has it, even Mekatilili managed to escape the British soldiers, without having to transform himself into a bat.
At the foot of Sabaki's immense baobab tree, historical celebrations and shamanic rituals are still held to remember those who lived respecting the laws of nature and passing on to their children the beauty of myth, the purity of dreams, the symbiosis with the planet, the hope of fairy tales.