It began with one question.
"Why does the soap smell like memories?"
The boy who asked it was no older than eight, knees dusty from play, eyes wide with curiosity. He stood beneath the baobab tree—the one near the stall where Tunde prepared healing balms and where, once upon a time, Iyi sat counting silences more than money.
Tunde had looked down from where he crouched, stirring a blend of crushed herbs and oil in a clay bowl, and smiled.
"Because memory," he said gently, "is what helps you become clean."
That was the beginning.
By the following week, the children returned, not just to ask, but to stay.
They brought mats from home, half-broken slates, paper corners, and pieces of charcoal used for fire. Some carried nothing at all—just eagerness, bright eyes, and questions.
And every morning, beneath the wide-reaching branches of the baobab, Tunde waited for them. He began not with alphabets or arithmetic, but with stories. Not just stories of herbs and healing, but of the unseen.
He told them of the sponge that floated in the bowl and never sank. Of the man who once walked into the spirit world with nothing but hunger and returned with hands that could ease pain without cutting skin.
"His name was Iyi," Tunde would say, eyes shining. "And he didn't just give soap. He gave light."
The children listened, mouths slightly open, as if tasting the tale. And after each story, he gave them something to hold—sometimes a simple leaf, sometimes a handful of water, and sometimes just a question.
"What does it mean to heal someone without touching them?"
"What's the difference between curing and caring?"
"Why do some people carry wounds no one can see?"
He let the questions hang like lanterns in the air, letting the children answer, guess, argue, laugh. Some answers were wrong, many made up—but all of them were listened to.
By the second moon, the baobab tree had become something more than a classroom.
Parents, at first skeptical, began to visit—some sitting silently behind their children, others offering yams, kolanuts, or small coins in gratitude. One mother arrived with a newborn tied to her back and said, "I cannot read. But I want to learn to listen like my daughter does."
So the class grew.
There were no grades. No punishments. Just stories, healing, and the slow discovery of language—not just the language of books, but of silence, of kindness, of spirit.
Tunde taught them how to make soap, yes, but he also taught them how to recognize when someone's sadness wasn't on their face, but in the slump of their shoulders. He showed them how to greet strangers like they were family, how to offer water before questions, how to give before taking.
Sometimes, when rain interrupted the lessons, they would sit under the woven roof of the stall, pressing their hands to the fogged-up jars and drawing images with their fingers. Tunde would ask them to draw their dreams.
One boy drew a sponge flying through the clouds.
A girl drew a river that wrapped around the whole world.
And once, a child who had never spoken before whispered to Tunde, "When I grow up, I want to heal the sky."
He did not laugh. He only nodded and said, "Then you must first learn how to listen when the wind cries."
One day, an elder from a neighboring village came to visit.
He stood beneath the baobab, watching the children as they sang one of the healing songs Tunde had taught them. When they finished, he stepped forward and addressed Tunde directly.
"This is not a school," the elder said. "There is no roof, no chalkboard, no registry."
Tunde bowed respectfully. "You're right, Baba. It is not a school. It is a remembering."
The elder frowned. "Remembering what?"
"That we were teachers before there were classrooms. That our ancestors taught with firelight and fables, not bells and desks. That learning begins with wonder, and ends with giving."
The elder said nothing for a long while. Then he sat down beside the children, folded his hands in his lap, and said, "Then let me remember, too."
By the time the third moon passed, the class had outgrown the baobab's shade. But Tunde refused to move it. "The tree listens," he explained. "And the wind helps them think."
So, they stayed.
Visitors began arriving from farther away—some to bring their children, others simply to watch. Some came wounded, thinking it a place of miracles, and left healed in ways they hadn't expected.
No one left unchanged.
Tunde kept no titles. He didn't call himself teacher or priest or healer. But his lessons began to ripple outward—spreading not just through children, but through homes, markets, and fields.
Under the tree, a child once said, "Master Tunde, what will you leave behind when you go?"
He looked up at the swaying branches and answered, "Hopefully nothing—because everything I am, I've already given."
The child didn't fully understand. But she smiled anyway, and pressed her hand into his, small fingers curling with trust.
That night, as the village gathered for their evening meal, the children formed a circle around the baobab. They sang the song of the sponge, the soap, and the silence.
And in the stall nearby, the bowl still held water.
The sponge floated, as it always had—soft, alive, listening.