Poisonwood Trivia Trivia Quiz

Answer: hid their extra items on their bodies

The Southern Baptist Mission League hinted to them that the passengers themselves were not weighed. The girls all wore many layers of clothing and underwear and their coats over top. In their pockets and tucked in their waistbands, they brought tools and food and other goods. It made a very uncomfortable flight for them.

Answer: Goat roasted over open flame

They made the goat into some kind of stew and it was so spicy hot, the girls wanted to spit it right out. Their mom threatened them with a thrashing if they dared to be that impolite. They were surprised as their mother had never laid a finger on them in their lives.

Answer: they didn't plant in hills

Mama Tataba told them to plant in hills or it wouldn't grow. They ignored her as they thought they knew more about gardening than she knew about Africa. When the rainy season began and the seeds were all washed out, they realized she was right and replanted doing it the African way.

Answer: Mother May I?

It took the youngest child, Ruth May, to find a way to make friends with the African kids. She taught them all this game and they all played perfectly and in English. It was a very sad scene later in the book when Ruth May had died and was laid out in the front yard and all these same kids stood around her and repeated Mother May I over and over as a way of saying good-bye and honoring her memory and friendship.

Answer: he had scars all over his face in an elaborate design

The scars were thin lines made on purpose, sort of like a tattoo. They ran from the middle of his nose out to the sides of his face. He was the only one they knew with that sort of decoration, so it was assumed he was from a different part of the Congo.

Answer: Leah

Rachel had a common-law marriage with the pilot, Axelroot, and then two other marriages after that. She went by the name Rachel Axelroot DuPree Fairley at the end. Adah never married and Ruth May died as a child.

Answer: Ruth May and Rachel

Ruth May died from a green mamba snake bite and was buried in Africa. Rachel moved to South Africa with Axelroot and then to the French Congo with DuPree. She married her third husband there and he left her a hotel, The Equatorial. She ran it successfully and never returned to America. Adah lived in Georgia near her mother and Leah occasionally visited there with her family.

Answer: her quinine pills

When Ruth May got really sick, her mom wanted to move her bed out into the main room. When they pulled the bed away from the wall, they found all the quinine pills she never took stuck to the wall. They counted them and there were exactly 61, the same number of weeks they had been there.

She was supposed to have taken one each week to protect against malaria, which she now had. Interestingly enough, she recovered from the malaria only to die from a snake bite soon after.

Answer: she wanted to hunt with the men

Nelson made Leah a bow and arrow and taught her to shoot. She became an excellent shot and when the village chief decided to have a hunt, she wanted to participate. The chief, Tata Ndu, the "witch doctor", Tata Kuvudundu, and her father were very against the idea. They ended up voting and she was allowed to go.

Answer: the death of Ruth May

It began to rain later in the day that Ruth May died. The Reverend walked around and tried to baptize the African children in the rain. The mom just turned and walked off with the three remaining daughters. They didn't bring a thing with them.