Meet the Prices: Ruth May Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mother, May I?

Although Ruth May makes comments about Africans that come across as racist (such as calling them the Tribes of Ham), she is also the first of the Price children to mix with local children. She teaches them to play 'Mother, May I?' (rendered as 'ma-da-meh-yi'). Leah is jealous that the children are willing to play with Ruth May, especially as they pick the game up quickly, while she has trouble communicating with them.

However, she does befriend one boy, Pascal, who teaches her Kikongo words.

Answer: Stuart Little

Ruth May loves animals and keeps the mongoose as a pet after it keeps visiting the Prices' house, and later bonds with her. Leah tells her to call it Rikki-Tikki-Tavi after the Rudyard Kipling character, but Ruth May calls it Stuart Little instead. She also has a pet chameleon called Leon, who the Prices find one day on Leah's bed. Methuselah is a talking African grey parrot who used to belong to Brother Fowles, a Catholic priest who later visits the Prices, and Saint Matthew is Leah's toy sock monkey.

Answer: Diamonds

Eeben Axelroot's plane is full of sacks of food, but it also contains sacks of rocks which turn out to be diamonds. While Ruth May is visiting the hospital, Nathan and the doctor, a Belgian, get into an argument about Patrice Lumumba and Congolese politics. Nathan dismisses Lumumba as an uneducated postal worker.

While Nathan is getting his hair cut, Axelroot gets Ruth May alone and warns her not to say anything about the diamonds, or her mother will get sick and die.

Answer: Bandu

All of the Price children are given Kikongo nicknames. As Ruth May is the youngest and smallest of the sisters at five years old, she is called Bandu, which means 'the littlest' or 'the one at the bottom', although it can also mean 'the reason for everything'. Ruth May picks up a few Congolese words from Nelson, a local boy who does odd jobs for the Prices. 'Mvula' ('termite') is Rachel's nickname, 'Béene' ('truth') is Leah's (and Anatole also calls her 'Béene-Béene', 'the truest of the true'(, and 'Benduka' ('crooked walker') is Adah's because of her disability.

Answer: Feeding ants to an antlion

Ruth May is sick and listless and Leah tries to cheer her up by feeding ants to an antlion, as she knows that Ruth May usually enjoys it. Ruth May sometimes amuses herself by singing 'wicked bug, come out of your hole' at the antlion's hole. However, Ruth May tells her to stop as the ants haven't done anything wrong. Leah pushes her on a swing and does her hair, but Ruth May barely responds. Leah notices that the sun's shadow makes Ruth May's legs look like antelope legs, and is disturbed.

Answer: A nkisi, or fetish

Nelson gives Ruth May a piece of bone with a hole in it in a matchbox and tells her to blow in the hole, while he says her name. He closes the hole and tells her it will protect her, and if she is about to die, it will make her disappear. Nelson is an orphan, as his family were drowned when their boat broke. Ruth May keeps the box under her pillow.

Answer: On the wall behind her bed

Orleanna decides to move Ruth May's bed into the main room so that she can be with her sisters during the day, and when Rachel and Leah move the bed away from the wall, they find rows of white round things stuck to the wall. Orleanna realises that these are Ruth May's malaria pills, and when she prises them off and counts them, Adah keeps count and discovers there are 61 pills, one for each week the Prices have been in the Congo. Ruth says that she couldn't swallow them because they tasted bad, so she stuck them to the wall, and Orleanna insists that Ruth May and the rest of the family take them, much to Rachel's disgust.

Answer: Anatole

The ants consume everything in their path and attack humans, and the Prices are forced to flee or die. Ruth thinks that the ants are getting revenge for Leah feeding some of them to the antlion. As Ruth May is the smallest, Orleanna carries her, and then hands her over to Anatole - who is also rowing Leah in his boat - while taking care of Adah.

When the Prices return home, they discover that the ants have eaten their hens.

Answer: Snake bite

Tata Kuduvundu, the local witch doctor, gets revenge on the Price family for Leah hunting with the local men, and puts a green mamba in the henhouse. The snake kills the hens and then bites Ruth May. Nelson orders Leah to get milk to put on the bite, but it is too late and she dies. Orleanna makes a shroud for her from mosquito nets and gives away her possessions to local women, while Nathan is upset that Ruth May died before she could be baptised.

It is this that convinces Orleanna to leave him and take Leah and Adah with her. Patrice Lumumba is murdered on the same day, and Leah mourns them both later in the book, killing a snake out of revenge for Ruth May, although Anatole points out that the snake was keeping rats at bay. Ironically, Ruth May says earlier in the book that if she could come back as one animal, it would be a green mamba.

Answer: False

Although it does not explicitly say so, the final chapter, 'The Eyes in the Trees', is actually narrated by Ruth May, or rather, her spirit. In death, she finally understands the concept of 'muntu' and how all life is connected; she has become one with the forest, and watches over her mother and sisters when they go to a market and ask a craftswoman if she has heard of Kilanga.

The craftswoman has not heard of the village, saying that there is only jungle there; the village may have had its name changed as part of the 'authenticité' policy.

The Prices have come back to the Congo to look for Ruth May's grave. Ruth May hopes that Orleanna will forgive herself.