How to Survive Ngoromera

Masimba Hwati

Ngoromera, 2020

Brass, iron, copper, carbon steel, and plastic

Museum purchase made possible by the University of Michigan

Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and the Director’s Acquisition Committee, 2020

Group 1

First, you have to figure out where you landed and meet up with your friends. Everyone will meet up at the instrument house. Inside the tubes is the house, which is silver and everyone has their own sleeping bag. There is a TV, and food and water so that everyone can survive. There is a fireplace inside to keep everyone warm. The restroom is in the basement. Further inside the house, there is an arcade, movie theater, a computer room, a lake, and a garden. There is also a school. If you need clothes, you have to find a flower in the garden that will bloom and give you clothes that are your size. To find it, memorize which one is the real one so you never forget. In the garden, there is also a flower dog named Daisy who can be a guard dog. Make sure to have guards outside who know the secret password so that only friends can come inside.

Then, make sure you have protection. There are evil goblins in this world that will attack, especially because you took their gold, diamonds, and blankets. They will try to break through the protection that you build around your house, such as a glass dome. There are different kinds of goblins. Some have tentacles, some have lots of eyes, and some are part spider. They make noises such as “meow,” “brr brr,” “rff,” “mmmmm,” and “gut gut.” Also have a plan B, which includes another house with a bunker that you can escape to. There is an emergency slide that you can take to get to it.

Next, make sure to avoid the goblin house. Their house is like a swamp. It’s very muddy and dirty, and it smells like bubble gum and dirty socks mixed together. There’s also rotten eggs and rotten milk inside, because that’s what they eat for breakfast. They also eat a lot of spicy noodles, which is their favorite food. Inside, there is a secret net that will catch you unless you’re a goblin.

Last, make a trap house to capture the goblins. Put fake gold inside the house to lure them inside, because they will think they can get it back. A net will fall on them and they will be captured! If you find the piece of the gold with a diamond in it, you can push it like a button to grow back to normal size. Another option is to find a dog with eight legs, which can lick you and make you normal size. There is a button in the instrument house that will bring you back outside the tubes.

Group 2

First, you notice you are floating on some sort of object. You call it the thingamabob since you have no clue what it could be. Since you are small, you are hungry and need lots of food to survive. You smell the good smells of food from across the thingamabob. You are starving. You stand at the sharp end of whatever this is and need to climb the entire thingamabob to reach all the food on the large horn. Then, while you are climbing the thingamabob, the thingamabob awakes from its sleep. The thingamabob only wakes up on full moons and has slept for 100 years before this. It turns out, the thingamabob is an ancient endangered creature, so you cannot hurt it. Its horns scream and it begins growling as it wakes. Its sharp tail wags in defense, but the thingamabob doesn’t feel you climbing, so you must be extra careful and quiet.

Next, you realize that you have temporary eye drops in your pockets that make animals unable to see for 30 minutes. This is just long enough to blind the thingamabob and get all the food from the horn of the thingamabob. You are climbing the neck of the thingamabob, trying to make no noise. You reach the head of the ancient creature and drop the eye drops in the thingamabob. The thingamabob drops cause it to burrow into the ground and hide in its underground burrow. You find even more food than before. You are set to never be hungry again. However, you have a problem. You are now underground.

Lastly, after searching for an exit before the thingamabob can see again, you find a tunnel that the thingamabob’s babies used to reach the outer world. You now have a route to leave the underground home of the thingamabob, without the creature seeing you! You take all the food outside while the thingamabob can’t see and run away as far as you can. You sit near the milk river, the same river that the thingamabob sleeps above. You now safe and will never be hungry again!

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How to Survive:

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