Free The Butterfly Heart by Paula Leyden Page B

me once that if I am too impatient, my life will be ended before it has even started. Which is a slight exaggeration, as I have already had several years of my life, a little more than a start. I’ve learned not to be impatient with him by creating an imaginary wall in my brain. It is a stone wall that cuts off the question area. And it is very high, too high for questions to climb over. Today I had to put a roof on as well, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to help myself.
    Ifwafwa mostly sits in the same place: just near the gate to our house, next to a large rock that Dad put there when we moved in. Dad liked the shape of it and Ifwafwa does too, because it warms his back when he sits against it. Sometimes, when the sun is very hot, he sits in the shade of the
muombo
tree that grows outside the garden. He told me that its red leaves, which arrive before the rains come, bring hope. Today his snake bag was empty.
    “I have brought you no snakes today, but I have a story you will like,” he said to Madillo. “It is the story of the Kariba Dam.” Then he turned to me and tilted his head to one side. “And you, too, will like the story but you must be silent if you want to hear it.”
    As if I’m the noisy one!
    “This is a sad story told by the BaTonga people who live up along the banks of the great Zambezi river. The river was home to Nyaminyami, which in English means “meat meat”. Not a beautiful name for a river god, but a real name. He was a kind god who lived peacefully in the river with his beloved wife.”
    “What was her name?” asked Madillo, excluded from the keep quiet rule.
    “What would you like to call her?” said Ifwafwa.
    “Mahina, maybe? There is a Tonga-speaking girl in our class who told me that’s the name of the moon. I like moons.”
    “A good name for her. So they lived in peace and harmony, troubling no one. When the rains were slow to arrive and the land was dry and thirsty, Nyaminyami would come slowly to the surface of the water and allow those who hungered to cut pieces of meat from his long, snake-like body. He was a creature of many forms: fish, snake and dragon, all in one body.
    “One year, before any of you were born, Nyaminyami swam to one end of the Zambezi river and his wife, Mahina, swam to the other. They did not know what was about to happen, they were just enjoying a good slow swim. If they had known, they would have stayed together.
    “Men came to the river with machines and they closed it off. They built a wall to stop its flow and they created a giant sea where before there had been nothing. The BaTonga people were forced to move from their homes, the animals ran away and the trees that had been there for thousands of years wept and died.
    “Nyaminyami was angry that his wife was trapped many miles away. He stirred up the waters and the floods came. But when they died down, the men returned with even bigger machines and continued their work. Nyaminyami tried again and this time the wall broke and the machines were washed away. But the men did not give up.
    “Meanwhile the BaTonga people were saddened because men had died in the floods. They begged Nyaminyami the river god to stop causing the floods, and he agreed. Which meant that he was never to see his wife again. Never to swim with her in the cool depths of the Zambezi, never to jump out of the water to greet the sun. Mahina had been the one who would heal Nyaminyami after he had fed the people, but she could do this no more. Without her he was lost, so he said farewell to the BaTonga people and disappeared silently, never again to show himself.
    “But there are times when this great false sea shakes and shivers, when loud tremors come from the deep, when men hide in their homes for fear of the dark waters. That is Nyaminyami reminding them that he will always be alone without the bright light of Mahina to shine on him. He is letting the people know that he has not forgotten what they did. He is there,