Free The Sleeping Baobab Tree by Paula Leyden

regarded it as their duty to kill their firstborn sons once they reached the age of ten. She just stood there waving to us and smiling.
    Joseph, of course, jumped into the back, so the passenger seat next to Nokokulu was gapingly empty. She patted it and did that animal thing of baring her teeth at me while pretending to smile. I had no choice – my parents had abandoned me in my hour of need. I climbed in.
    As we drove slowly out of the gate I looked back at them waving in unison as the car disappeared from their view. I could not be absolutely sure but I thought I detected an air of relief shimmering around their heads.
    We survived that trip but it took a
very
long time. Dad told me afterwards that he had unwittingly bought the car from a known criminal so people knew the car. Unwittingly? I don’t think so, but it certainly explains why no one hooted as Nokokulu drove at about twenty miles an hour.
    She took us out towards Leopard’s Hill and past the old cemetery.
    “You know, boys,” she said, “this cemetery has run out of empty ground. Run out completely. So by the time you’re buried, they’ll have to dig up a grave of some old person and squash you in beside them. You’ll be buried for eternity with someone you don’t know.”
    “What about when
you
die?” I asked.
    “Me, Chiti? What did I tell you?”
    “That dying is a waste of time.”
    “Yes.”
    “But if it’s a waste of time for you, why not for us?”
    “Because you, silly little boys, always waste time.”
    With that she went back to humming away to herself as if we weren’t there and turned around to drive back home.
    Hopefully for this trip to Ng’ombe Ilede she’ll be mainly in a good mood. If she’s in a good mood she ignores you. And if she’s not at least I’ll know that Bul-Boo and Madillo are there in the boot. Nothing too bad can happen if they’re around, although I can’t stop thinking about the Man-Beast. Nokokulu could be talking about the kryptops, I suppose, but that’s been extinct for millions of years. It’s Number Three on Sister Leonisa’s list of Top Ten Monsters, because, as she says, “Just imagine how great it would be to meet a two-legged hyena,” which is what the kryptops looks like. She has a funny idea of great.
    If the twins do manage to come on this trip and
if
I manage to spend time with Bul-Boo on my own, I am not going to do what I did last time.
    That time I proceeded to tell her, in great detail, about the time the whole Zambian soccer team was killed in a plane crash. She knew about it anyway – there isn’t one person in Zambia who doesn’t – but no one knows about it as well as I do. I thought (wrongly) that Bul-Boo might be impressed by my extensive knowledge. It was when I started listing off all the names that she started to look bored.
    If Bul-Boo and I do happen to get onto the subject of soccer, at least this time I’ll have good news for her, as our team, Chipolopolo, are now the champions of the Africa Cup of Nations. In fact we won the championship in the exact same place where the plane crashed all those years ago. Well, not the exact same place, because that would be in the sea, but in the city where the plane took off from. That’s something.
    Sometimes though it’s hard to know what another person will find interesting. Especially if that person’s a girl.

BULL - BOO
Goldfish Training
    Mum was not very talkative when she came in today, but she cheered up a bit when we told her Sister’s archaeologist story. I still tell her those kinds of stories, although some of the others I edit. Maybe she cheered up because she was looking for little things to help her not think about the big thing that was worrying her, i.e. the missing patients. And I learnt that one part of the story was true – mosquitoes in Egypt aren’t malaria mosquitoes. Sister sometimes, I suppose, gets something right.
    After supper we went up to our room to pack for our sleepover. I felt terrible