I think of Lottie out there at night, jumping the fence and fording the river to get medicine from Mama Whatever-Her-Name-Was. My shoulder feels much better, the pain now a dull ache that I barely notice. The medicine worked, but I didn’t thank Lottie this morning. She was wrong to take the impago.

• • •

After breakfast, we march to the chapel for a beginning-of-the-January-term prayer meeting. We attend chapel three times a week, and again on Sunday, so that God is always at our shoulder.

“Right, left, right, left.” Brenda, a senior girl with a permanently blocked nose, calls out the rhythm, and we fall into step. Behind us, Gordon Number One leads the boys. There are four Gordons at the academy, all sons of Scottish men who passed through Swaziland or else took up farming the land. Gordon Number One’s father comes to every speech day and awards ceremony, and Delia told me that Gordon Number One will go to a university in Scotland one day.

We near the red brick chapel. It has a peaked iron roof and a small graveyard on the side nearest the school boundary fence. The five graves are decorated with artificial flowers in bubble-topped plastic containers that help to keep the colors bright. Whenever we pass the graveyard, we hold our breath, to stop the spirits of the dead from entering our bodies and stealing away our souls. The American missionaries tell us to stop believing in native superstitions and to put our faith in the hands of the Lord Jesus above, but we all know that African spirits are stronger than American spirits, so we hold our breath, and that way we stay alive.

On the near side of the chapel is a concrete baptism pit. When it rains, the pit fills with water and makes a home for the frogs. On baptism day, the pit is filled to the top by hand and the frogs are scooped up with nets. Some backsliding students have been baptized three or four times. It helps that the newly baptized get a pat on the back from Mr. Vincent and an extra helping of dessert after dinner. The devil is cunning, but the good Lord has steamed pudding and sponge cakes on his side.

In the distance, a black dot appears on the dirt road that leads though the thick bush to the school grounds. The chug, chug of an engine grows louder, and my heart sinks. It’s Mr. Parns’s blue tractor, and I know the ugly scene that’s coming. It happens every term. Mr. Parns begs his son, Darnell, to get off the tractor and go back to school, and his son, Darnell, screams and begs to go back home, while the rest of us look on, helpless.