Students form into ranks. Gordon Number One and two other boys help Mrs. Vincent roll water barrels from the back of the pickup truck and store them against the walls of the little-boys’ dorm in case the fire jumps to the buildings.

“Quick.” Lottie pulls me from the field to a stand of trees to our right. She hacks at a branch and cleaves it straight from the trunk. “Cut off the branches with green leaves and make a pile.”

I lift my panga and bring the blade down onto a branch. My muscles quiver when the metal meets the wood, and it takes me five blows to cut the branch loose. I move to the next branch and the next till I’m wet under my arms and shaking.

“Give the branches to the senior boys,” Lottie says, and keeps cutting. I drag the branches onto the field, where Mr. Vincent and Mr. Moses, the dorm master, organize the students into firefighting units.

Mrs. Button, who lives behind the mechanic’s workshop, says that in England, fires are put out by specially trained firemen who drive big red trucks with powerful hoses, and ladders that reach to the tops of buildings. In Swaziland, we have water barrels and students armed with wet flour sacks and green tree branches.

“Four lines,” Mr. Vincent says. “Boys in the front two rows, and girls in the back two.”

I dump the branches near a stack of wet flour sacks, and the senior boys grab whatever is closest. The piles disappear, and I run into the trees to collect more. Lottie has a stack ready, and I run a relay between the field and the trees till each of the boys in the front line has a branch or a dripping flour sack to beat down the flames. Lottie and me stab our panga blades into the ground so they are ready for quick use, if the need arises.

“Shoulder-to-shoulder. Keep close together,” Mr. Moses tells the firefighters. “If it gets too hot . . . back out. I don’t want no dead heroes tonight.”

“Yes, sir,” the boys reply.

Mr. Vincent, Mr. Moses, and the front-line boys move toward the fire in the bush. Burned leaves float to the ground at my feet. Flames wink deep in the bush, and my heart drums inside my chest when the second row of boys fades into the shadow of the forest.

“Here.” Lottie hands me a crooked branch, and we join the end of the girls’ line. “With luck, we’ll get to go in next,” she says.

“With luck?” I say. What an odd phrase to use, and her with a fresh list of Oxford Dictionary definitions to draw on. “You’d rather be with the boys than here where it’s safe?”

She shrugs her bony shoulders. “It’s better than waiting.”