SAWUBONA

In Nigeria a perceptive boy understands how back-punishing women's work is insweeping inside and outside a village hut with a short-handled broom of natural fiber.Sympathetically he builds a long-handled version for his mother and grandmotheropposing the group's fierce clinging to an absence of support for local women. InCape Town South Africa a girl dresses like a boy to be safe from unwanted maleattention while fetching water for her household during a city-wide politically drivendrought. In Zimbabwe a girl and her younger siblings escape a marriage secretlydesigned to undermine their fragile family unit. Forced marriages resulting from afamily's hardship can cause multiple disasters for a native female child. In anotherstory a Maasai boy builds a device to prevent lions from killing family livestock.This story although fictionalized mirrors the efforts of an eleven-years-old Maasaiboy Richard Turere in Kenya.All narratives in this collection are fictional yet grow out of today's real circumstances.The narratives seek to educate readers about ways in which these children can overcomecultural obstacles. In living with a six-month-old warthog and vervet monkey toher pleasure and occasional dismay the author learned about conservation issuessurrounding humans and orphaned animals. The two aggressive youngsters havebeen woven into two stories highlighting some consequences.