Chapter 1 Exit Ticket Final Version (copy)

For some reason, Limbikani liked to pick on me and Gilbert. One day on our way to school, he waited for us on the road and jumped out from a grove of trees.

“Oh look, it’s William and his friend Little Chief Wimbe.”

“Leave us alone,” I shouted, but my voice cracked and gave me away.

Limbikani put his chest in Gilbert’s face.

“Where’s the big chief, monkey boy? Looks like he’s not here to protect you.”

He grabbed the backs of our shirts and dangled us in the air like two sad puppies. Then he stole our lunch. This happened again and again.

Even though we lived in a small village in Africa, we did many of the same things kids do all over the world; we just used different materials. After talking with friends I met in America, I know this is true. Children everywhere have similar ways of playing with one another. And if you look at it this way, the world isn’t such a big place.

My friends and I loved trucks. It didn’t matter what kind. We loved the four-ton dump trucks that rumbled out of the big farms, kicking up dust. We loved the small pickups that took passengers from Wimbe to Kasungu, the nearest city. We loved them all, and each week, we’d compete to see who could build the best one. I know that in America, you can buy toy trucks already assembled in a store. In Malawi, we built ours from Shake Shake cartons and pieces of wire. To us, they were just as beautiful.

The axles were sections of wire we bought by picking mangoes. And for the wheels, we used bottle caps. Even better were the plastic caps from our mothers’ containers of cooking oil, which lasted much longer. And if we took our fathers’ razor blades, we could cut designs in the wheels to give each truck its own unique treading. That way, the tracks in the dirt told us if the truck belonged to Kamkwamba Toyota, for instance, or to Gilbert Company LTD. We also built our own monster wagons, called chigiriri, that looked like American go-carts. We made the frames from thick tree branches, carefulto find ones with giant knots or a fork that could be used as a seat. We then dug up large tuber roots called kaumbu that looked like mutant sweet potatoes, and shaped them into wheels. The axles were poles carved from a blue-gum tree. After everything was assembled, we tied it all together with vines and hoped it didn’t fall apart. To make the car move, one person pulled with a long rope while the driver steered with his feet. With two cars side by side, we held derbies through the trading center. “Let’s race!”

“For sure!”

“Last one to reach the barber shop will go blind!”

“GO!”

After the race, if we had some money in our pockets, we’d stop by Mister Banda’s shop for a cold bottle of Fanta and some Dandy Sweets. Mister Banda ran the Malawian version of a convenience store.