High up in the tree he sat. (7)

continued

  High up in the tree on Tooting Common Leroy sat and ate his sandwiches as he watched in silence at the galloping horse riders below. Leroy avoided his special classes for being backward, whenever he could the two hours on Saturday and two more hours after school was too much he felt. The view was energizing for the 14 year old. The climb and the perch were far more nostalgic and edifying than French verbs. The riders jaunt on their powerful steeds in their breeches and stylish safety helmets.
  
  

CHAPTER 3 the Guides Journey

     With eyes closed, I iSangoma was always there and ready to emerge. Leroy’s Motifs, Leroy’s fingers rested on a small object on the dais he selected a tiny badge and held it high for the audience to see. He flashed the tiny silver and blue winged badge and passed it to the crowd gathered.  It was a souvenir that Leroy had kept all these years and this was the moment to reveal its mystical significance: Leroy was placed on a plane to depart from a child’s tropical haven, the propellers choked and spluttered as a bad omen on that BOAC plane sitting on the tarmac at Kingston airport. With a steady hum Leroy could see from his seat through the window the hungry sky calling him from the Jamaican island of his birth. It was then he was wrenched apart from his freedom, dressed in a Sunday suit and tight shiny lace up shoes.  Leroy was compelled to eat the English food as wholesome as it was; it was not to be compared with the freshly picked and freshly slaughtered farm animals he was accustomed. 

   “Someday this silver badge would help to re-capture what he had once lost. I the iSangoma within had promised him as he slept on the flight to the UK.
    iSangoma Leroy continued as more voices played within him. 
   “Leroy, there are so many starving children in Africa,” his father had told him. 
   Leroy often felt like saying.
   “Please wrap up my food and send it to them,” but he never dared.