day. Brian was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of an astronaut on the moon watching a blue Earth rise into black space. Underneath it said “Heart/Earth.” Today was Grace’s turn and she said she was going to tell them how she came to Plenty. The first part she didn’t remember, she said, so she would tell them what her mum told her. Grace Wek’s family was from South Sudan in Africa. They lived in a town called Malek, near the Sudd – that’s the swamps of the White Nile River where feathery papyrus grow like crops of tall green dusters, and crocodiles and hippos roll and wade. In the wet season, the grasses turn into water meadows. Tigerfish and catfish swim in the water, cranes dance in the papyrus, and people build their cooking fires on a floating world. Sudan had been fighting wars for so long that hardly anybody remembered the start. The old men said Sudan’s war was like weather – no matter where you went there it was. You couldn’t escape. The fields were destroyed and grew nothing but bitter weeds and cattle bones.
