Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. He knew that people were always telling you not to kill snakes on sight, but you could not allow snakes to come so close to all the orphans. It might be different in the bush, where there was a place for snakes, and they had their own roads and paths, going this way and that, but here it was different. This was the orphan farm front yard, and at any moment the snake could drop down on an orphan as he or she walked under that tree. Mma Potokwane was right; he would have to kill the snake.

Armed with the broomstick which Mma Potokwane had fetched from a cupboard, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, followed at a discreet distance by the matron, walked round the corner of the office building. The syringa tree seemed higher when viewed from outside, and he wondered whether he would be able to reach the branch on which the snake had been sitting. If he could not, then there was nothing that he could do. They would simply have to warn the orphans to stay away from that tree for the time being.

“Just climb up there and hit it,” whispered Mma Potokwane. “Look! There it is. It is not moving now.”

“I cannot go up there,” protested Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “If I get too close, it could bite me.” He shuddered as he spoke. These green tree snakes, boomslangs they called them, were amongst the most poisonous snakes, worse even than the mambas, some people said, because they had no serum in Botswana to deal with their bite. They had to telephone through to South Africa to get supplies of it if somebody was bitten.

“But you must climb up,” urged Mma Potokwane. “Otherwise, it will get away.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at her, as if to confirm the order. He looked for some sign that she did not really mean this, but there was none. He could not climb up the tree, into the snake’s domain; he simply could not.