Good Luck, Anna Hibiscus!


 
 
 
 
 Chapter 1: Harmattan Garden
 Chapter 2: Double Trouble for Anna Hibiscus
 Chapter 3: Anna Hibiscus’s New Clothes
 Chapter 4: Good Luck, Anna Hibiscus
 
 Anna Hibiscus lives in Africa. Amazing Africa. In a country called Nigeria.
 She lives with her mother and her father; her grandmother and her grandfather; her aunties and her uncles; all of her many cousins; and her two baby brothers, Double and Trouble. They all live together in a big white house in the middle of a bright and beautiful garden!
 
 Anna Hibiscus loves the green of their garden. She loves the red and the yellow flowers that grow in the cool grass. She loves the leafy trees and their big, bright fruit. She loves the birds that sing in the branches and the lizards that run along the roots.
 Anna Hibiscus thinks that their garden must be the brightest and most beautiful garden in the whole city. Maybe the brightest and most beautiful garden in the whole country! Could it be the brightest and most beautiful garden in the whole of Africa? The rain thinks so! Every single evening, it showers the garden. The sun thinks so! Every single day, it smiles at the garden.
 
 But one morning, Anna Hibiscus woke up and the sun was not smiling through the bedroom window. “Where is the sun?” Anna asked in her croaky morning voice.
 Chocolate and Angel woke up. “The sun is gone!” Angel cried.
 Anna and Chocolate and Angel ran to the window to see. Angel was right: the sun had gone and the sky was not bright blue; it was cloudy brown! Anna Hibiscus looked down at the garden. The green leaves of the trees were brown. The green grass was brown. The red and yellow flowers were brown.
 
 “The garden is dead!” Anna Hibiscus opened her mouth and cried.
 Chocolate and Angel joined her in crying. Louder and louder they cried. Clarity and Joy, the big girl cousins, rushed into the bedroom.
 “Way-tin happen?” they shouted.
 Anna Hibiscus and Angel and Chocolate were crying too loud to speak. They pointed up to the hazy brown sky. They pointed down to the dusty brown garden. Clarity and Joy smiled and laughed and dried their small cousins’ tears.
 “It’s harmattan time!” Clarity said.
 “You no remember?” asked Joy. “Every year is de same thing. One harmattan wind blows over Sahara Desert. It blows de desert sand all the way down to our own country.”
 “An’ dat same sand is now covering the sky and the garden,” said Clarity. “The sun is not gone; it is only the sand that is covering it.”
 “Will the rain wash the sand off our garden?” sobbed Anna.
 “No-o,” said Clarity. “For the next four months, we will have no rain, only dusty sand and wind. After dat the rain go fall, the sand go finish, and the sun will shine again.”
 “But before that,” announced Joy, “Christmas!”
 Anna Hibiscus and Chocolate and Angel stopped crying. Christmas! Now they remembered the harmattan. It was always dry and dusty at Christmastime.
 Suddenly Anna Hibiscus was happy. Happy and excited. Because when Christmas came, she was going to Canada to play in the snow!
 Anna Hibiscus ran into her parents’ room. Double and Trouble were standing up in their crib, looking toward the window.
 “Christmas!” shouted Anna Hibiscus, clapping her hands. Double Trouble smiled and clapped their hands too. Clapping was their new best thing.
 Anna went to stand by their crib. She looked out of the window. “But before Christmas,” she sighed, “harmattan.” No sun and no rain. Only dry, dusty sand.
 
 Luckily for Anna Hibiscus’s family, there was a good well in the garden of the big white house. A good well full of clear, cold water. In the dry and thirsty harmattan months, the water was low. But it never ran dry.
 Every dry day, Anna Hibiscus drank all the clear, cold water that she wanted. And every dusty, hot evening, she was given one bucket of water to wash with.
 “One bucket is already a lot of water,” said Grandmother. “Be careful.”
 
 “When I was small, every harmattan, our well dry up,” said Grandfather. “We were grateful for one cup of water to wash ourselves.”
 
 Everybody in the big white house was careful. And everybody was grateful. More than this, everybody tried to leave some water in their bucket.
 Double and Trouble got half a bucket each. The water came up to their necks. Double Trouble sat for a long time in their buckets. It was the only time they were cool. It was the only time they were quiet!
 
 Anna Hibiscus stood in the bath with her bucket of water. She poured one big cool jug of water over her hot and dusty self. Ohhhh! She wanted to pour more, but she stopped. She soaped and then carefully rinsed herself with one and a half jugfuls of water. She was clean! And there was almost half of the cool water left! Anna Hibiscus got out of the bath. She was hot again already!
 
 
 Chocolate climbed into the bath next. She poured a jugful of water over herself both before she soaped and afterward. She too wanted to pour more; she too stopped. They both looked into her bucket. There was half left!
 Now it was Angel’s turn. Angel splashed cool jugfuls of water over herself one after another. More and more she poured. Ohhhh! Now she was not only clean; she was cool. Angel looked into her bucket. All the water was gone!
 
 Anna and Chocolate looked at Angel.
 “Come out! Come out!” Benz and Wonderful, their big boy cousins, banged on the door. “Grandfather is waiting for you!”
 “Hurry up! Hurry up!” shouted Clarity and Common Sense. “You are the last ones!”
 Anna Hibiscus and Chocolate and Angel quickly carried their buckets to the tank in the garden where the well