Flying Through Water: Part 3

by Mamle Wolo
In this novel, Sena, a 15-year-old boy from Ghana, tries to help his family get through a difficult time, but when he falls into the clutches of human traffickers, he must do everything he can to escape and return home.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Part 1: Chapters 1-6, Part 1: Chapters 7-12, Part 2, Part 3
15 words 11 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. bough
    any of the larger branches of a tree
    If I could break off some of the smaller branches and balance them across a fork in the lower boughs, I might be able to create a sleeping platform.
  2. myriad
    a large indefinite number
    The sky was ablaze with the myriad of their infinite glimmerings.
  3. endowed
    provided or supplied or equipped with
    And yet in nature’s heart I felt liberated and endowed with a splendor beyond anything humans could ever purchase.
  4. breadth
    the extent of something from side to side
    I walked the length and breadth of the island and was delighted to discover oil palm trees and wild cocoyams, both exciting new food sources, as well as different species of wild grass, some that I had never seen before, and lemongrass—which would help keep mosquitoes and other insects away.
  5. hew
    strike with an axe; cut down, strike
    I dismantled my sleeping nest to repurpose its branches and hewed off additional ones from nearby trees.
  6. stern
    the rear part of a ship
    We rowed for dear life, Baby Joe clinging to me in terror, but they caught up easily and bumped our stern hard with the prow of their boat.
  7. fibrous
    resembling or composed of elongated threadlike structures
    Then with a clay spoon I carefully extracted the orangey-red palm nuts from the boiling pot, used my sharp stone to scrape the softened pulp off the shells, gathered it together in a fibrous ball, and dropped it back into the soup.
  8. squabble
    argue over petty things
    I worked as fast as I could to get kernels for all of them, but I wasn’t fast enough, and I found myself laughing out loud as I watched them chase each other and squabble like mischievous children.
  9. lethargy
    weakness characterized by a lack of vitality or energy
    It turned away and began to slip down a different branch, but there was a decided lethargy in its movement, and I saw a bulge halfway along its body as its coils unfurled.
  10. undulate
    move in a wavy pattern or with a rising and falling motion
    I watched its hefty coils undulate down the tree trunk with astonishing grace and disappear into the bushes.
  11. turmoil
    violent agitation
    My thoughts flew into turmoil, my instinctive fear of the master taking hold, but as the boat came closer, I saw that it was no canoe but a proper motorboat.
  12. downy
    soft and fluffy, like small feathers
    Countless tufts of floaty fluff drifted in the air and water around me like downy little showers of blessing.
  13. lucid
    capable of thinking in a clear and consistent manner
    In a split second my mind grew lucid, and my heart started thumping.
  14. sensationalism
    the journalistic use of shocking subject matter
    “I saw some government people on TV saying it’s just exaggeration and sensationalism and what and what… you know them and their big words!”
  15. marooned
    cut off or left behind
    I imagined what we must look like right now—a half-naked, half-wild boy explaining riverine geography to a rapt audience of uniformed men in a boat marooned on the Volta Lake.
Created on Thu Sep 18 08:18:22 EDT 2025 (updated Mon Nov 10 10:33:03 EST 2025)

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