BESSIE HEAD: When Rain Clouds Gather Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it. Makhaya stood up at last, sickened by the ceaseless clack, clack of the vultures' beaks. Away from the little hut and the vultures was the endless, dead vista of scorched earth and twisted dry thornbush. He leaned against a dead tree and closed his eyes, all his capacity for thought slowly seeping out of him. This bush on all sides was the most awful life imaginable, and it occurred to Makhaya that it must have been this unrelieved, heavy isolation which had driven the lively-minded Dinorego out of the cattle business. Yet thousands of people lived like this, like trees, in all the lonely wastes of Africa, cut off even from communication with their own selves. Was it any wonder that life stood still if a man became a tree? Therefore, he, Makhaya, 10 could run so far in search of peace, but it was contact with other living beings that a man needed most. Maybe even Utopias were just trees. Maybe. Maybe he walked around in hopeless circles, but at least he was attempting to reach up to a life beyond the morass in which all black men lived. Most men were waiting for the politicians to sort out their private agonies. 15 At this point he ceased thinking altogether, and the sun passed its topmost peak in the sky and began sinking towards the horizon. At about three o'clock Gilbert returned with the police officer George Appleby-Smith and a doctor. Makhaya sat in the car drinking a little water and eating food which Gilbert had brought along, while the policeman and doctor made 20 their reports. Gilbert also sat in the car but he kept silent, too. Eventually the doctor came out of the hut and walked towards the car. 'I'd say the poor little fellow died of malnutrition,' he said. He kept quiet a moment, screwed up his eyes, and looked away. The hospitals were full of children who died in the posture of the little boy in 25 the hut, their knees cramped up to their chins, their bony fingers curled into their palms like steel claws. Most of those who survived would be mental defectives or cripples – while this little boy had mercifully died. 'The policeman wants to know if it's all right to bury the boy here,' he added quietly. 30 Only Makhaya moved. 'I'll accept responsibility for that,' he said. He turned round and picked up a small can of petrol, jumped out of the car, and walked to the hut. George Appleby-Smith stood in the dark hut, staring at the little heap of bones, with an expressionless face. All these sights were supposed to be all in a day's work to him. But he stored these experiences 35 away to give him the courage to run his area the way he thought it ought to be run, even to befriending 'security risks' like Makhaya. All those authorities had kicked up such a dust about his allowing a 'security risk' to settle in Golema Mmidi, but they never had occasion to come out into the bush to see how children died, while he, George, saw everything, every 40 day. He turned towards Makhaya with one of those very rare smiles. 'Hullo, Makhaya,' he said. ‘You settling down?' What makes this extract so sad? Remember to support your answer by close reference to the writing.