Mrs. Obuabang had screamed when the masked man shot their dog, and Mr. Obuabang grabbed his baseball bat and took a deep breath to go out the door. This was bad. This was SO bad! The children were sleeping on either side of the hallway, and a stray bullet could easily stop their fragile little lives. Even worse, if Mr. O died, they might sell the house and go back to live with Mrs O’s parents! That house had no room for me! No, this was MY home and these were MY people.

It took only a moment for those thoughts to scream through my mind before I bared my teeth and launched at the intruder. I meant to kill him, but being unaccustomed to combat I accidentally pushed him too hard. He slammed into the wall putting a head-shaped hole in the drywall and cracking one of the studs behind it. He fell limply to the floor and lay there breathing but totally unconscious. People in the movies have all this time to chatter and call police when the bad person is knocked out, but real knockouts don’t last that long. I knew that, of course, so I zipped into Mrs. O’s room and grabbed the tie from her bathrobe. Hogtying the intruder took only a moment and my chest was still heaving from adrenaline when I looked up at the horrified faces of my host family.

Apparently Ghana does not have boggarts. I learned that very quickly when they started screaming “demon!” and trying to hit me with the bat. We boggarts are very quick, and very strong, but stainless steel is close enough to cold iron that it’s rather inconvenient. “Stop!” I shrieked as I dodged once and then again. “Stupid humans I’m TRYING to help you!”

By the grace of God, little Amma came out of her room and her scream stopped Mr. O in his tracks. She was only 4 and still young enough to see me under normal conditions. We played often and her mother thought I was the imaginary friend. Amma ran over to me and put her chubby little arms around my neck, “Daddy! No! Don’t hurt Buggy!” She shrieked it right into my ear. Being just a young human, she was had been unable to pronounce “Boggart” when we first met, so she always called me Buggy.

Her father stopped and told her to get away from me. His eyes were so round I thought they might pop out of his head. She glared at him with the ferocity of a very small lioness and said, “No!” “Ahem” I interrupted, “Perhaps I can explain if you would just put down the bat for a moment?” He started to lower the bat when the sound of sirens cut through the air. In the fury of the moment we had both forgotten about the original problem. The original problem was awake now and staring at me with his mouth hanging open. Right. Gesturing at the hog-tied intruder I said, “Let’s deal with this first and then I promise I’ll explain.”