Water Wahala by Isaac Neequaye

Kweku Kyere whistled an old hi-life tune as he shut the door and sauntered into his living room. Agyapomaa was slouched in front of the TV watching a sitcom. It was evident she hadn’t been home long; she was still dressed in her work clothes. “Hello Sweetie, how did your day go?” he called across to her cheerily. She shifted her attention from the TV and smiled at him. “It went well. And how was it at Don’s Place?” A grin peeked out and slowly spread across Kweku’s face as he placed his briefcase on the dining table. Agyapomaa was always curious about how he spent his Friday evenings before getting home. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

This story has been selected for the StoryTime anthology African Roar 2011, please go to the African Roar site for more info.

Water Wahala was written by Isaac Neequaye.

Copyright © Isaac Neequaye 2010.

Though born in Tamale, the capital of Ghana’s Northern Region, Isaac Neequaye spent the greater part of his formative years in Kumasi, where his father taught at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Secondary education took him to Accra and then back to Kumasi again, where he graduated from the electrical engineering programme at KNUST in 1991.


Many people characterise life on a university campus as a sheltered one, but Isaac admits wishing he could expose his family to similar experiences now. It wasn’t apparent then, but the KNUST of those days was really idyllic.


His father, a surveyor, travelled often, sometimes taking the family along, and Isaac credits his love of travelling and sightseeing to these early experiences. During the early 80s his family sojourned for a while in Nigeria, and there was a time that it felt as if he was permanently in transit. Many such journeys—involving countless hours of travel, crossing borders, dealing with border guards and gendarmes, exposure to foreign cultures and people, who sometimes understood English differently—have shaped his outlook.


Isaac admits awareness about his ability to write well given the generous praise of his teachers when younger. But it was the affirmation of friends and peers that finally pushed him to take up his pen. It was time to discover whether his talents were applicable to other genres besides technical documentation.


Getting to this point has involved surmounting very daunting obstacles, given that most of his career has been spent honing his technical writing skills. “I don’t consider my creative voice and style fully formed yet, but I am now bolder to explore different experiences and projects. For me writing is also somewhat cathartic. I’ve gotten so fed up with a lot of the nonsense I observe around me and have come to realise that the key to weathering it all is perspective. So I try to see the humour in what goes on around me, peek behind the surface, try to walk a couple of yards in my subject’s shoes, and not rush to condemn or write them off.”


Isaac is a very new writer and hopes readers will like his work. As such he is eagerly looking forward to constructive feedback.

When the King of Sungura Died by Murenga Joseph Chikowero

I almost laughed at my stupidity. How could I have missed the house all this time when it stood right here just off the gravel road? I had spent half the day driving around this village only for a little boy to stop and ask me what I was looking for. Yes, he knew the home I was looking for.


Just a few days before, I had convinced my editor that I was about to crack the mystery of the late singer’s family. For a whole month after King TJ, real name Tiyanjana Jimalo, the undisputed master of our Sungura music, died, no one heard anything about his family, in particular his wife and children, itself an unusual thing in our society where both official wives and small houses – the unofficial wives - and their children were known to quickly emerge from the woodwork and descend on the dead man’s estate like hungry hyenas. But here I was at the late singer’s mysterious rural home where I would pen the story that would make me famous.

This seeming absence of the late singer’s family had generated myths and even as I walked behind the little boy, several conspiracy theories still swirled in around our ghettoes where teary diehard fans played King TJ’s songs on massive ghetto-blasters and cried even harder. Even my own paper, The Town Crier, ran a story that the mysterious family had reportedly discarded the elegant coffin from the funeral home and then proceeded to secretly bury our musical king in a traditional Chewa mat. It was even said the burial was announced days after the event. They are hiding somewhere or busy taking back all the money to Malawi, a colleague said helpfully. Suddenly everyone became an expert on Chewa culture and its supposed mysteries.

Although The Town Crier had been in existence for over a hundred years already, it still shamelessly profited from sensational stories about certain people in our ghettoes that our government called aliens. And it was common knowledge that the late King TJ was of Malawian origin. Yes, one of those despicable Chewa-speaking-not-so-intelligent types who walked the whole length of the railway line from hunger-scoured Blantyre to our bounteous Harare. But because King TJ had strummed his way into our hearts over the years, we had conveniently forgotten that he was one of them.In a flash of inspiration, I had walked into my editor’s office and laid out my plan. I surprised even the veterans when a battered car was released for my special assignment. After three days of working my sources at three different drinking holes, I knew something that would knock the breath out of every resident of the city on Friday when our weekend edition hit the streets. Someone knew where King TJ’s wife was hiding, clearly distressed and in mourning still. And yes, my name would be perched up there at the very top of the coveted front page when our famous Friday edition hit the streets. My fame was guaranteed. It wouldn’t matter that I was still a cub reporter.

Perhaps sensing the possibility of a free meal, the little boy who had eventually led me to this home was about to accompany me all the way into the widow's spacious sitting room when I shooed him away. In my excitement I considered giving him my black golf cap as compensation for his unsolicited efforts but remembered that it wasn't everyday that I managed to acquire a new golf cap. In any case I was already seeing myself as the new Tiger Woods of the investigative desk at The Town Crier. And Tiger Woods must always wear his cap of power.

With this story I would wave goodbye to the half-life of the trainee journalist. The cub journalist’s life fitted me as a stiff cowhide might fit a weary sleeper. What sane person could enjoy attending staid council meetings where old men in colonial-style suits still went through the motions of working for the city’s residents and congratulated each other as they passed resolution after resolution even as piles of uncollected garbage threatened to spill into their very meeting chambers? Until my luck turned three days ago, Nakai, my fiancée, had even hinted I had begun to walk like one of those ancient councillors. In fact I have no respect for those old bastards at all. If I had my way I would bind those stinking thieves hand and foot and drag them along our potholed roads to the courts. Who could respect grey-haired men who still dyed their hair pitch-black and wanted us all to imagine they were still sprightly young men? Anyway, here was my chance to make a clean break. I wouldn't even have to buy that chain-smoking editor a drop of beer to be confirmed as a substantive reporter with my own telephone line, my own computer with a secret password and probably even a new cellphone.


I surveyed the scene one more time: Here was one of those African rural homes that don’t make it into tourist brochures because tourists reportedly want to see only round, grass-and-stick huts that made you wonder how people get inside them let alone stretch out and sleep. I wouldn’t have been disappointed to spend my last years here with Nakai – and a fair sprinkling of doting grandchildren. Then I snapped back to reality, scared by the very idea of imagining Nakai, that buxom black beauty, as a grandmother. Before me was this simple but royal homestead. Even with the faded light blue paint, it wasn't hard to imagine our late king of Sungura music cooling off here on the odd midweek day when he wasn't booked to perform in one of our city’s ubiquitous nightclubs where minimum-wage factory workers lucky enough to have jobs still mingled with nouveau riche roadside fuel dealers and danced their sorrows away with startling vigour. Occasionally, these revellers’ tragicomic adventures made it into our Friday edition especially if one of them fainted or even died on the dance floor from sheer exhaustion.

When I saw the late King TJ’s widow come out to greet me I almost whipped out my prized Nikon camera but quickly scolded myself for such a hasty thought. Nothing says “amateur” louder than a journalist who rattles his source with an unexpected flash of the camera. You always got a better story if you kept your cool and let your news source relax. Let him unwind, stretch out his legs and if possible, take a long pull of something mildly alcoholic. That’s what they still taught at the Polytechnic where I had graduated only a year before.

I quickly stuffed my baseball cap under my armpit while simultaneously extending my right hand towards the widow. I made a point to hold my own right hand near the wrist, the way you see our elders do at sombre ceremonies where everyone speaks in deliberate near-whispers. A light brown palm was deposited inside my large dark brown one and I shook it firmly as our society expected of murume chaiye, a real man. A real man didn’t shake hands with a woman, no matter who she was. A real man seized a woman’s limp hand a shook it vigorously two or three times before releasing it. I did my best not to look at the person at the other end of the hand for tradition dictates that he who has been bereaved cannot be looked straight in the eye. I was very satisfied with my familiarity with these rituals and for a second I wished there was a third person watching at a distance, ideally with a Nikon camera.

“Please come in mukuwasha,” she said, addressing me as her son-in-law as often happens in such situations. “We can't stand in this roasting sun like this,” the woman added as she turned and headed towards the open doorway of the sitting room.

Even without looking her in the eye, it wasn’t difficult to notice that she was wearing a bright crimson dress and nothing at all on her head, hardly the appearance of a woman who had just lost a famous husband. But who knew with these aliens, these Malawians? Everything they did was so secretive. I cast the thought aside and settled more comfortably in the modest but neat couch. No prominently displayed photos of King TJ anywhere. But rural people do not always display family pictures, I cautioned myself.

“Please sit down mukuwasha,” a thin voice was saying though I had already chosen a spot for myself.

No matter what I did these days, I always found myself taking a seat that faced the door, a result of reading American detective novels where the hero sometimes surprised the villain with a shot fired from the hip.

Once we were both seated, I rose again to shake her hand. Again she surrendered her palm and I held it and shook it once or twice the way our elders do when expressing sadness over another’s loss. “Aah, these stories of destruction, mother,” I muttered just above a whisper, voice properly tuned to capture what I hoped was true sadness on my part. Although I sometimes pretended to be a city slicker those days, I still remembered that death was never mentioned by name in the face of the bereaved.

“Hmm, they were seen, my son,” she responded after a reasonable pause. I eased back into my couch and the woman did the same, elaborately gathering the hems of her ankle-length dress to cover even her naked feet. It was obvious she had welcomed hundreds of friends and relatives who had travelled great distances to share her loss of a husband.

After a dignified silence, the woman cupped her palms, clapped twice and went out towards the grass-thatched kitchen. I listened to the retreating footfalls and laid down my camera bag. It was important to appear relaxed. And appearances were everything. Or, as one of my favourite advertising slogans said, “What’s power without control?” Soon the woman returned, slightly bent at the waist on account of a heavy tray of food that she was carrying.

“Eat, my son,” she said after laying her burden on a small table that she pushed towards my feet. “I’m sure you have come from afar,” she added, her way of asking who I was.

I personally preferred mukuwasha but I didn’t protest. But I wasn’t going to dig into her food before she knew who she was dealing with. I carefully opened my left shirt pocket to produce a neat, laminated ID, the kind that every journalist at The Town Crier flashed all over town. For a brief moment, I glanced at my intelligent smile on the card. That was my power smile. It was something between a smirk and a proper smile. Nakai thought I had just bared only my upper teeth which made me look like a walrus. But I was convinced Nakai had become jaded by the hustle of the city. Let me observe this true African woman here who, despite the untold wealth of her late husband, had remained anchored in our timeless rural culture, even if she was probably a Malawian like her late husband. I tilted my face a little just to confirm that she was impressed.

“Oh, you are with The Town Crier? What brings you here?” she asked quickly in genuine, pleasant surprise.

Forgetting tradition for the second time that afternoon, I couldn't help observing that some of her front teeth had an irregular arrangement which probably accounted for the sweet, hissing sounds that emerged each time she spoke. It also made me wish we were not talking about death because I would have wanted her to see her smile.

“Yes. I’m interested in the story of your late husband,” I remembered her question. “People out there in the city are very curious about how he lived, you know, his private life and perhaps the circumstances of his death,” I said, dipping a spoon into the mound of rice. "The story behind your husband, you know, everyone in town wants to hear it from someone who actually served him sadza and chicken. When he was home, that is,” I added rather unwisely and immediately regretted it.

But she didn't seem to mind at all. I began to eat in earnest. She seemed to be wrestling with her thoughts for a while. Like a charming investigator, I enjoyed my food as if I had forgotten all about my assignment. I crushed a chicken thighbone, closed one eye as I sucked at its sweet marrow, sweet as only a rural “roadrunner” chicken’s marrow can be.

To the widow I said, “Everyone is going to read this story and of course there will be a picture of you, perhaps on the front page itself. In fact I will tell the page designers to use two pictures.”

“Yes,” she turned towards the window for a moment and the afternoon sunlight poured across her face.

I made a mental note to ask her to sit on that couch and pose just like that for a photo that would rule the front page come Friday. Our ghetto readers love sad, beautiful widows. This would be the story for me and I made up my mind that I would fight the various editors to have them spare the front page the usual political drivel for just one day. What kind of reader would choose the story of a politician in a British colonial-style suit officially opening a toilet at a rural growth point over a still-beautiful widow of our late king of Sungura music telling her own side of the story to a rising eagle of investigative journalism?

Eventually I told her about my tape recorder and she agreed to let me record the interview. In due course we began and true to my word, I restricted my questions to purely domestic aspects of her late husband.

Later I took out my prized Nikon camera.

“One last question. Exactly how did your husband die? You know how people talk these days. Every “long illness” is taken to mean only one thing as if people didn’t die after suffering long illnesses before AIDS was poured down the well,” I said, proud to have used a phrase from one of the late King TJ’s songs.

“No, my husband died after a very short time. You know, by the time we arranged to take him to the hospital, I was even scared of feeling his heartbeat because I looked at those unblinking eyes and knew the worst had happened.”

I scribbled furiously into my notebook even as the tape recorder rolled quietly.

“So these stories that he got paralysed while... uh... you know, on top of another woman and what not... are totally false?” I asked, both ashamed of myself and yet proud that for the first time I had actually mentioned sexual activity with a woman who wasn’t Nakai.

“What are you talking about, my son?” she shot back immediately.

I stared at her like a rabbit frozen by the full glare of a car’s lights.

“It will be two years come next week but I still remember everything clearly. My husband fell off my neighbour’s rooftop. I was passing him the bundles of thatch grass so I should know.”

My shoulders sagged. I stared at a spot between my feet for what felt like hours. So I had driven these two hundred miles into this God forsaken place to hear the story of a villager who had fallen off a rooftop some two years ago? Then an idea hit me.

“Do you have a black dress and doek?”

“Of course,” she said, already on her feet.

In a few minutes she was back in the traditional black mourning dress complete with a doek, the headtie that our society still expected our women to wear at relevant occasions. I furiously snapped six or seven pictures of this village woman. Perhaps she knew she would be the late King TJ’s widow for as long as someone called my editor to say my story was one giant hoax. But I was beyond caring. One widow is as good as any. After all, this woman has also lost a husband.

“Do make a point to buy the Friday paper. Your picture will be on the front page,” I said, gathering the tools of my trade.

The woman looked at me the way Judas Iscariot might have looked at Jesus on the way to Jerusalem. We knew each other’s secrets and the sensation was sweeter than the dripping white honeycomb that I used to eat as a herd-boy right at the beehive even as furious bees swarmed around my head.

By the time I reached my battered car by the roadside, I had what I thought was a good plan. By the time the first phone call questioning the truth of my story reached my editor, I would be a legend. I would have my moment of glory. There was always the possibility of resigning before they actually fired me and then use the resignation package to start a new life in Botswana with Nakai. Or just become a living legend in the pubs by embellishing and pushing this story as my very own imaginative invention of the life and times of King TJ. That way I would only need to stop combing my hair, design and wear my own clothes, carry a large bag full of old books everywhere to be perceived as yet another victim of corporate and government inflexibility. Yes, there was a good possibility of free beer down the road from an ever-expanding circle of admirers.

“Your Nike cap is nice, mukoma.”

I almost jumped out of my skin. It was that boy again, lurking in the evening gloom. All this time I had been told by my own mother that I am an only child but now this silly boy was unilaterally declaring himself my small brother!
“In what grade are you?” I asked rather pointlessly.

“Not grade, mukoma. Form Three. Things are not always the way they look. That’s the kind of cap that Tiger Woods wears, right mukoma?”

It was really Nakai who had paid for the cap but in a flash, my Tiger Woods power cap was flying towards the little boy who caught it by sticking a finger right under it. I didn’t want to think about it. I started the car and looked out one more time. The little boy had decided the best way to wear my Tiger Woods cap was backwards.

“Greet them in the city for us, mukoma,” he said with a brief wave and began to walk towards a narrow footpath, a self-satisfied whistle that sounded oddly like one of King TJ’s hit songs trailing him.

I stuck my head outside and listened some more. Yes, that was it; one of those intoxicating Chewa songs that drive our non-Chewa people crazy without ridding them of their prejudice.

When the King of Sungura Died was written by Murenga Joseph Chikowero.

Copyright © Murenga Joseph Chikowero 2010.

Murenga Joseph Chikowero is a descendant of great Chief Chiwashira of whom many legends are told. Joseph was born in 1977 at the peak of the war in Mhondoro-Ngezi, Zimbabwe. Because of the intensity of the armed conflict, his family temporarily relocated to Harare’s Geneva Section of Highfield high density suburb where his father worked for a cotton ginnery.

He attended schools in both Mhondoro-Ngezi and Guruve in the extreme north of the country. He credits his interest in the power of the word, whether written or spoken, to his Grades 3-6 teacher, Mrs. Ncube. Later, he moved to Harare for high school.

At the University of Zimbabwe, Joseph had the unique opportunity of working with talented writer-scholar-philosophers such as the famed T.K. Tsodzo, Anthony Chennells, Maurice Vambe, Tim McLoughlin and Memory Chirere, among others. He graduated with an Honours degree in English before finishing an MA in English in 2002.

He taught Literature in English and English Language in high school and worked for the private media before joining the Zimbabwe Open University, teaching English and Communication studies.

Presently, Joseph is in the US where he is studying for a PhD in African Literature and Film at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Among a host of influences, Joseph cites Dambudzo Marechera, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Phaswane Mpe as a key sources of inspiration.

Joseph has a novel in progress which explores growing up in the 80s and 90s in Zimbabwe. His stories seek to pry open the silences of Zimbabwe’s post-independence history and the place of the individual and her community in what is often a violent situation. He believes there is enough talent in the ‘lost generation’ that was displaced by various forces in Zimbabwe’s recent past to produce the new Dambudzo Marechera.

Joseph can be contacted at chikowero@gmail.com

Missing A Thing of Beauty by Abigail George

I have given up on despising my mother. I do not have enough energy as I used to when I was much younger to take her on. Her bravado, her innuendo, all her vanities and subtleties I leave them well alone. She is still selfless, giving and elegant to the outside world but to me she is cold, composed and emotionally uninvolved in daily matters of the household. Perhaps, I think to myself, I am not what she expected.I have given up on despising my mother. I do not have enough energy as I used to when I was much younger to take her on. Her bravado, her innuendo, all her vanities and subtleties I leave them well alone.

She is still selfless, giving and elegant to the outside world but to me she is cold, composed and emotionally uninvolved in daily matters of the household. Perhaps, I think to myself, I am not what she expected. But because of the work I do now as a caregiver at a Hospice, at the end of a long, uneventful and mostly predictable day we have something to talk about. At last I am able to do something that I wasn’t able to do as a child, as a teenager, an adolescent and a young woman. I draw her out of her shell and she begins to talk with authority. It is even pleasant being in her company like this and I can sit back and imagine that perhaps when she was in high school I could have been her friend. My mother’s whole demeanour changes to one which is accepting of unscrupulous behaviour when my brother Eliot comes to visit. She is kinder and more patient with him. She is more loving towards him than she ever is with me in company. Everything is less of a drama when he comes.

He never brings his wife because she sees me as the lowest of the low. All in a class of my own. I am a working class stooge. His wife is sophisticated - a hedonist. She is beautiful and elegant and her nails resemble the talons of a bird of prey. Her name is Devi and she is an attorney and works downtown in Port Elizabeth. We never see much of their daughters; my mother calls them ‘the girls’ - twins Rooka and Trusha, who are six years old now. It is always ‘how are the girls, Eliot?’

I never seem to hear the end of it. How brilliant they are? What they are learning at school? How they are progressing with their swimming lessons? He usually stays for lunch and we talk and swap character assassinations about the people we work with. My brother works in a bank as a credit risk analyst. His family seem to me to be part of the other world he inhabits when he leaves us. A world in which poker, drinking spirits, clubs, bars and restaurants, dinner parties is seen as the socially acceptable way of life.

The cigarette smoke from his mouth nestles gravely in the air. My brother is slender and handsome. He has deep, dark brown eyes that have made many a girl’s heart melt into euphoria when he was in high school. He is still friends with some of these women. He has always been admired since the time when he was young by everyone he came into contact with.

Today my mother admires his new, top-of-the-line car. It is very posh.

I found words like ‘bilateral symmetry’ and ‘mitochondria’ enticing and irresistible at school not the opposite sex. I was always reading constantly with a nose in a book when I was growing up. Sometimes it seems as if little has changed between the gap of my youth and my young adult life. I was still quiet and shy.

“I wish you would stop hiding in yesterday.” My mother would drawl complacently. “Yesterday is gone and the sooner you come to terms with that the better. Look at me. Look at what I am capable of doing at my age. You’ll be so much healthier. Your outlook on life will be so much more positive.

Why don’t you go out and find people of your own age to engage with. Interact with people who share the same ideas as you. Mark my words you’ll start to have fun and enjoy life. You always sound depressed and stressed out about something. You are always so negative. The trouble with you is that you think the world owes you something.”

It irritated me more than anything to have her lecture me at thirty but I said nothing. As children, my brother and I had learnt to deal with our mother as little as possible. She just wasn’t worth the trouble bothering her about our school assignments or packed lunches or supper. I am still a very careful, very efficient person but I would not say I am beyond caring.


In the mean time the man I had been caring for - Harry Mahola - was brilliant but his family had abandoned him. His wife had seen him as weak and his children as a dilettante. His children saw him as playing at being a grown up and a family man. He was the parent who always made a joke out of a family crisis or the prankster and his wife was the disciplinarian.

So eventually his wife packed her bags, divorced him and moved to another country with their young children.

He had pancreatic cancer. It was the reason why he had come to be in the Hospice. He had nowhere else to go to die. He had been a writer once upon a time ago and had written important books that were well received by reviewers but sold poorly. He didn’t write anymore because he felt rejected by his contemporaries and he didn’t feel inspired anymore to write about the things that had happened to him personally in the past. It just made him feel sad and frustrated that there was nothing he could do to change the past history and legacy of Apartheid, racism and prejudice. He himself was poor - he had made next to nothing out of royalties for the books he had written - and time and time again this came up in the discussions we would have when we played rummy or scrabble or chess or when we chatted briefly during the day.

“What did you do?” I asked him lightly.

“I used to write stories.”

“Books?”

“Yes, sometimes poetry as well. But mostly stories about the struggle of the dispossessed.”

At one time he had dreams inside his head of wanting to be an actor in Hollywood films instead he fled the country soon after the Group Areas Act was enforced and lived in exile in Botswana and Tanzania.

One day I came into the room and he was sitting up right in the bed.
“Is anything the matter?” I asked him.

“I have a son and a daughter but I do not have contact with them. My ex-wife is a doctor and she lives in Canada. I have no family here but this is still my home. Have you read Bessie Head’s Maru? It is quite unlike any other book I have ever read.” He glanced at me quickly to see if I was listening. “I hope you don’t get tired or bored listening to the ramblings of an old man.”

I smiled. We became firm friends after that. It was very simple. We were two like-minded individuals.

Harry said later that on some days he just felt sick of feeling sick and tired. When the pain came - as it often did later on in those moments we shared - he imagined that he was floating on air without a precipice in sight. He called it ‘mind over the physical pain’ of his body. The pills I gave him made him feel woozy and light-headed.


In the hospice there are many ancient lives. Personalities are reborn to more assertive and less aggressive memories. A gentler identity unfolds. My identity became marked each day by the unmistakeable origins of love for the in-patients of this place.

“You do realise of course that the tone of your voice changes when you speak about him. Are you in love with him?”

I stared at my mother coldly before I answered her.

“Why do you have to be so cruel and insensitive?”

“I only have your best interest at heart, silly girl. What if this man, who is not only sick and elderly, thinks that this coloured girl is in love with him? All hell will break loose with your superiors and then where will you be left when you cannot get a proper recommendation. What will happen to your squeaky clean reputation that you are so proud of.”

“He is frail. He is dying.”

“Men and women can never truly be friends. Listen to me. You can do much better than that, Lana. If it’s a friendship you want, join Bible study or the choir at the church. I’ve been after you for years to go to the Anglican church and mix with people you own age and here you go and get involved with someone who isn’t even rich, who hasn’t got a proper career even and on top of all that he just another blerrie darkie, nogal.”

I keep waiting for her to turn around and see it from my point of view. I keep waiting for my mother to say, “Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I’m to blame.” Because for so long in this environment that I’ve been living in I’ve sustained the belief that I am unlovable, no unlikeable. He found my daily bulletins about celebrities, trivia and my anecdotes about this one and that one interesting and I believed in some way it motivated him as well to think that his life still had the semblance of humanity.


He encouraged me to read more African writers. “Don’t be scared, or put off. Jump right in.” He gave me names that no matter how hard I tried to pronounce, I could not. He was patient, kind and endured my questioning like a drill sergeant. When he was tired, I went in search of other terminally ill patients and read to them or helped them write letters to their grandchildren.

He was always encouraging me to read books by some of the most innovative minds of my generation. He suggested I read writers whose books had won international awards and praise from critics across the board internationally. Once I remembered he had suggested I read the ‘The famished road’ by the celebrated Nigerian writer Ben Okri that won an important British literary award - the Booker prize.

“Tell me about your parents.”

“My mother is Afrikaans-speaking and she comes from Ladysmith originally but then her family moved to Johannesburg and her father became a police man. After that he worked in a factory.”

You were so happy and playful. You couldn’t stop laughing and because you were laughing I had to laugh too.

“Do you look like her, your mother, I mean?”

“I don’t know. I think I look more like my father because I have much more of his personality and character in me moulded together.”

“Such big words. Your father then is serious, he has a highly developed sense of humour and he is of the African intelligentsia persuasion.”

“Too many compliments and I am afraid that I am not deserving of any.”

“In my experience and I am forty-nine – of course infinitely wiser than you.”

“Of course.” I said, playing along and beginning to relax and enjoy this game immensely.

“People who lack knowledge will feel they are not deserving, not worthy and where there is no knowledge, people are destroyed. Their very livelihood and this is why I am telling you this. I know you will listen to me. You are a smart girl.” His eyes sparkled.

“You are a still a girl. So, so young. You’ve given up on life so quickly, in a heartbeat. You haven’t even deduced whether or not there is a quickening pulse. Is there life there? Don’t you think I’ve watched you all these days that you’ve been able to take care of me. The cigarettes you light one after the other when you go on a break.”

He had hit a nerve and I hated being judged.

“Let me finish before you go.” I had come into his room to fetch the tray upon which his lunch had been laid served.

“You have your whole future ahead of you and I know what your heart truly desires to do but you have been afraid to commit to it. One word. Write. You are a born writer if ever I saw one. The stories you regaled me with. I knew you had serious talent from the very first time we spoke.”

It could have been the ranting of someone who had seen the light but I never stopped to wonder why he had spoken to me with such vibrancy and energy – more so than I had ever seen him with before.

The day you died I was at your bedside. Your forehead felt ancient and cool to the touch. I stayed until the coroner came and they lifted your body up off the bed onto a stretcher with speedy efficiency. You said I could have your copies of Hemingway’s ‘A moveable feast’, Salinger’s ‘A catcher in the rye’, Arthur Nortje’s poetry anthology ‘Roots’,

I timed the miraculous cause and effect of the birth of our friendship with the disease.

“Most of us don’t tend to become as emotionally involved with our patients, as you did. But you’ll learn. Towards the end, it gets easier. Letting go is just a formality, there’s still the matter of denial, bereavement, grieving. Death is a process that gives way to yet a new and uninformed rebirth.” The matron leaned in towards her. “It changes something in here,” she pointed towards her heart, “and here.” The matron pointed towards her head. The last conversation we had was the day before you slipped away and lost consciousness.


After his death I tried to investigate the details of our relationship for the time I had known him. Later, much later after I discovered his books in nooks, in crannies, in second-hand bookshops, I was in awe of him. Now not only as a man but as a poet. His prowess with the pen superseded his gruff, arrogant manner. His protagonists were always aloof war heroes. They were always stunned by the shock and trauma of the horror and brutality of war or they played the aloof hero who defies estrangement and is welcomed with open arms into the inner circle of his family once again at a celebratory homecoming. The women in his books were often derided and castigated for making mistakes that cost them dearly. The characters in his books that were female did not think they were born only to be homemakers and lovers. Instead they were also tormented by mental illness or miscarriages, infertility, promiscuity, alcoholism and every disease, illness or generally every sickness known to man.

“Yes, by all means write.” my mother said.

“Where will you write? The problem is the space, you see. Will you have enough space?”

“I will write in my bedroom on my old typewriter and later I can invest in a computer when I need it.”

Finally she was happy at the prospect of change and at the appeal of progress in my life. I was so happy I could have kissed her but she would have been embarrassed.

“It will be a nice hobby. You’ll grow. You can do research at the library and you’ll go out more. I can help you with this. This will be so good for you.”

I realised there were finally endless possibilities that added meaning to life. There are two sides to every situation: grasping at a life line which will do you the world of good or gasping for air, coming up for air after realising the sea of life will not swallow you whole.

“What kind of writer are you going to be?”

My mother was always getting ahead of herself. But she was usually right. I didn’t see research as boredom and routine.

“I’m going to right about the struggle of the dispossessed.”

“What? I didn’t hear you?”

“I’m going to write about Africa.”

“That’s a start.”

I wait for her to say, “No matter what you decide to do, I’ll still be proud of you, no matter what.” But I can hear her walking away from me, down the passage, her interest that spurned her on before, or sparked her interest is gone. She puts the kettle on and feeds the cat.

I imagine Harry is still here.

Harry did I ever tell you about my father? About how much you remind me of him? He was a writer too and an activist in a subversive organisation called the Yu Chi Chan Club in the armed struggle. You remind me of his strength, his decency and his unrelenting resilience in the face of the adversity and injustice of Apartheid and the Group Areas Act.

Missing A Thing of Beauty was written by Abigail George.

Copyright © Abigail George 2010.

I am a writer of short stories, articles, personal essays, a memoirist, diarist, grant writer and poet who was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 1979. I studied film and television production for a short while at Newtown Film and Television School in Newtown, Johannesburg, South Africa which was followed by brief stints as a trainee at a production house, studying Business Administration through correspondence, Bible School at Word of Faith Christian Centre in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and studying creative writing through the Leisure Study Group’s Writing School via correspondence again.

I have been published widely in print and online in journals and magazines in South Africa namely Litnet and on Litnet’s Blog, Sun Belly Press, Botsotso, Carapace, New Contrast, Kotaz, Timbila, Echoes Literary Journal, Upbeat and Tribute and online in Africa in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Turkey and Zimbabwe and internationally in the United States, England, Finland and Canada.

I have received two grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg. In 2005 for a poetry anthology entitled, Africa, where art thou? and again in 2008 for manuscript development for a collection of short stories entitled, The Origins of Smoke and Mirrors. In 2010 I was published in the following anthologies; Poems for Haiti (Published by Poets Printery), Animal Antics, Soulfully Seeking (Published by the Poetry Institute of Africa) and the forthcoming African Roar 2011.

Longing for Home by Hajira Amla

Grace Chirima’s hard black boots crunched on the frozen ground below her. Breathing clouds of steam, she clutched her coat tighter about her as she walked through the shortcut next to the old church. At least it wasn’t raining today. I wonder what the weather is like back home today, she pondered. Would the tomatoes be ready to pick yet? It would still be a little longer before the mealies could be harvested. All the children would want to carry the watering cans, because it would mean that they could splash a little water on each other when Mhamha wasn’t looking. On hot days it was worth the risk of getting a scolding.

This story has been selected for the StoryTime anthology African Roar 2011, please go to the African Roar site for more info.

Longing for Home was written by Hajira Amla.

Copyright © Hajira Amla 2010.

Hajira Amla lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, and has had all sorts of interesting job titles; including musician, journalist, newspaper sub-editor, radio news anchor, and PRO. Born in England, she spent two years in the Seychelles before moving to South Africa in 1993.

Her own colourful past is a constant reminder to her that truth is stranger than fiction. She is afraid that if she ever published her memoirs, the Universe may suddenly collapse into a black hole. However, she has decided she is rather fond of chocolate and small furry animals, so the Earth is safe - for now.

Her writing often reflects the stark realities of life in a changing nation and throws a harsh spotlight on the widespread abuse of women and children in South Africa.

Garuba by Anengiyefa Alagoa (Part One)

Finally the tannoy crackled into life and the female voice announced to the crowded airport terminal that the flight to Jos was now ready for boarding. The flight had been delayed for 4 hours already and the announcement came as a relief to all the passengers on this flight, as we filed into a queue and were directed towards the Nigeria Airways aeroplane far across the tarmac that was to take us on this journey from Lagos Murtala Mohammed Airport.

I was excited. The moment had finally come when I was leaving home, going to that far-off place that I had always dreamt of. I was going to northern Nigeria where I had never been, for my one year of compulsory national youth service. It is the requirement for every new graduate of higher institutions in Nigeria to join the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) for one year of service to the nation. And it is the practice for 'youth corpers' to be posted to parts of the country different from where they originate, or where they had gone to school, college or university, the idea being to introduce young people to other parts of the country to which they had never been and which they would otherwise have no occasion to visit. I had been posted to Bauchi State, a place I'd only read about in geography books and heard about on the news. I had recently turned 21 and I was leaving home and I was bubbling with excitement. The nearest airport to Bauchi town was the one at Jos, about 120 km away. The plan was that I would fly to Jos and then complete the journey by bush taxi.

The Jos Plateau is a very scenic part of the country and the city of Jos is located right on the plateau itself. The landscape was all new to me, as I had never been in a highland area. I marvelled at the sight of those magnificent rocks and the magical broad open spaces that lay between them. Eucalyptus trees seemed to dominate wherever vegetation appeared. I know now that the weather was pleasantly cool, sub tropical. But at that time I thought Jos was cold, having lived all my life until then in the coastal, equatorial, steamy heat of Lagos. And it was with a sense of wonder that I sat in the city taxi travelling from Jos Airport across the city to the suburb known as Naraguta, where I would catch the bush taxi to Bauchi town.

It was about sunset. The flight from Lagos to Jos had lasted no more than an hour. But because the flight was late in departing from Lagos, we had arrived in Jos much later than had been expected. The journey to Bauchi from Jos would last another hour, that is, when I eventually got on the bush taxi. No matter, I thought, surely the NYSC must have an office open all night, in the event that youth corpers travelling from other parts of the country arrived at an odd hour.

It was the responsibility of the regional NYSC office to register youth corpers on arrival, accommodate them and manage their posting to whatever job they were assigned. I knew nobody in Bauchi. Indeed, I knew no one in the whole of the north of Nigeria. I was counting on the NYSC office in Bauchi being open this evening when I eventually arrived. But at the moment, I was too filled with wonder and excitement to direct my thoughts to what might happen. Or perhaps I was too afraid to even contemplate that the NYSC office might not be open at all when I would eventually arrive there later this evening.


Finally I was dropped off at the Bauchi Road motor park in Naraguta, Jos, from where I was to catch my bush taxi. There was a row of several taxis, all going to Bauchi. The bush taxi is a shared taxi that offers the opportunity of sitting in a confined space and in extreme close proximity with complete strangers, for hours at a time. These taxis are the veritable workhorse of the Nigerian highway, ferrying people from one city-centre to another, right across the land. But here, I could see that the taxis were in sort of a queue, taking it in turns to depart. No taxi could leave until the first one in the queue had departed, filled with passengers.

When I arrived at the motor park, the driver of the taxi at the front of the queue had taken my bags and placed them in the boot of the vehicle, alongside the luggage of the other passengers who were already sitting inside the taxi. It was a Peugeot station wagon, with three rows of seats. I was assigned one of the two seats at the rear of the vehicle. The front passenger seat was occupied by a middle-aged, very overweight northern Nigerian gentleman, who as I watched, bit furiously into the kola-nut in his hand, exposing teeth of a bright brown colour. In the middle row of three seats sat what seemed to me like a young family of three, the mother fussing about with her young child, seeing to it that the child was comfortable. Aside from my seat there was only one other empty seat in the taxi, the one next to mine in the rear section. So I assumed that there would be a few minutes to spare before the taxi could leave.

It was a whole new atmosphere here in northern Nigeria, where Hausa was the main language being spoken, a language of which I knew not a word. Rather than board the taxi straight away, I went instead a few metres to a little kiosk and bought a bottle of Coke to quench my thirst. The young lady at the kiosk had to ferret out the bottle with some difficulty from an icebox that was filled with drink bottles and stuffed with crushed ice. And as I walked back to the taxi, I heard someone call to me from behind.

"Excuse me please..." the male voice called out.

Instinctively, I knew this this voice was calling out to me and it was a pleasant surprise to hear someone speak in a language that I understood. So I turned around and saw this tall, dark young man staring at me, an uncertain look in his face. He was dressed in traditional Hausa garb, a sky blue embroidered caftan with matching trousers. On his head was a cap of the kind that is so typical of northern Nigerians, woven in a blue and white striated pattern. This man introduced himself as Abdulsalami. He was a student at the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, travelling from Zaria heading to Bauchi to visit with relatives, but had failed to do his sums properly and now found that he was a few Naira short. He needed some assistance to pay the fare to Bauchi and asked if I could be of help. Agreeing to assist him was easy. It was not that I had a lot of money myself, but I saw immediately that he was genuinely in need of help. He was decent, polite, and I thought that this could easily be me in his position seeking the help of a stranger. So together, Abdulsalami and I paid his fare to the driver of the taxi and got into the vehicle, both of us sitting side by side at the back. And so it was that for this journey into the unknown I had earned the company of a young man of about my age, who was native to this place. I was alone no longer.


As expected, the journey to Bauchi took just about an hour. When we arrived in the town it was already dark and as in most of the tropics, the transition from daylight to darkness had been brief, almost sudden. Bauchi is not a very large city when compared to Lagos. It is an old traditional Hausa settlement and I had read somewhere that there is an ancient adobe city wall surrounding the old city. With modern development, the city has spilled out over the wall and beyond it. And although the walled 'Old City' retains its traditional role and located within the city walls' embrace is the traditional heart of the city comprising of the Emir's palace and the Central Mosque, the city of Bauchi is now a state capital, the capital city of Bauchi State. As a result, political power has long shifted from within the confines of the old city wall to the ultra modern office-block complex that now houses the offices of the Bauchi State Government, located along a broad avenue just outside the city wall and close to a magnificent, ancient, but well preserved city gate that formed a part of the old wall. The expansive state governor's residence too, located nearby, is clear evidence that the Old City retains little of its power.

The road leading into Bauchi town from the direction of Jos was very wide and brightly lit. And it didn't feel as cold here in Bauchi as it did in Jos. Abdulsalami had explained that shortly after we left Jos, we had descended from the Jos Plateau and that we were now on the vast savannah, which covers almost the whole of northern Nigeria. In the bush taxi travelling from Jos, I had told Abdulsalami who I was, and explained why I was travelling to Bauchi. He said he knew where the NYSC offices are located and that the taxi would drive past the building. He suggested that it might be a good idea if we let the driver know, so that the driver would stop in front of the NYSC place and I could get off, to which I inclined my head in agreement. Abdulsalami then raised his voice and said a few words in Hausa to the driver, who grunted in acknowledgement.


When the driver eventually pulled up in front of the NYSC offices in Bauchi, it was already about 9pm. The street was brightly lit, as was every major road that I had seen so far in this town. But the NYSC building! There was not a single light in sight. Not an open window. Abdulsalami had pointed out the building to me as the driver pulled the taxi to a stop in front of it. And as he did so he must have seen the shock on my face, because he immediately decided to alight from the taxi with me, even though the stop at which he ought to have left the taxi was yet one kilometre further down the road.

I was in Bauchi, in a strange city, with all of my worldly possessions, late in the evening in front of a locked office building, with nowhere to go and no idea what to do next. I was thankful that Abdulsalami had chosen to leave the taxi and stay with me, because the task of rescuing me from this predicament now fell squarely upon him.

Taking in the situation as we stood on the pavement in front of the NYSC building, I could see that Abdulsalami was thinking hard. He must have felt he was somehow responsible for me, because shortly he started to speak. He informed me that his uncle whom he had come to Bauchi to visit lived not very far away from where we were. He suggested that we go to his uncle's house and stay there until the next morning when I would return to this NYSC office to get myself registered. Of course I welcomed this suggestion. I did not have too much of a choice after all. The only option that would have been left to me was for me to heft my luggage around town in a strange city, at night, trying to find lodgings that I could afford. And all of this in a language that I did not know! It was unsurprising then that I jumped at Abdulsalami's idea. So we set off, he and I, him helping me with my heavy bags. Abdulsalami flagged down a passing city taxi, which after some haggling in Hausa between him and the taxi driver, took us to his uncle's house in a part of town that I assumed was where all the important people lived. On the way there Abdulsalami told me that his uncle was the State Commissioner for something or the other, sort of like a state government minister.

No wonder then that the house was very nice, set in a beautiful arid garden. The north of Nigeria and especially the Savannah land is an arid zone that lends itself to arid gardening, where plants of the Aloe and Euphorbia families dominate. There was an amazing specimen of that stately tree Aloe ferox. I marvelled at the immense good taste in which this front garden had been created and how lovely it looked in the floodlighting set strategically among the various cacti and succulents. The taxi had set us down at the entrance gate, more than fifty metres from the main house. Walking through the garden and past the main house, Abdulsalami and I went straight to the back house, commonly referred to as the 'boys quarters', another fifty metres or so further back from the main house. A back house of this kind is usually accommodation provided for the domestic workers, the hired help who work in the main house. But in this case Abdulsalami's cousin, his uncle's son, had laid claim to one of its rooms.

It was into this room that we entered after Abdulsalami had unlocked the door. And although it was not a large room, my first impression was that it contained too many items of furniture. It was obvious that its occupier had gone to great lengths to prove to anyone who entered that he was not a servant in this place. Abdulsalami showed me around, the conveniences and such like, and then he left me and entered the main house to inform his relatives that he had arrived. I think he must have at the same time also told them that he had come with a visitor, because shortly afterwards he came back to the room accompanied by two younger teenage boys about thirteen or fourteen, who appeared eager to see who this person was who had accompanied their cousin to their home. They were friendly and I felt very welcome. Abdulsalami said supper was on its way and in the meantime I could freshen up if I wished. Of course it had been a long and eventful day, so I welcomed the opportunity to take a shower and change my clothes. Abdulsalami went back into his uncle's house with the two boys.

Returning to the room after my shower with only a towel draped around my waist, I saw that the door was ajar and there was someone inside. I was a stranger in this place and not wishing to upset anyone, I carefully knocked on the door and peeped inside to see who it was. There was someone inside the room, a man, but not one I had met before. He had his back to the door, but hearing the knock he turned around just as I entered. He was startled and seemed surprised to see me and this was understandable too, since he would not know who I was, or what I was doing here.

"Hello", I said. "I arrived a short while ago with Abdulsalami".

"Oh..?" was the man's reply. "I didn't know Abdulsalami was around..." the man said, his eyes lighting up suddenly, as he moved them from my face downwards to my naked chest and then to my bare feet. He looked back up into my face.

"I think he's just gone into the main house..." I stammered, struggling to maintain my composure and to pretend that I had not noticed how good looking this stranger was.

He smiled at me and then I saw how truly handsome this man was. I was naked under this towel wrapped around my waist and I felt a bit embarrassed that he was seeing me for the first time like this. But I just smiled back and extended my hand. Perhaps he sensed how I felt, because after shaking hands and while still smiling at each other he left the room, presumably so that I could get dressed, closing the door behind him. Not long after I had finished dressing, a knock sounded and the door opened. Abdulsalami returned accompanied by the same man. Abdulsalami introduced the man to me. This was his uncle's son, his cousin. And his name was Garuba.

Garuba and I shook hands, again, as I muttered to Abdulsalami that Garuba and I had already met. There was something in Garuba's eyes. And gosh! He was so handsome, you know, with those very fine facial features peculiar to the Fulani. Garuba was very well groomed. His curly jet-black hair was sharply cropped in a crew cut and from the way his hair sat it was obvious that he had recently been wearing a cap. His moustache was neatly trimmed and he had perfectly manicured fingernails.

A loud knock on the door and a woman entered carrying a tray on which was set a huge meal of rice and peanut beef stew, the aroma of which was heavenly. Having set the tray down on the carpeted floor, the woman, obviously one of the uncle's domestic workers, left as quickly as she had arrived without saying a word. She returned a few moments later with a pot of piping hot tea, which I was told was called chai, together with some mugs and then left again. No cutlery was provided and as is customary among the people of the north, all three of us sat on the floor around this tray of rice and beef and ate with our hands directly from the tray. The food was delicious and Garuba was very pleasant, as he politely showed me how to manipulate the rice and meat with my fingers.

Garuba stole glances at me during the meal and there was no doubt that he could see that I too was unable to keep my eyes from him as we sat on the floor facing each other, the tray of food between us. Looking up from the food, our eyes would meet again and again and it began to feel as if Abdulsalami was not even present with us, although now and again Garuba would say something in Hausa, perhaps just to keep Abdulsalami involved and engaged. At this meal the communication between Garuba and I was silent, but it was real and tangible. There was a warmth about him, in the way that he looked my way with that sparkle in his eyes when he smiled or laughed about something. He was smiling at me, I knew it. I saw the excitement in his eyes too, which I thought must mirror the excitement that I was sure he could see in mine...(To be continued).

Garuba was written by Anengiyefa Alagoa.


Copyright © Anengiyefa Alagoa 2010.

I grew up in a suburb of the city of Lagos, Nigeria in the 1970s and spent all of my childhood and formative years there. That city more than any other, is my home. I fulfilled my childhood ambition of becoming a lawyer when I was admitted to the Nigerian Bar sometime in the mid 1980s and went straight into law practice. But it was not very long before I became disillusioned with the system in Nigeria. I persevered for as long as I could, but seized the opportunity when it came to relocate to the UK in 1996. I have been living in London, UK since then and have since re qualified and been admitted to the Roll of Solicitors of England and Wales. I enjoy the challenges thrown my way in the work that I do and my profession is a big part of my life.



But then I've also discovered another love, a new found love of creative writing. In February 2009, I surrendered to a long held desire to start a weblog. In writing the blog I gradually drifted towards writing stories, episode by episode, making up the details as I went along. The stories I have written and the ones that are still at the embryonic stage in my mind are all based on real life experiences and situations, of myself personally or of others I have known. But the accounts are fictionalised.



I stumbled upon ST while on one of my web surfing expeditions. I was moved by the fact that several other African people were similarly motivated to write creatively such that I felt a compulsion to join this group of African writers. And I was pleasantly surprised when Ivor Hartmann read one of my scripts and thought it good enough for me to be admitted as a ST author. I have never had anything published previously, save for the odd contribution here and there to Nigerian and British newspapers and magazines, usually one strong opinion or the otherr. ST is the first venue at which my creative writing is published and I cannot say how pleasing this is. I know this is supposed to be an autobiography, but I was not going to let slip the chance of expressing my immense pleasure.