The Shady Taxi Driver by Hana Njau-Okolo

At dawn, Kamau drives out of the compound leaving his wife Wanjiku to attend to her daily affairs. He joins donkey-drawn rickshaws and oversize government vehicles, jockeying for dominance on the narrow two-lane arterial road in Rongai — a town where slow but steady growth hinges on the actions of its inhabitants. A sizeable number comprise the fast moving trail of pedestrians on worn footpaths alongside the road. They emerge from alleys and lanes leading from homesteads, and flood onto the bazaar-like strip coming alive with the rising sun. Most are heading to Kware, a transportation hub named after Rongai’s largest quarry. Kware is a makeshift area that barely contains the hodgepodge of vehicles whipping into drop-off and pick-up position; forcing the messy scramble of every man, woman, and child, to move en masse like a wave ebbing in and out of harm’s way.

This story has been selected for the annual StoryTime anthology African Roar 2012, please go to the African Roar site for more info.

The Shady Taxi Driver was written by Hana Njau-Okolo.

Copyright © Hana Njau-Okolo 2011.

I was born in Nairobi, Kenya. My trailblazing parents founded Paa Ya Paa Art Gallery in 1965, just two years after Kenya’s independence from British colonial rule. I grew up in the art gallery, which was an extension of our family home. Today, Paa Ya Paa is Kenya’s oldest African-owned art gallery and holds a unique place in the preservation and promotion of art and culture in East Africa. Today, I am a mother of three, wife, and a writer eager to flesh out the hints of the melodies that pulse beneath my skin. Melodies rooted in East Africa, transmuted in the Diaspora. I discipline the beating of my drum at my blog Mama Shujaa.

The Butterfly Heart by Paula Leyden (Book Excerpt)

We made sure to walk home slowly this afternoon so we would be at the gate when Ifwafwa arrived. He never breaks his promises and he never lies. Which if you think about it is an unusual thing to be able to say about someone. I know there is a difference between small, necessary lies to make other people happy, and really large lies that are, well, just big and not very good. But Ifwafwa doesn’t even tell the small ones. Or if he does I don’t notice.

It was Fred’s great granny who first told us about him. Fred says that she is a very famous witch and that even Alice Lenshina was scared of her. That is something to brag about. Alice Lenshina started this kind of a church called Lumpa, which means ‘better than all the others’ in Bemba, which is one of the languages I speak. (I say Bemba, although I am supposed to say chiBemba because that is the proper name, but dad says it’s OK to use the shortened word.) So, Alice Lenshina’s mission in life was to get rid of sorcery and witchcraft in Zambia and if she, with her army of something like 100,000 followers, was scared of Fred’s great granny, then Fred is right. She must be famous. And very scary. Alice is long dead now, but Fred’s great granny is still alive. She is the oldest person I have ever seen, you cannot see her eyes any more because of the wrinkles.

She told us that if we ever had problems with snakes we should look out for a kind man on a big black bicycle. We would know him by the sound he makes as he rides around, she said, because he has tied little bits of orange plastic onto each spoke of his wheels so you can hear him coming. You wouldn’t think you could see that someone was kind just by looking at them on their bicycle, but with Ifwafwa she was right. We did find him and since that day he has been our friend.

When we got home today, Ifwafwa was there already, sitting on the grass. He had his bag next to him and we could see from the bumps that there were already snakes in it. Madillo is always excited if he has snakes with him because he lets her stroke some of them. I have only tried that once. They do feel soft and dry but I still don’t like the feeling of their muscles moving under their skin. I told Ifwafwa that that’s what people call him, the puff adder, but he didn’t mind. For him it’s not an insult to be called a snake name, because he loves them.

We sat down next to him, me the furthest away from the snake bag, and he started.

‘This is the story of the Bangwelu swamps, the place where the water and the sky meet one another and become one. The place where the lechwe live, the red deer with the legs which can leap in the water. It is not near my home, it is in the place of the Kaonde people.’

When the Snake Man tells us a story he tells it in a very quiet voice so it is hard for us to hear him. He is clever like that. He makes us listen. Sister Leonisa does the opposite, shouting and waving her arms around, sometimes even jumping up and down. With her we have no option but to listen but with Iwafwa we want to.

‘A long time ago a small child, only a little bigger than you,’ he said, nodding his head towards me, ‘was playing down by the river. She was with her mother who was drawing water. A black shadow came across them and her mother looked up into the sky as they had been waiting for the rains for many months. Then she heard her small daughter scream and turned around.

The Kongamato, the one they all dreaded meeting, was swooping down out of the sky towards the little girl. Its long beak was wide open and the mother could see its teeth. His huge wings blocked the sun. He was almost upon them when the mother reached up and grabbed hold of his tail. She held on tight; she did not want her little girl taken from her, but the Kongamato was too strong for her and he grabbed hold of the child and flew up into the sky. The mother held on and he flew away silently carrying them both as if they weighed no more that a flake of ash.’

The Snake Man looked at Madillo and me, ‘Do you know of the Kongamato? The overwhelmer of boats?’

We shook our heads, hardly daring to breathe.

‘It is a bird without feathers. A lizard with wings. A creature like no other, with a beak and teeth. It flies slowly and has lived on this earth since time began. Its skin is like a snake’s, soft and smooth. No one knows where it goes to rest but it always flies round the Benguela swamp. It causes floods by stopping the river and there is no boat in this world that can resist it. No person either; to look into its eyes is death. The Kaonde people make a potion to protect themselves against it and this poor mother and her child had forgotten to use it. No one ever saw them again. The Kongamato returned alone.’

Ifwafwa sat back on the grass in silence. Then he opened the top of his sack slightly to check that his snakes were still well. He smiled, then closed it again. That’s the downside of him not telling lies, he doesn’t have many stories with happy endings.

‘Is it real?’ Madillo said.

He looked at her, ‘Do you think it is my dear? People have seen it many times. They all speak of the same thing, of the wings that are wider than I am tall. Of the beak that is longer than the tail. It is real when you have seen it, yes. I hope you never will.’

Madillo shivered but she did not look worried. She likes getting scared. These kind of things fly out of her head, but they stay in mine. I will have to try and think very hard about something else otherwise the Kongamato will visit me tonight in my dreams.

The Butterfly Heart was written by Paula Leyden and is an excerpt from the book of the same name.
(Walker Books UK, March 2011)

Copyright © Paula Leyden 2011.

Paula was born in Nyeri, Kenya and when she was five she moved to Lusaka, Zambia where she lived with her family until the age of fifteen. They then moved to South Africa where she completed schooling. She studied English and History at the University of Natal, and Education at the University of Cape Town.

Paula taught at secondary schools in Cape Town and Jo’burg for a number of years and then moved into the human rights field, working for a variety of human rights projects on issues such political prisoners, the death penalty, unlawful detention etc. She was also involved in preparing submissions on the death penalty for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa as well as working on applications for amnesty for MK combatants.

In 2003 she moved with her partner and children to a farm in Kilkenny, Ireland where they both now breed horses and write. Paula started writing fiction when she moved to Ireland, and her first book The Butterfly Heart was published by Walker books in March 2011, and endorsed by Amnesty International. The follow on book to this will be out in 2012.

Of Winds and Reeds by Dango Mkandawire

“Even in the earliest time we see him [man] daring to stand erect at the gates of the grave, disputing its verdict, refusing to let it have the last word, and making argument in behalf of his soul." -Joseph Fort Newton

(Based on a True Story)

A watchman unto his sons whose beam illuminated the hidden and dark crevices of their lives; Father had closely monitored their progress since they were children. While Joseph was in school he had to write a letter once a week explaining everything he had done from what he ate and what he learnt.

This story has been selected for the annual StoryTime anthology African Roar 2012, please go to the African Roar site for more info.

Of Winds and Reeds was written by Dango Mkandawire.

Copyright © Dango Mkandawire 2011.

Dango Mkandawire is a Malawian national who lives and works in Blantyre, Malawi. He started writing one day after he read the quiet yet forceful command of an unknown author: Write! Africa Write! His hobbies include football and reading.

Sometimes there is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider by Zakes Mda (Book Excerpt)

As I drive back from Bensonvale I wonder how things would have turned out for me, my brothers and my sister if we had not left Sterkspruit. We would have lived here for the rest of our lives, and become teachers and nurses like everyone else, without the exposure to the world that was a result of the single occasion the Boers came for my father in the middle of the night; a whole contingent of white policemen with bright flashlights. They turned the house upside down, looking for ‘terrorist’ documents and banned books. My father’s Communist books were nowhere to be found. I later learnt that he had earlier that week asked our nanny to bury them underground at her place. How did he know he was going to be raided by the police? He must have got a tip from an insider – maybe from a sympathetic black cop.

They took him away in a kwela-kwela police van with bars on the windows. My mother sat at the kitchen table and wept.

The following week was very important for me because I was representing Tapoleng Primary School in a track meet where Herschel District primary schools were competing. I had outrun all competition in middle and long distance races at my school, and it was time to use my famous long strides to bring the trophy to Tapoleng. But how could I do it with my father in jail? It was not so much for him that I felt sorry, but for my mother. I knew he was strong and could handle any situation. After all, we were all terrified of him. I didn’t see how he could fail to terrify the Boers as well. But my mother did not take the arrest well. She worried about how they were treating him in jail and whether they were torturing him or not. Fortunately, she was allowed to take him some food, but never to see him. She cried a lot even as she kept on reminding herself that she needed to be brave for the children.

I lost the race.

The following Monday I went to school as usual, but something unusual happened at the morning assembly. After the prayers the principal Mr Moleko, also known as Mkhulu-Baas, made a speech about the folly of trying to fight against the white man in South Africa.‘There are people who think they can win against the white man,’ he said out of the blue. ‘That is very stupid. Umlungu mdala – the white man is old and wise. What do you think a black person can do to make South Africa a better country? A black person is a baby. If you try to stand up against the white man you will end up in jail.’

I knew immediately that the nincompoop in the threadbare grey suit was talking about my father and I hated him for it.

One evening when we were eating dinner father came home. He was on the run from the police and had come to take a few of his things and to say goodbye.

He went into exile in the British Protectorate of Basutoland, as Lesotho was then known.

We pieced things together later. He was being accused of holding secret meetings all over the Cape, planning the violent overthrow of the state. We had not been aware of all these nocturnal activities because he seemed to be a looming presence at home all the time. A few days after he had been locked up there was a line-up, an identification parade. A certain Mr X was to point out the man who addressed a secret meeting of a PAC cell in a town called Elliot where some acts of sabotage were planned. Mr X was a secret state witness who had attended the meeting, and therefore could not be identified by name. My father knew immediately that the police had already tutored Mr X on how to identify him. He therefore took off his coat and gave it to the man next to him to wear – the people in the line-up were black men picked from the street, and he knew the particular man to whom he gave his coat. He also changed the order of the line-up. Mr X arrived wearing a mask, looked at the men in the line-up and pointed at the man wearing my father’s coat.

‘That’s the man,’ he said. ‘That’s the man who addressed the meeting in Elliot.’

Of course the man would not have held a meeting in Elliot or anywhere else for that matter. The police were angry that their identification parade had been foiled by my father’s cunning. They had to release him, but he knew that was only temporary. It would take them hours rather than days to find other ways of getting him. They would never give up. That was why he didn’t wait for them to rearrest him but escaped to Basutoland.

Once more we were without a father.

The first place to knell his absence was the garden. Old Xhamela had long gone to work for the South African Railways and Harbours and father’s peach trees lost their sculpted shapes. Weeds grew rampant and the seedbeds lay without new seedlings of cabbages, tomatoes and beetroot.

For many days after my father left I could see that my mother’s eyes were red from crying. But soon she got used to the idea of his absence. After all, she had lived alone in Johannesburg for many years while he was either serving articles in the Transkei or was travelling the length and breadth of South Africa, first organising for the ANC Youth League and in later years for the Africanists. She kept herself busy by playing tennis at the township tennis courts whenever she was off-duty from Empilisweni Hospital and sometimes I joined her. Until one day she beat me six-love. I gave up tennis for ever.

I must admit that I enjoyed the freedom that resulted from my father’s exile. For the first time I was able to build a loft and keep pigeons, which my father would never have allowed. Also, my mother was at work for the whole day most days. Or she was doing night-duty, which meant that I could join Cousin Mlungisi in some of his night-time activities. For instance I could go stand outside Keneiloe’s gate and whistle until she came out of the house. Cousin Mlungisi’s girlfriends came out to him when he whistled, and then they would repair behind the outhouse toilet to do naughty things. But my Keneiloe could never come to me. Her parents were too strict. She only stood at the door and waved at me so that I could see she had heard the whistling. Then she walked back into the house before Hopestill got suspicious. That was good enough for me; I had ‘checked’ my girl. I was a fulfilled boy as I walked back home where I had to sneak into my room even though my mother was absent because the nanny was likely to squeal on me if she discovered I had gone to ‘check’ girls.

When Hopestill visited, she and my mother talked about the hardships caused by my father’s absence. They giggled like school girls at something she said to Hopestill. Then Hopestill whispered something back and they burst out laughing. I loved Hopestill at those moments. She was so beautiful. She looked very much like Keneiloe. Then my mother said in a solemn tone, ‘But, Hope, I think it’s a good thing he left when he did. Look at what the Boers have done to Bhut’ Walter and Nel.’ She was talking about her friends Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela.

Sometimes there is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider was written by Zakes Mda, and is an excerpt from his book of the same name.
(Penguin SA, April 2011)

Copyright © Zakes Mda 2011.

Zakes Mda is an acclaimed South African novelist, poet and playwright. He has won major literary awards for his novels and plays. Sometimes there is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider is his latest and twenty-fourth book.

The Proposal by Victor Osa Asemota

Ehime was in a dense jungle. He found himself having to fight for breath because there seemed to be no air in the forest. He tried to move in search for air, but he could not move a limb. He had been fastened to the trunk of a giant Iroko tree by strong vines. When the noise came, it was abrupt, rambling, and unnerving. The jungle that had been a silent vacuum a few moments ago now exploded against his eardrums like discordant sounds of a million rain drops on a tin roof.

The babble preceded a storm that plucked leaves from the evergreen trees. His heartbeat slammed against his ribs making his chest heave like a breathing mountain, when he saw the fallen leaves turn into reptiles. They bared their fangs, flicked their tongues, and he looked on wide-eyed as they slithered towards him, their eyes flashing like moist coal on fire.

Ehime waited to die.

He felt something cold lick at his lips. It tasted like cascara herbal infusion his mother used to force down his throat as a child. The smell he perceived was that of a million dead rats in an ancient air-tight cave. Ehime forced himself to prise his eyes open, and there it was, a spitting cobra, its salmon pink throat contrasting with the black gleaming head that puffed atop its elongated body. Its dark gleaming eyes, a finger-tip from his face, glared into Ehime’s soul.

His mouth hung open in a stifled scream, as if wedges had levered his jaw open, and the cobra inserted its head into it licking a cold way down his oesophagus. He tugged at the tail of the snake, and to his amazement, it came out easily and he felt light as hot air. He ran like a gazelle that had escaped from a lion, and the vermin began to chase after him.

He skidded to a stop, right in front of him, was a chasm. He gaped downwards, but could not see the bottom. Rather than confront the animal onslaught, he took one limp step into the void of the ravine and plummeted into the abyss-.

Ehime was woken by a loud banging on the door, persistent and impatient. With sweat dripping all over him, he sat up. He did not know whether to be happy that it was only a nightmare or that the knocking was the beginning of another episode in the ordeal. He flicked on his miniature flash-light and peered at the clock near the bed. It was well past midnight.

A fright more gripping than the nightmare descended upon him. Ehime opened a drawer in his bedside cupboard, pulled out his Sigma pistol and checked that it was ready to go into battle. His fingers felt the cold metallic moistness of the gun which lent a touch of firmness to his jangled nerves.

‘Ehime?’ a voice said as the banging continued.

It was a woman’s voice. Ehime waited. The voice came again, unmistakable now. That was Omolara. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked, trying to detect whether she was being compelled by marauders.

‘Ehime?’

‘Who?’

‘Omolara!’

‘Are you alone?’

‘What kind of question is that?’

Ehime flicked a switch, the single bulb threw harsh light on his clammy sweat-covered body, and hid the gun under the sofa cushion within quick reach. When she saw how his sweaty shirt adhered to his chest and shoulders, Omolara’s impression was that Ehime had been in an amorous romp.

‘What’s happening?’ Ehime asked, a little disoriented still.

‘I should be asking you.’ Omolara gazed at the half opened bedroom door. ‘I’ve been knocking for ages.’

‘I’m sorry, Honey.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I don’t really know what happened.’

‘I’ve got another bag on the next landing.’

‘I’ll get it.’

When Ehime had gone down the stairs, Omolara dashed into the bedroom. She opened the wardrobe and glanced across to the bathroom. There was no other woman, she found with relief, her slamming heart beginning to simmer down like a pot of soup newly taken out of the torment of the fire. She felt guilty for suspecting Ehime so easily. ‘What is happening?’ she asked as Ehime returned with her bag.

‘Nothing. I was sleeping.’

‘What with all that sweat?’

‘I was having a nightmare,’ Ehime said and shuddered. ‘It felt definitely out of the ordinary, unexpected.’

Omolara pulled him to her bosom with her long slender arms. She rubbed his back and shoulders, a mother trying to lull her child to sleep. ‘My poor baby,’ she cooed.

‘Thank goodness you came,’ Ehime breathed and put his arms round Omolara’s broad hips appreciatively. ‘You would have met a stiff tomorrow.’

Omolara laughed. ‘What fabulous story! I never knew that my honey was still a baby that cried when he had nightmares.’ She patted his head fondly.

‘It’s not funny, Honey. I feel that somebody is after me.’

‘Who could possibly be after you?’

‘I suspect Taju.’

Omolara almost laughed again, but she saw Ehime’s lips, pursed, pulled inwards, signs of the tension and anger fermenting inside of him, so she contained it. ‘Come on, Ehime. You’re more sophisticated than that.’

‘I’m serious about this, Honey. Believe me.’

Omolara turned his face up from where it was resting in her lap so she could look into his eyes. ‘How do you mean?’

‘For a couple of days now, I’ve sensed eyes boring holes into my back.’ He pulled her head down and kissed her lightly. ‘I’ve applied a trick or two I’d picked up here and there, and I’ve seen two men turning the other way awkwardly.’

‘You’re letting James Hadley Chase influence you. He wrote some of those books before my mother was born.’

‘This is not paranoia. The nightmare might be what it is.’ Ehime stopped fiddling with Omolara’s strong ebony hair. ‘But the tailing is real. I’ve done my own counter-tailing, and one of the men led me to Satellite Town.’

‘So?’

‘Where does Taju live?’

‘Satellite Town.’

‘Constitution Avenue?’

Omolara nodded an affirmative. Her mood changed, creating a crease in her forehead as her eyebrows pulled down, nose flared. She wondered why most Lagos men didn’t take a simple no for answer? They expected every woman they desired to fall for them; her feelings were irrelevant, a whiff of cotton before the wind, if they wanted her, the woman must go along. She smelled the noxiousness of distaste as her mind stepped back six years when she turned nineteen. She had just defied her father’s will for her to study law and enrolled for journalism instead. As if the gully created by that was not enough, her father had started harping on her marrying Taju, the man he had nominated.

Things came to a head six months ago, when her father and Taju had mauled Ehime twice in three weeks.

‘Are you sure of this?’ Omolara said coldly.

‘I’m not Taju’s favourite fan, but I don’t hate him enough to go to the mundane level of assassinating his character.’

‘It’s time I had some sense knocked into his skull.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Ehime said and hoped Omolara was not thinking of some violent action.

‘I’ll have to tell him in clear terms to leave us alone.’ Her father’s role in the whole thing came to mind, but she forced it out immediately.

‘You won’t do that.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m the one they’re stalking, not you,’ Ehime said. He observed Omolara’s chin jut out, but he knew, from experience, that her anger was brewing toward Taju. He didn’t tell her that he thought that Omolara was hiding their relationship because he was a common high school teacher. Her profile as a top-notch television reporter was daunting. He caressed her face and kissed her lightly.

‘I guess I have to talk to my parents,’ Omolara said. ‘At least you can’t stop me from that.’

‘I can because I am the subject.’

‘But it’s linked to me.’

‘Your dad hates my guts,’ Ehime said. ‘His rancour is bile in my mouth.’

Omolara hugged him for a long spell. ‘If we are strong, it will only become a stroll in the park, no matter the potholes on our way.’

‘Then let’s get strong,’ Ehime whispered and responded with a firm hug in his strong arms. It compressed the breath out of her. She gasped and exhaled onto his solid chest. Omolara loved the crushing sensation.

‘We are strong,’ she murmured. ‘I feel it.’

‘Not many waters can put out the flame you ignite in my heart,’ Ehime said. Omolara sensed unsteadiness in his voice as if he was afraid. ‘You have meant more happiness to me in the last year than I had known the two decades before.’ He tightened his hold around her as if he wanted to prove that his life depended on her love. ‘I want to keep it that way.’

Omolara bent her head backward to look at Ehime. She saw a distant determination in his eyes. ‘Why do I feel that this is a vow you’re making?’ she said.

‘Call it what you like, Honey, but I want it the way it is now.’ Ehime said, looked into Omolara’s eyes, and nodded with a hardly imperceptible movement of his head. ‘Forever.’

Omolara leaned back from the hug to see him clearly. ‘Take time off work tomorrow and let’s do something meaningful.’ she said.

Ehime wondered if Omolara was asking him to take time off for a day-long love making session. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘Let’s go to the registry.’

‘Registry?’ Ehime could not make sense of it.

‘I want to marry you,’ Omolara said casually as if she was talking about a dance date, and went to the loo.

Ehime blinked several times as if he was trying to douse peppery stings in his eyes and hit his old coffee table with his knee. The pain that seared through his wobbly legs confirmed that he was out of the nightmare. He chuckled ruefully as his mind went back many years.

His parents had just been killed in a road accident, so he was taken under tutelage by an aunt who always accused him of using witchcraft to eliminate his family. When one of the aunt’s children had died of cholera, she had blamed Ehime for the death and placed a curse on him: ‘Never will the womb of a woman carry your offspring,’ the aunt had proclaimed like a Sango priestess. That pronouncement had remained with Ehime, an abnormal swelling on his mind, especially after he had suffered a couple of jilts from girls he thought he had really loved. Now here was Omolara offering marriage on a platter. She must be playing pranks on me, he thought.


Two evenings later, Ehime showed up at Omolara’s house to spend some time with her.

‘Ki lo mbere (what do you want)?’ Chief Akaka Omolara’s father, asked as he opened the heavy steel gate.

‘I was wondering if I could see Omolara, sir.’

‘What do you want from her?’

Through a slit in her bedroom door, Omolara could hear her father howl like a cyclone, voice threatening already, and for reasons she couldn’t explain, decided stay inside and let Ehime sort her cranky father out.

‘She’s my friend,’ Ehime answered simply. He was beginning to feel the hostile welcome and understood why Omolara had warned him not to come to the house yet.

‘What kind of friend can you possibly be?’ Chief Akaka sneered, and waved his hand dismissively.

Reminding himself that the situation between him and Chief Akaka had taken a different shade, Ehime ignored the scorn. How love diverts one’s attention and renders you docile, he thought as his mind tinkled with a hundred stinging retorts with which he could have flattened this shrivelling old man. Sometimes you have to swallow red saliva and spit out the white because a woman loomed large in your heart. ‘Baba, you will change opinion by the time you know me like Omolara does,’ he said.

‘She no know you.’

‘More than anybody else. That’s why she’s my-’, Ehime bit his tongue and changed what he was about to say. ‘That’s why she’s my girlfriend.’

His big voice dripping with the slimy slur of slander, Chief Akaka laughed out loudly. ‘It is confirmed as I had suspected,’ he managed to say between bursts of laughter that brought tears to his wrinkled eyes. ‘Olodo ni e (you’re an imbecile).’

‘What I just said, sir-’.

‘Out my house, olodo,’ Chief Akaka shouted, moving menacingly, gait leaning forward, toward Ehime. He had his walking stick poised to strike.

Belief that Chief Akaka was too civil to assault him because he asked for his daughter, rather than fear — he had been in too many street brawls as a teenager to shy away from frontal attacks — made Ehime resist the tendency to bolt.

He was mistaken.

Before Ehime realised that the man meant business, the weapon was upon him. The first strike caught him in the left side of his head. He yelled and clutched at his ear, too dazed for any evasive action. Another blow got him right in the centre of his head, and a third would have landed, but he raised his hands instinctively. He caught it on the left hand. The blow was so ferocious that the little finger of his hand was reduced to pulp before he was able to manoeuvre the stick out of the old man’s grip and throw it behind a sofa.

Chief Akaka must have been surprised by the amount of blood gushing from Ehime’s ear. He just stood gaping, a bewildered spectator in a bloody fight, as the crimson red spread down the young man’s white cotton shirt like an invading army.

In spite of the pain raging in his ear, Ehime felt a kind of grisly pity, which he found bizarre, for Chief Akaka. The man looked vulnerable now that he no longer held his weapon. Ehime could easily crush this ancient in one swipe and assert control over his territory. But the blood of anger that boiled in his heart faded in the warmth Omolara’s love provoked in him. He looked at his blood-splattered chest and shuddered.

Omolara who had been watching the confrontation through the slit in her door, her mouth dry, was too paralysed for any action. She knew her father to be temperamental, volatile, a lightning in the rain, but the viciousness with which he had attacked Ehime chilled her spine to immobility. She could only wish that Ehime would go away before he bled too much, or was attacked again. If she came out now, Ehime would never understand why she hid while her father assaulted him.

She was still at a loss what to do when Ehime seemed to have perceived her wish, and, like a vanquished bull, retraced his steps and dissolved into the darkness outside. In her heart, the love for her father went limp like mimosa before the heat of the sun, a taste of sawdust in her mouth as she tried to swallow the insipid feeling he had evoked in her. When she was sure that Ehime was out of hearing distance, she came out to confront her father. ‘What did you do that for?’ she said, grasping hold of her sanity with twitching fingers as the venom of frustration raged in her soul like a snake that had swallowed chilli peppers.

‘Taju is the man I choose for you,’ Akaka said, felling like a guard who had successfully fought away the fox that threatened his poultry. ‘That boy is poison.’

‘No, Baba, he is not,’ Omolara said. Eyes cast down and damp, her head tilted to the side, and shaking slowly, she said, ‘Ehime is my husband, your son-in-law. We got married at the city hall two days ago.’

Chief Akaka stared at his daughter, but his brittle wrinkled eyes could not see her. He gaped at the blood stains on the floor, shook his grey head, and feeling like a stranger in a shrine, slouched to his bedroom.

The Proposal was written by Victor Osa Asemota.

Copyright © Victor Osa Asemota 2011.

I was born in Benin City, Nigeria. My interest has always been composing poetry and reading fiction. Some of my poems have been published in the Guardian Newspaper in Lagos, Nigeria and in various collections such as Collected Whispers of the International Library of Poets. I studied mass communication in Nigeria, before moving to Spain in 2002 where I teach English. But I want to communicate with you through my writing, rather than by what or where I have been. I am presently revising my first novel Memories Are Forever.

Tlaki comes to Jozi by Noosie C. Petlele

My birth was a mistake. I was given the name Matlakala — meaning rubbish or something you do not want — because I was not supposed to have been born. Growing up, I pieced together the story of my birth from gossipy neighbours and sometimes from my maternal grandmother — my role model.

This story has been selected for the annual StoryTime anthology African Roar 2012, please go to the African Roar site for more info.

Tlaki comes to Jozi was written by Noosie C. Petlele.

Copyright © Noosie C. Petlele 2011.

Noosie C. Petlele is a South African born writer, artist, entrepreneur, and mother of three. She loves reading anything and everything, and intends to write romance thrillers the likes of American novelists Brenda Jackson and Sandra Brown, “before my hair goes 100% grey”.