She is a dark, tall, beautiful, witty Senegalese young woman in her twenties, with white teeth accentuated by her dark healthy gums. He is a Caucasian Alaskan boy of about same age, with smiling eyes and a liking for humour tainted with sarcasm that it turns out mademoiselle Senegal digs. This boy is also a bit of a punk. He’s not a full blown punk but he has a punkish flair that somehow works. What does this Senegalese girl turned woman have in common with this boy turned man from Alaska?Not language.Not skin colour.Their names reveal their differences.She, Aminata Senghor; he, Robert Patrick Harrington.Even though she speaks foreign tongues as if they were her own, sometimes English, sometimes French, and even though she speaks in English, prays in French, whenever she weeps, she weeps in Wolof.Her skin is the darkest of the black shades and he; they don't come whiter than him. His skin is queerly mottled with moles and freckles and red blotches. His beard grows at a rate faster than her dark, coiled kinks. He loves her skin.It is smooth all over, from her face, down her nape, over the contours of her bosom, her rich dark areolas and her massive nipples which lie nestled in what looks like dark crinkled organza by Nicole Miller. Travelling further down her belly button, then deviating to cusp the smooth roundness of her behind, when boy Alaska tells fille-Senegal that he likes her skin, it means more than a mere compliment. It assumes so many meanings. Is he telling her that he likes her as she is, all her sins, borne of her blackness forgiven or is he just enjoying the uninterrupted caress of her skin?Oh, they have things in common for they discover to their delight that there are shared experiences that transcend race, colour, culture, even social class. They both remember so vividly the rotten egg smell from high school chemistry class. They both remember how they used to get such a rush from reading innocent love scenes in novels. They are kindred spirits. He lost his virginity at eighteen; she gave hers at twenty one. They were both too old. They knew how to wait. These are the things that join them.They laugh over their differences. She says it's cold in the middle of Fall. He says, cold? Are you from Africa? She likes the experience of discovering so many new things. Unlike the Senegalese men that litter her past, this Alaskan talks.He talks when she's upset.He doesn't call her baby.Or whisper sweet nothings.When he says something, it means something. He gushes over her. The descriptors he assigns her, she's never heard from Senegalese lips. He calls her gorgeous, beautiful, too pretty, and he wonders how he got so lucky. He tells her that he enjoys kissing her more than any other woman he had ever known because she actually has lips to kiss.She on the other hand, likes his eyes that are sometimes azure, sometimes hazel. The only thing that disturbs her is she can find no names for these colours in Wolof, but perhaps therein lay the appeal. To her, he is exotic. It bothers her not that he may be merely experimenting with her, for she is not certain that she is not doing same.Time goes by and when she attempts to sever the bonds of their relationship, he cried. She stayed because until now, no man had ever cried over her. She also realised then that even if it had once been, this was no longer an experiment. Even though she pretended not to have heard, it secretly pleased her when he announced that he would learn Wolof if it mattered to her.If this was not real, someone needed to teach her what real is.But how could she go on with this man, who kissed her tears when in Senegal, parents had met and smiled over a certain other young man, chosen to be her husband. She was practically married! She should count herself lucky that despite her feminist proclivities and big mouth, a normal man wanted her.One day, as she and boy Alaska sat beneath the skies, admiring the constellations in a bushy clearing far away from any other humans, in short, doing white people things, she imagines what her life might be if she proceeds with him. That excites her. She’s always preferred the unknown. Then she thinks of the young native man. And it occurs to her, that she doesn't really know what he might be like, what his kiss may be like, so she begins to think that maybe he would be even more of a discovery.One day, long ago, someone had advised her to forget what everybody else wanted and just choose based on what she wanted. She had chuckled at this seemingly sage advice because she knew that even though the world told her this, no one was ready for what she wanted. She wanted both. But the world wasn't ready for that. So as she sat in the clearing, she thought of a poem by Kwesi Brew that she had memorized long ago:"'We have come to the cross-roadsAnd I must either leave or come with you.I lingered over the choiceBut in the darkness of my doubtsYou lifted the lamp of loveAnd I saw in your faceThe road that I should take"And she exploded inwardly out, at the absurdity of poems and life and how poets over romanticize and make love seem so easy. Right then, in the darkness of her doubts, she wanted to do right, but how could she? She was scared; scared of being with boy Alaska because even though a year had passed, he still did not know that she prayed five times a day. While he was moral in his own way, perhaps even more so than many "good Muslims" that girl Senegal knew, he seemed to de
Life has never stretched a generous hand to me. I live by the meanest means and happiness comes by accident. I've got nothing to propel me to propensities but bitterness. I try more than many people I know but my coffers are always next to dry. Perhaps my levers to affluence are stationed at the penurious end of honesty.Once again I find myself in Johannesburg South Africa, Mzanzi so the natives call it. I'm here where the word trust has no meaning or maybe the meaning of the word makes no sense. This is the most dangerous human inhabited city in the whole universe and as a place can only be second to hell if it is not hell itself. Humanity is at its lowest measure and people don't live the life but the day. The natives are known to be uneducated, lazy and dangerous save for majority of whites who live in hide outs of expensive places. But even they too at times live by the mighty barrel of the gun.Guns are sold at street corners by hooligans with blood stained eyes and cigarette smelling breath -and assault knives are accessible as bread. However those who kill for a living prefer home made knives for affordability and efficiency. They stab for as little as a cell-phone, a pair of shoes already on feet, wrist watch and just a blue hundred rand note is a huge sum of money to them. Their conscience is totally dead and they live by instinct. They don't like anything that challenges the mind, they hate learning, they detest working but they like good living. Their hearts are always green with envy and their hands are quick to put covetousness to practice.I've been here before, I've been robbed here before and my mind can not let go. As I walk down this lane from the cheap looking coach rank along Devellis street into Park Station I feel paranoia creeping down my spine. Urine is now full in my bladder because I have never arrived this late. Street lights are hitting hard on me and I feel I'm too exposed to the people I can't see. I've suddenly adopted a boastful and careful gait while talking to the old men walking beside me in a makeshift hoarse voice. I'm trying to look and sound inaccessible to thieves. I've got precious powder on me. It's more than just soil. It's gold in colour. It's called gold. I've got twenty-five grams of it and it's packed in two small balls of plastic papers, one placed in the boots that I'm wearing and the other one is in my underwear near my arsehole. As I walk it keeps on rolling out to the edge of my underwear but I keep on pushing it back. I don't want to loose it. It has around thirteen grams of gold worth slightly a thousand United States dollars. It's a lot of money here in South Africa but its not much back home. In Zimbabwe it buys two months groceries for a family of four, but here in South Africa many families live on it the whole year.At park station the old man and I make a phone call to the buyer. We learn that he was shot dead by robbers at his home in Midrand two weeks ago, for a while we are dumbfounded, just looking at each other with our hands on our mouths. Later we decide to wait for a new day, so we both try to catch a sleep on cold steel benches inside the park station arena, but the police won't allow us. Every few moments they're waking up people asking for valid bus tickets. I hear they're trying to get rid of street-people mostly from my country. We both brave the cold mid-January night to wakeup very early into Tuesday not that we've run out of sleep but that it's worth while given the conditions. I'm home sick already. This is my first time to be here for this cause. I've never done gold-deals in this city before, I'm used to Polokwane and I'm here because my buyers are out of the country besides the old man told me gold has more value in Jo'burg than in any other South African city. The old man knows everything about the buyers in this city and I know nothing. I'm waiting for him to come-up with a contingent plan but it surprises me to hear him ask, 'What do we do now?' I figure out I don't have an instant answer to the question. But wait a minute, I know what I want.'I just want to go back to Zimbabwe.''I just want to go back to Zimbabwe,' he carefully repeats the words one by one while looking straight into my eyes. I think he has just made a mistake; he has just opened his eyes and mouth too wide that I can see the contents of his heart. I see betrayal, I see greediness, I see corruption, and I see blood and death. I've got nothing to say so I keep on looking into him careful not to give away my findings. But he had something to say,'Ok, ah okay,' he clears the throat and continues, 'I'm calling my friend in Boksburg and he will give me another buyer. Actually, he's the one who linked me to the late.'I still have nothing to say so he takes out two one rand coins from his pocket and slotted them into the telephone machine while the other hand is holding the receiver. I can hear him muttering something in a native language that's biblical tongues to me and I can feel my heart throbbing. He puts the receiver down, scratches his head and turns to me with stretched arms,'I told you he can help, he said we can go meet him in Boksburg so he will take us to the buyer. By the way how many grams did you say you have?' he seems not confident with his question as much as I'm not comfortable with giving him an answer so he adds a bit of justification to it, I mean I have ten and I should know how much we have exactly so I can negotiate the rate knowing the total number of grams we have between us.''Five' my answer is quicker than he expects and that kind
They are walking past. Some cast open glances of disgust, some tinged with apprehension, in my direction. For I know they can never understand how an old woman and an infant can live on a street pavement. Who can blame them? Of course the memory of my husband stands over us, protecting us from both their stares, and the elements.Dearest comrade, I got both this paper I am writing on, and the pen, from the Chief of the dump outside the city, where I started this letter a while ago, sitting in a cave looking over my ill husband.The first day we stumbled on that cave, let me tell you as you burp from exotic salads, it was a clear morning, the sun shining so brightly, as though for us, and the birds singing sweetly in the trees. My husband and I stood at its mouth, him thanking his ancestral spirits, and I God, for being so kind to us. Finished with the praise of our divine benefactors, we had stood for a while in front of the cave mouth, just looking at it, relishing the moment, because, finally, we had found a home. Actually, it was my husband who discovered the cave mouth - he had stopped to relieve himself at the side of the mountain, then he had broken a branch off a bush to use it on himself, and behind the bush was the open door of our new home!As we had stood watching the cave mouth, a wild dog had shot out of it towards us - I had screamed, and it had darted between our legs and disappeared into the forest. My husband, he was strong then, said to me after we had regained our composure – these are his exact words – 'If an animal can find sanctuary in there, so can we,' and, brave man, he had disappeared into it. I had stood waiting for him outside, terrified to follow him in - what if there were more wild animals inside there? I waited and waited, but he did not come out. Finally, scared of the open, I had followed him in, my baby strapped to my back. It was semi dark inside, and the smell of animal dung, and something rotting, filled the interior. A body lay in the middle of the cave. In shock, I had discovered that it was my husband! My heart in my mouth, I had rushed to him, and he was gripping his right toe, his face twisted in pain, his mouth pursed. In panic, I had asked him what it was, and he had pointed at a scorpion that lay beside him, its body crushed. Dear God - it had bitten him, and he had stamped it to death with his bare foot. We both walked barefoot, we had thrown our shoes way, or what remained of them when we could no longer tie them around our feet with wet bark during our weeks of flight.Ever since that scorpion bite, he became ill. First it was the toe. It swelled and swelled, and at night he would sweat buckets of water whilst raving incomprehensible things, cursing at the world, at life, and you also. Then, when the swelling got better, he had developed a running stomach. When the stomach got better, then it was general body weakness. The Chief sometimes came to visit, bringing herbs, but I think his interest lay more not on my husband's health, but on my body, and what he would do with it once my husband was no longer there. I was telling you the cave was nice comrade. Oh yes it was! You should have come to see the bats that hung on the low roof at night, often shitting down on us, and woe on you if you slept with your mouth open! You should have seen the beautiful rough stone walls with their water streaks that sometimes assumed the shape of Bushmen paintings straight off the school history text book! The floor was also bare rock, but I had carpeted it with dry grass, making sitting or sleeping on it much more comfortable. In the middle of the cave I had made a stone hearth, but a fire was only lit there whenever the Chief visited with his matches, otherwise we had to do with the cold hearth all the time, and the damp darkness.As you sip your coffee, or are you sitting cross legged with some visiting dignitary's - Thabo perhaps - my heart is bursting with laughter. What if I mentally wish it and that tea burns your tongue and you scream – just as we screamed when the bulldozers that you sent that day flattened our houses, destroying all our possessions that we couldn't remove from them in time.We escaped from that open truck ferrying us to the transit camp when its engine stalled and the driver and the guards asked everybody aboard to disembark so that it could be pushed. It was at night, a very cold night, and we were in a game reserve. Maybe that was what gave our escort confidence, that we would stay put, but, warn them, never trust human nature as long as life is at stake, just as your position is now because of this opposition party that has emerged from the tears of the masses that has panicked you so much. We fled into the dark forest. We ran – O God we ran... terror in our hearts, for there had been rumours in the truck that maybe... you had no need for us, after all, the history books talk about Hittler and those wagon loads headed for Auschwitz – don't see me dirty like this and sleeping in the open, I can read and write, just as this letter will prove to you if you care to read on. We lost sight of the others in the bush - I remember my husband's hand tightly on mine, heh... and my baby bucking on my back and crying as we ran. He is four years old, and he has been through so much suffering already that I wonder what kind of a man he is going to grow into. And, ever since this all began, he has been so quiet- it must be these bad winds...We left everything in that truck, the truck driver and the guards must have become very rich from all that lice and cockroaches
Each day unfolded with a different attitude, a different pace and a different thought. Each individual a silent different song crooned to keep themselves company, to run away from the snapping reality. And nobody cared about him any longer. They had shunned him, written him insensate. Daily when the sun disappeared beyond the horizon he watched from his window, the night approaching in her nightdress of painful dreams to terrorize the whole nation in its sleep until it was exhausted, hopeless, and helpless. He watched the deluding cover of darkness raping the country apart, baking it from disease to disease to AIDS, while the Anti Retro Virals were looted and the AIDS orphans and other beneficiaries died in the countryside, heroes of tomorrow who did not make a constituency and who did not vote died! He loved his people so badly but he realized he was still looking for himself, wondering if this was the way it was supposed to be. His own culture had already disappeared; everyday the gifted young ones died one by one, falling to the fatal calls of carnal desire, calling it freedom and independence. Damn it! He was like someone looking for himself in a world ruptured by a riddle of a broken circle. What is it, my Lord, about my country? He looked out through the window from his room as if to run away from the same nagging question. Children of the slums played outside, so meek like cherubs oblivious of the economic war happening around them, oblivious of the man society had shut out.Many of the houses in this area had been built slapdash after the clean up exercise by the dirty cruel city council's bulldozers! Victims like him with nowhere to go simply hid somewhere temporarily and then stole back to their destroyed shacks and re-built them, re-built their fallen city. They were safe here. He was safe here. The children were safe here. This was home sweet home. The majority of the people were poor security guards, general gardeners, unskilled industrial workers, shoe makers, dealers, thieves, vendors, prostitutes, and a lot of young people who had neither a decent means of survival nor a better future to look forward to. Everywhere the pit-latrines oozed unbearable gases onto the dusty roads and homes and cholera visited the children very often. O how deeply devastated he was when two weeks ago Sinikiwe, that sweet daughter of his neighbour Scooter, fell to diarrhoea and nearly died! Chickens and stray fly-ridden puppies roamed all over the place dropping their excrement without knowing that there was no one in great need their manure. The ghetto really needed some kind of different spiritual manure to let love grow again, let it flower like a rose again, he mused. But this was the place that carried his dreams and his joys. Nothing could take away this truth. He wanted to close the window but in a parting glance he suddenly saw a hen that sat with her wings warmly embracing her pullets. He looked up to the sky and saw an eagle hovering. He waved and pss-pssed it away and it flew in a different direction. The hen tilted her head to look at him and as if to say thank you to him, it cackled and let go its pullets to play with others in the grass nearby. He closed the window and walked back to his desk to read his book again. His room a miserable cave of art with ugly walls smeared with old and peeling new paint. A sooty perforated roof of rusty zinc sheets hung uncertainly above. On his desk there were books piled one over another. He had a great taste for poetry and African story telling, as if he had a vision that a key will materialize from those books and liberate the minds of his people; liberate them from the riddle of an un-satisfied desire, a broken circle, and a collapsed future. Next to his desk was a box full of manuscripts, old newspapers, magazines, newspaper cuttings and heavily annotated novels. Reading haunted him like a devil. On one of the walls a well thumped portrait of the late legendary Robert Nester Marley wailing in concert, hung like a religious flag of one love, the kind of love that could only be found by struggling, creating struggle out of stone and destroying it again, calling it revolution. Below Bob's poster he had pasted a statement written in graffiti style reading '...and finally the tables are starting to turn'. Next to the window was a poster of a young dreadlocked writer speaking behind the microphone, the one he loved, the one he missed like a brother, the one whose books haunted him like a devil. A quarter of his floor space was taken up by rusty gadgets such as paraffin stove, pots, plates, cups, spoons, and even some underwear. His clothes hung like animal hides on a wire fixed from one corner to another near the roof. On certain Sundays he would go outside the house, sit under a tree in the middle of the yard to look at people passing by. Sunday was the day he would be seen socializing with people but normally he sat under the tree, fiddling with his book. He would silently embrace the hectic noise of both church goers and non-church goers. The youths who had turned into lousy Rastafarians sat in the verandas of their shanty cabins, wooing women, smoking ganja as atrocious raga vibes boomed liberally from their ill-gotten ghetto blasters, speaking the language of Rand and greenbacks which no one knew from where they earned them. Out on the dusty roads young children in the company of their cleanly dressed parents sprightly headed for the church, carrying Bibles and beating tambourines. Adults walked like Israelites temporarily marching out of th
His feet a blur that even seemed not to touch the tar, the Matchstick man flew along the street. Behind him chased a police car, siren baying, and its roof light flashing red murder. On either side of the street, like daring spooks, other red flashing lights chased other Matchstick men on jerky shop window reflections.Cutting across a corner, he slipped on a banana peel, tumbled down, and skidded forward on his stomach, the tar shredding his dungarees in a loud abrasive screech.The street suddenly writhed into a turn - he shot straight on out of it and into Independence Square.A gold statue of Her Excellency, astride a rearing black granite bull, was mounted in the middle of a stretch of dry grass, right in his path. Behind it smiled the country's palace, built of pink marble, and its door guarded by two lions in diamond studded leather neck collars. The lions were both licking their lips - they had just devoured a little boy dressed in an opposition party t-shirt who had dared pass by the door. Around them were scattered tufts of human hair, dentures, toe nails, and the head of a penis. The latter, blitzed by furious bottle green flies, was flipping around like the freshly cut off tail of a lizard.The Matchstick man slammed into the plinth, head first. There was a loud cracking sound, like a gunshot, and his head burst into sizzling red flame. The granite bull bellowed in alarm, it leapt from the plinth, over the flames, and thundered towards the door of the Palace, clods of soil raining behind it from its hooves. The alert lions already had the door open. Gold and granite disappeared into it, and the two lions slammed the door shut from inside.Fanned before a ferocious wind, flames raced hungrily across the dry grass following the scars of the bull's spoor, smoke and ash swirling thickly above them.They beat the fire with acid statements in the state media - the radio, TV, and newspapers. They tear gassed it, set police dogs on it, truncheoned it, shot at it, and, finally, the two lions subdued it at the Palace door. They put it in a strait jacket, raked its face with their sharp claws, drawing blood, then carted it away still struggling to nobody knew where except an unnamed grave deep in the sacred forest behind the Palace in which was rumoured resided the maimed spirits of silencing.'There is no cure!' The media bansheed. Her Excellency appeared on the lofty steeple of the Palace, on her forehead jutting a pair of tiny horns, singing the 'No Cure' anthem in a deep male voice. Drums beat across the orange sky, horns trumpeted, and feet stamped. The blue sun closed its ears with its fingers, its face a grimace. Then, displeased, it strode west over the border of the horizon, and darkness prematurely opened its terrible mouth over the capital.***One unsuspecting afternoon, the Matchstick man re-appeared in the streets again, wearing a red t-shirt emblazoned in white in front; 'Will Anything Ever Change?' In his hand he carried an aluminium briefcase. His head was a black char, from which his eyes burned with a cold defiant fire. A faint sulphurous smell emanated from him. Borne on a powerful current not felt on the ground, vote campaign leaflets raced overhead on light wings like the scattered thoughts of the hungry.The Matchstick man opened his mouth in dismay at the sight that met his eyes. He only had two front teeth, which were on his lower jaw. Obese rats, clad in long leather jackets, felt hats, and dark sunglasses, strutted about the streets, double barrelled shotguns balanced over their shoulders. Infants with emaciated faces peeped with dead eyes from the broken windows of buildings. Dogs bayed in the rubbish strewn alleys, and the sun, arms akimbo, the corners of its eyes moist, squinted at the Matchstick man from the sky with hope in its heart.The Matchstick clicked his briefcase open, took out a sheaf of papers from inside, and then closed it again. Then, frowning heavily, he glared at the statue of Her Excellency. In her smouldering eyes was reflected the double images of a stooped old man about to cast a vote into a transparent ballot box emblazoned 'Uhuru' in rainbow colours on one side. A cock in militia uniform held a machine pistol to the back of the old man's head. The old man cast his vote, and then also jumped into the slit after it. The cock grinned, and, with a magician's flourish, sealed the slit with masking tape. It fluffed its feathers, cocked its head and crowed lustfully. Then it lugged the ballot box on its shoulder, and the double images strutted away deeper into the eyes of the statue and then vanished.The Matchstick man rifled through his papers, his brow furrowed in intense thought. The two lions manning the door of the palace were pumping dumb bells, sweat coursing down their swollen muscles. The sun coughed, and a momentary blue heat wave scorched the earth. The matchstick man wiped sweat off his brow, and then he approached the statue, a defiant look on his thin wood face. A starved looking red locust was looking into a hand mirror on the plinth, sharpening its teeth with a whetstone.The wail of a siren, and a red fire engine slewed around the corner, tyres squealing, and raced towards him. The Matchstick man stood his ground. It skidded to a stop in front of him. The buildings on either side of Independence Square straightened their shoulders, and all became deathly silent. One could even have heard the footstep of an ant that stood with
Listen.UK Lucy by Sarudzayi Chifamba-Barnes Hands shaking and her whole body shivering from fear and anxiety, Maria quickly parked her car in front of the two-bedroom terraced house she rented in Coventry. Her eyes were filled with fear when she saw three police cars parked outside her house, and neighbours peeping through their lace curtains to view the incident. A few people passing by also looked at her house in amazement. For a moment, Maria thought that she had turned into the wrong street and parked her car at a wrong house. Full Story The Land of Darkly: Act Five Harabladi was woken by the gentle massaging motion of his new bed; it hummed and vibrated in delicious ripples up and down his body. Before he even opened his eyes, he smiled and thought this is the life, and went on to wonder when was the last time, before the gold coin, that he had actually been happy when he had first woken up. Perhaps it had been the first morning of his second marriage; which he remembered being just like the feeling he had now, barely awake with his eyes still closed. Excepting that last time, the feeling lasted only as long as he kept his eyes closed. Full Story Choices by Esi W. Cleland She is a dark, tall, beautiful, witty Senegalese young woman in her twenties, with white teeth accentuated by her dark healthy gums. He is a Caucasian Alaskan boy of about same age, with smiling eyes and a liking for humour tainted with sarcasm that it turns out mademoiselle Senegal digs. This boy is also a bit of a punk. He's not a full blown punk but he has a punkish flair that somehow works. What does this Senegalese girl turned woman have in common with this boy turned man from Alaska? Full Story Cost of Courage by Beaven Tapureta When I was not with Brother I was with it again. Tonight it found me alone, away from Brother. It was like an incurable mental illness which came with voices and visions. It was like a nightmare yet I could not fathom how far it was from the real world. I kept walking on the dark deserted road. My eyes hardly blinked; there were demons playing wild soccer in the natural turf of my mind, howling 'Punch him down! Punch him down!' I knew it was it again. I whispered to myself that I was not going to fall or be punched down by whatever or whoever those demons were. Full Story Still Going by Emmanuel Sigauke I was going to the gathering and no one would stop me. Not even Mai, not Maiguru. Nothing, not even the duty to take care of the goats would get in the way. I was going to meet with Chari behind Chisiya Hill, join others like us on the road to Mototi Primary School, and arri
