100. Waiting by E.C. Osondu
Waiting (2008) is the winning story on the 10th Caine Prize for African Writing, 2009. This story was published at Guernica . Written in the first person, Orlando Zaki writes about his life in a refugee camp. Orlando is amongst a group of young people in a refugee camp. According to him, most of the people at this camp got their names from the inscriptions on the shirts they receive from the Red Cross Orlando is taken from Orlando, Florida, which is what is written on the t-shirt given to me by the Red Cross. Zaki is the name of the town where I was found and from which I was brought to this refugee camp. My friends in the camp are known by the inscriptions on their t-shirts. In general, life at the camp is lived according to the theory of 'only the fittest survive'. There is struggle for water and food, that is when they become available. For the most part they live in wait of these basic facilities and also in expectation of being adopted and sent to...