141. SHORT STORY MONDAY: The Plantation by Ovo Adagha
For the next three months or so reviews for the Short Story Monday will be taken from the Caine Prize 2010 anthology titled A Life in Full and other stories. This anthology is made up of seventeen short stories in two parts; five of these were shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing and have already been reviewed . The remaining twelve short stories, which is going to be spread over the next three months, were written at the CDC Caine Prize Writers' Workshop. The Plantation by Ovo Adagha is situated in an oil-producing region of Nigeria. Like most stories set in such regions, the dichotomy between the inherent wealth of oil and the absolute poverty that has encapsulated and defined the lives of the inhabitants is glaring. The takeover of their fertile land by underground tubes that spews oil into the soil making the land non-cultivatable spells doom for the indigent indigenes. They see the wealth flowing through poverty only to inflate bellie...