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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...

Mukoma Wa Ngugui's How Kamau Wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile  was shortlisted for the 10th Caine Prize award in 2009 . It is the fourth in the list of five shortlist to be reviewed here. The itself was published in Wasafiri Volume 23, No. 2 in June 2008. Kamau is a member of the Second Independence Democracy with Content Forum (SIDCF), a group that has been asking questions of their dictatorial government. He has been arrested and tortured on several occasions and has become immune to the fear exuded by military officials. One evening Kamau was visited by an army officer who presented him with a list of people who should be on the run, in case an impending insurrection fail: 'I ... we do not want to see more people dead. Especially the young people and even though we anticipate more trouble from the likes of you, you professional agitators, this is our country and your needed. Protect yourselves and your friends. We shall deal with each other later. Like men ... eye to e...

Parselelo Kantai's You Wreck Her  was shortlisted for the 10th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2009 . The story appeared in Issue 2 of St. Petersburg Review . Parselelo's  You Wreck Her covers a lot of issues in a few pages, from human trafficking to prostitution and fraud. Right from the beginning the reader is confronted with a sleazy sexual encounter between our character who is a malaya (prostitute) and an mzungu  (light-skin tourist). You do not know how far you have fallen down in this world until you see yourself crawling up a karao's  face on a Friday night. You are slobbering and gagging over your short-time, ignoring the after-taste of condom coming into your nostrils from the back of your throat, like Goort's coffee bubbling in the machine on a Sunday morning a long time ago. You lather and stroke. Your head bobs like a bar of soap in bathwater. You can feel he is getting close. There is a commotion far away, beyond the squeak of rubber ...

Alistair Morgan's Icebergs was shortlisted for the 10th Caine Prize for African Writing, in 2009 . The story was published in The Paris Review No. 183 in 2007 . Dennis Moorcraft has moved to his plush retirement home on the coast of Cape Town after several years of work in Johannesburg. He has lost his wife to cancer and his children are abroad and the daughter who continued to live in their Johannesburg home had refused to vacate that place to join his father in Cape Town; coming only to visit. Consequently, the father is alone in the huge apartment after his wife made him promise not to give out their dream home for another person to occupy. One late night, the FOR SALE on the house next to his came down. Mr. Moorcraft now has a neighbour. An enigmatic neighbour whose comings and goings were as sublime as the man himself. However the two individuals met and after several shots of alcohol started talking. Interests were shared and Moorcraft got to know that Bradshaw lo...

Author: Mamle Kabu Title: The End of Skill Genre: Short Story Publisher: Picador Africa Published in: Dreams Miracles and Jazz Year: 2008 Editors: H. Habile and K. Sesay This week is Ghanaian Literature week at Kinna Reads and I have joined her in bringing to light the gems of Ghanaian Literature. Amy at Amy Reads is also participating. The End of Skill, which was shortlisted for the 10th Caine Prize in 2009 , is a different kind of short story told by Mamle Kabu. The story unlike many others takes a path that lies untrodden. Most at times stories are told of change; of how wills must be asserted; of how parents force their children to tow a path, take a career, marry a given person, and how the children are affected by their parent's decisions. Always negatively affected. However, in The End of Skill, Mamle Kabu tells a story of how parent's decisions aren't all that colloquial. Jimmy or Kweku, as known and called by his father, was tired of c...