108. Stickfighting Days by Olufemi Terry

Olufemi Terry's Stickfighting Days won the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing Award in 2010. It was later included in the anthology A Life in Full anthology published in 2010. This story first appeared in Chimurenga vol. 12/13.

The focus of the Caine Prize is ' on the short story, as reflecting the contemporary development of African story-telling tradition.' Here, one wonders if the 'African story-telling tradition' part deals with what publishers refer to as 'The African Story'. If so, the Caine Prize has succeeded. If the 'development' is also necessary, then it has failed totally; for now, the prize is almost seen as the ultimate search for the story that that can make readers puke and wonder if the characters are savages or humans. Consequently, writers summon all their creative power to write the most scatological stories that would define what an African story is. Whereas some writers search for the most rotten neighbourhoods in any country they can imagine, 'selling their nations horrors', others, unable to find appropriate vicinities, themes, or enough filth, create theirs. And if the Caine Prize's aim is to continuously reward these stories, describing them as 'creative, ambitious, bold, imaginative', then Stickfighting Days would be to the Caine Prize, what Rushdie's Midnight's Children is to the Booker. Stickfighting Days by Olufemi Terry is the ultimate horror story a writer can create.

The story is filled with blood, shit, murder, glue-sniffing, scavenging and more. At almost every other line, there is the macabre. There is enough macabre in this story to make any of Stephen King's novels become a bedtime story. The more so if one realises that King's stories are somewhat paranormal and Olufemi's story is more of a representation of his reality, at least that is what he wants to portray. As to which reality, created reality based on his perception or his personal experience, it is up to him to tell us.

Stickfighting Days - worse than E.C. Osondu's Waiting, another Caine Prize-winning story (2009) that made me puke - is a story about a young boy of thirteen (13) years named Raul and the life he leads. Like Waiting, we do not know the place, whether it's a town or a city. The story is based on the character Raul and how he relates to his environment and the people around him. 

Raul is a stickfighter - simply put, he fights with sticks. And this is no child-fight. He fights to kill. He pops out eyes. In fact in a single day he killed two people - a boy named Tauzin, from whom he steals bread, and Salad, a guy who always act as judge during stickfighting. Prior to this he had nearly killed another fighter. This makes the reader wonder how many people would be left on the street if he goes at such rate. Besides, he exhibits no emotions; he has become habituated to emotions, which makes him eerily enjoy what he does. 

There's something in his eyes - he's not afraid - but I see recognition beyond fear - and acceptance of what I'm about to do, of what I am. Killer.

Written in the first person narrative, this is how Raul describes killing Tauzin

The strike is precise enough to kill; I feel the rubbery give of his temple beneath the tip of my sticks. But once more shame comes on me, so suddenly I taste it mingling with the acid vomit. I walk away without checking he's dead.

And this is a thirteen-year old boy who names his sticks Mormegil and Orcrist because the judge - Salad - had told him stories from Lord of the Rings. In fact he aims to be like the Spartans. And here the Olufemi showed his motive: to create a morbid and macabre story in a way that has never been before. For how does an illiterate boy, who does nothing but to fight, kill, scavenge and sniff got to know how the Spartans were and wanted to be like them? It's almost like a collection of morbidity heaped on this Raul character. 

Markham thrusts into his other eye and Salad's face splashes blood. He still makes no sound. I'd dreamed of a killing blow, the single cut that cleanly ends life, but I've done that already, with Tauzin earlier. It was sweet. But now's not the time for precision. I swing and thrust, mindlessly raining blows, and Markham is with me, shares my aim for we club at the judge's head with no thought of accuracy. Even when he no longer moves, Markham and I swing for some minutes. And I stop.

And what did judge or Salad do? He prevented Raul from killing Markham and declared Raul the winner of the fight. Because he prevents fights from deteriorating into death matches.

If the boys are not stickfighting, they are scavenging on dumps, covering their legs with specks of shit - remember Osondu's Waiting? - sniffing glue. Almost every character in this short-story has a delinquent behaviour and this is rightly so as Olufemi was writing about street children. But street children even show love, they show care. I wonder where these street children came from and in which environment they live. Even in street kick-boxing, deaths are not rampant. For instance, Raul had killed Tauzin because Tauzin told him that he had put rat-poison in the bread he just stole and ate.

"That bread was poisoned. I left it as bait for whoever's been stealing my stuff. Rat poison," he adds unnecessarily. "Bet you didn't know I was a master poisoner. Had no idea it was you, but I don't care really. You might not even die."

Some people have claimed that the author is not an ambassador for his country and what matters most in writing is the creative process. This story does not read like anything by Flaubert or Proust, so what is the motive? According to the Chair judge, Fiammetta Rocco, this story is

ambitious, brave and hugely imaginative, Olufemi Terry's 'Stickfighting Days' presents a heroid culture that is Homeric in its scale and conception. The execution of this story is so tight and the presentation so cinematic, it confirms Olufemi Terry as a talent with an enormous future

I wonder what Fimmetta was referring to as brave and ambitious. Was the author writing about a people he was not supposed to write, which requires bravery? Or was he ambitious of winning the Caine, which might probably explained why he wrote this? Mediocrity is not talent. If Olufemi keeps writing in this form, even Western readers, to whom most of this morbidity and macabreness is directed, would be fed up with his offering.

This story did nothing for me. It is the weakest story in the shortlist. But it won, according to the judges. For those who want to find out, this story is available at the Caine Prize website for downloading.

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Brief Bio: Read about the author here.

ImageNations Rating: 2.5/6.0

106. Muzungu by Namwali Serpell

Namwali Serpell's Muzungu, her first published story, was shortlisted for the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2010. The story was first published in the African Diaspora journal Callaloo and later selected and published in The Best American Short Stories 2009. I is also one of the stories in the Caine Prize Anthology, A Life in Full and other stories.

Muzungu tells the story of a young precocious girl, Isabella (or Isa), and her relationships with the people and things around her. Isa is the daughter of expatriate parents and, at age nine, has come to understand what being white meant. She is also an intelligent girl who prefers having conversations with adults to children and who thinks Athena is better Aphrodite. She loves fractions too. However, this characteristic was expertly handled so that any hints of Einsteinian traits were avoided. For instance, when she follows Chanda to the servants' quarters and is called muzungu by one servants' relatives, she runs to her father to seek its meaning.

Isa's parents - Sibilla and Colonel Corsale - seems estrange from her. Whereas the father is a drunk; preferring to drench himself in alcohol to holding complete conversations, her mother is either serving and doting the party-visitors or doing another thing. All through the story Isa was almost never seen in their company and the only time he goes to her father, he was in a drunken stupor. Besides, though her parents keep servants at the servants' quarters, she is not allowed to play with the servants' children, not even with Chanda who is closer to her in age. And this makes Isa, an only child, lonely. She is unable to fraternise with the her parents' friends' children who come to the parties his father organises. They seem too childish and cry at the least opportunity.

In addition to her introversion, Isa has 'teenage' doubts about her features and keeps looking in the mirror. She thinks her nose hangs too close to her upper lip and will usually push it up with her fingers. She is also afraid of inheriting her mother's hairiness.

She checked her face for hair (an endless, inevitable paranoia) and with a cruel finger pushed the tip of her nose up. She felt it hung too close to her upper lip.

In effect, just like any other preteen, Isa entertains fears and harbours insecurities. And Namwali did an excellent job in the way she treated them without giving in to stereotypes, which would have been the easy way out.

In addition to this vivid portrayal, devoid of the overly-dialogue that one encounters in stories with children as protagonists, is Namwali's excellent use of language and beautiful narrative. The author's sense of observation is acute - and this is enhanced by her point-of-view narrative style - carrying to the reader the smell, taste, and feel of the story. The reader inevitably feels attached to the narrator seeing whatever it is she is seeing and doing whatever it is she is doing. At a place where Namwali describes the Colonel's drunkenness, she writes

The Colonel liked to drink from the same glass the entire day, always his favorite glass, decorated with the red, white, and green hexagons of a football. As his drunkenness progressed, the glass got misty from being so close to his open mouth, then slimy as his saliva glands loosened, then muddy as dirt and sweat mixed on his hand. At the end of the evening, when Isa was sent to fetch her father's glass, she often found it beneath his chair under a swarm of giddy ants, the football spattered like it had been used for a rainy day match.

Per the title Muzungu - ghost - race and identity is the major theme threading through. For instance, though Ba Simone and her children live on the same compound as Isa and her parents, the contrast between the kind of life both lead is stark: food, dressing and language are dichotomous and diametrically opposing, each family occupying an extreme locus.

However, the focus Namwali's story is on the characters and with detailed descriptions she delivered. It is clear from the dearth of dialogue or its sparing use that Namwali's strength lies in intricate, spicy narrative than in dialogue. She made reading this story a joy to the mind. The choice for the award would have been between Namwali's story and Alex Smith's Soulmates, though none won.

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Brief Bio: Namwali Serpell was born and raised in Zambia until she moved with her parents to the United States in 1989. Her first published story Muzungu was selected for 'The Best American Short Stories'. Her recently completed novel Furrow is set in the Bay Area of US. It is the tale of a 12-year old girl who loses her younger brother. As an adult this girl meets a man who looks just like her brother, however this seeming reunion unfolds deceit and delusion. Breaking is a work in progress and looks at three Zambian families - black, white and brown - over the last century. In September 2011, together with six other writers, Serpell was awarded the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Awards. Namwali Serpell works as an Assistant Professor of English at University of California, Berkeley.

ImageNations: 5.0/6.0

Other Caine Prize Shortlist: The Life of Worm by Ken Barris (2010)

104. The Life of Worm by Ken Barris

Ken Barris's The Life of Worm was shortlisted for the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing, 2010. The story was first published in New Writings from Africa Anthology published by Johnson and King James Book, Cape Town. This story, like all the shortlisted stories, are part of the A Life in Full Anthology published in 2010.

The Life of a Worm is a story about a man and his dog, Worm. The man lives behind a series of metal doors, motion sensors and several electronic security protection. He is also protected by Worm, a ferocious dog he struggles to handle on their daily outings. When people approach them, praising the dog, the man becomes scared, afraid that the dog would tear off intruder's face. From his internal conversation, we see that the man is unable to control his dog. He is also afraid of something: armed-burglars? He is needs this protection and this makes him unable to sleep properly, always checking on his security detail. With alarms going off randomly, his alarming security detail is a worry to his neighbours.

Another worry of Worm's owner is his neighbours infested oak tree. This oak tree has bent at such an acute angle that any strong winds or storms would fall it and in falling destroy the man's house. The man has estimated the extent of this damage should it occur, arriving at the conclusion that his garage would not be destroyed.

Taking his dog for walk one day, the man sees that a huge trunk-like stem of the oak, which he dreamt had broken off, had actually broken and and destroyed a part of the wall. He wants to confront his neighbour but continues his walk with Worm. Then a spaniel approaches Worm and Worm grabs the spaniel and strangles it to death. The man cannot make Worm release this spaniel from his jaw. And powerless, he waits till Worm, in his own time, releases this dead dog.

This story, written in the first person present, is more of an internal dialogue and desperation of a man. Taken at face-value it portrays nothing. Absolutely nothing; however, further reflection shows man's daily worries about security, death, things he cannot control, things he procrastinates and more. Would he be attacked by the numerous robbers parading the street or by any of the reported incidents of burglary? Would the rotten oak tree fall and destroy his house? Would Worm kill someone? It has this Kafka-esque feel, for things begin almost at nothing and develops into something different.

This story is worth its inclusion in the shortlist. As to it winning the award would have depended on the meanings attributed it not what it says. And since attribution is a subjective endeavour, it is difficult to speak for or against it not winning.

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Brief Bio: Ken Barris lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He's a poet, novelist, and short story author. His short story The Quick Brown Fox won the 2006 Thomas Pringle Award. In 1996 his novel The Jailer's Book  won the M-Net Book Prize; it also received Honourable Mention at the Noma Award. His Poetry in New Coin won him the Sydney Clouts Memorial Award. An Advertisement for Air, a collection of poetry also won him the Ingrid Jonker Prize. He has been twice shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2003 and 2010 for Clubfoot and The Life of Worm, respectively. The latter was also shortlisted for Studzinski/PEN Award in 2009. Barris' novel What Kind of Child was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book for Africa Region and the Herman Charles Bosman Fiction Prize. (Read about the author here)

ImageNations Rating: 4.5/6.0

Other Caine Prize Shortlist: How Shall we Kill the Bishop (2010) 

102. How Shall we Kill the Bishop? by Lily Mabura

Lily Mabura's How Shall we Kill the Bishop was shortlisted for the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2010. The story was first published in Wasafiri Vol. 23 No. 1, March 2008. It is also part of the Caine Prize for African Writing anthology A Life in Full and Other Stories published in 2010, together with Alex Smith's Soulmates.

How Shall we Kill the Bishop is a story about the lives of four priests, a bishop and a cook at a vicarage in a desolate town in Kenya. In fact the author's description of the town where the vicarage is set is similar to Andre Brink's Praying Mantis. For instance the military base was a

remnant of the colonial legacy standing amongst stunted acacia trees and withered shrubs of solanum. The stunts of sparse grass surrounding the base were too brittle for cattle to graze on - too brittle even for camels. 

and it is this military that provides the 

distraction from the sick dogs that would not stop howling, from the dry animal carcasses in the bush and watering holes caked with mud.

In this town, inhabited by natives virtually begging and scouring for food and military, life seems to happen spontaneously and during the periods where life and access to sustenance seem to be unbearable, the natives who are unable to migrate away from the town, to literally seek greener pastures, turn to the bishop and his four priests for help. Yet these priests have their own problems. Each has something he is eager to forget. According to Fr. Yasin Lordman:

Fr. Ahmed, ... , was hard bent on forgetting cigarettes; Fr. Seif, in his determination to forget the woman he loved, intruded on everyone's quiet time because he could not stand his own; Fr. Dugo determined to forget that the bishop had tested him most before admission; and Dafala [the cook] determined to forget that the bishop was sick at all and carried on as usual.

And so too is the bishop as he lay dying on his bed. The bishop wanted someone to confess his sins to before he passes on. In his determination he writes a confessional letter for Fr. Yasin to post to the Nuncio Felice in Nairobi . Early on, it was Fr. Yasin who had asked the question 'How shall we kill the bishop' - as a joke - when they realised that he was the one who is preventing them from going back to their old ways. Fr. Yasin on his way to posting the letter saw Salima, a girl who had become part of the life of the priests and the bishop after she scaled the wall onto the compound and was asked, as penance for her sins, to serve as the altar girl, since the vicarage had lost all their altar boys to the unending drought. Following Salima, perhaps to verify why she has not been coming to the vicarage, Fr. Yasin misses her in the military crowd.

Fr. Yasin exchanged the bishop's envelope for the promise (from a woman in charge of the place where the military were dancing) of seeing Salima. Then suddenly, on the vicarage's compound was an armed military man with his boot on Yasin's neck. And in one censer swing of his gun, dropped the bishop.

This story is an enigma. What caused the military man who was keeping Salima to come to the vicarage and kill the Bishop? Was it a competition for Salima? Or revenge? Since the content of the envelope was removed, the military man could not be acting on revenge as initially one might think that the bishop had known Salima carnally. This story is somewhat above my head. I hope you read it and point this out to me, perhaps I am missing something. I think this story was shortlisted because of its enigma.

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Brief Bio: Lily Mabura is an African and African Diaspora scholar and writer at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her literary awards include the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature and Kenya's National Book Week Literary Award. She has published several short stories, a novel, The Pretoria Conspiracy (Focus Books, 2000), and three children's books. She is currently working on a fictional exploration of Kenya's 2007-08 post-election violence, Man from Magadi. (source: A Life in Full and other stories)

ImageNations: 3.5/6.0

Other Caine Prize Shortlist: Soulmates by Alex Smith (2010)

101. Soulmates by Alex Smith

Alex Smith's Soulmates was shortlisted for the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2010. The story appeared in New Writing from Africa (2009) published by Johnson & King James Book, Cape Town.

Mary of the bees and thorns, Mary of the porcupines and nubbly roots, namelijk Maria, genaamd Magdalena, van welke zeven duivelen uitgegaan waren, Maria minus seven devils, Maria after whom I have been named, help me, please! Outside spiders were spinning webs, bees were waiting, motionless, for day, and porcupines were chewing through the frost and rutty bulbs of the renosterveld. Inside Maria was tearing. The door to the room was closed, but windy wind, tumultous as Maria's loss, violated the locks and cracks and came in with grit and insects, to witness the splitting of the elliptical entrance to Maria's physical soul, and, regardless of the fragile circumstances, boorish wind rampaged about the room with all the rattle of seven devils. Maria was laid out on a bed of coarse sheets.

Soulmates is the retelling of a historical event that occurred in Cape of Good Hope in the 18th Century. It is a story of love and murder, of a woman who, in finding love, found death for in finding love she stepped over an abominable line: killing her husband, in a patriarchal era, and falling in love with a black slave in an era where all that blacks were good for were dienaars en slawe: servants and slaves.

Maria was married to 'Rough' Franz Jooste, 'a knurled farmer, who has spent his blessed savings on negotiating for a bride price' at a young age her family was in need of the money. From the story we observe that Maria is depressed. There is no joy in the marriage, no love, no affection exhibited by Franz. There was two main activity that Franz demanded, one was asked, the other was taken: food and sex, respectively. Sex with Franz was one of a punishment through asphyxiation, physically and emotionally, than it was of love, for Franz, as portrayed in the story, was a straightforward person who goes in directly for what he wants. It was one-sided without the kisses, without the conversation, without the sharing of emotions: it was always rough and dry. 

Franz, who had stripped her of clothes to fondle, squeeze, prod, suck, suffocate, vandalise and admire her, and now now slept fully dressed with his pants still unbuttoned and his mouth hanging open, ...

Consequently, Maria experienced no joy in the household. Not even in her language, as Franz had 'disallowed her mother tongue, French' thus taking away her willingness to read the 'humourless Bible in Dutch'.

Suddenly, Maria, who had always thought of herself as better than their slave, Titus, realised that she was no different from him; they were both slaves to Franz, beaten by him at his will for the least offence and sometimes for nothing at all. However, 

Impish Titus with tapering fingers, ..., in spite of everything that was in his life possessed the playfulness of youth. He was a jester, not especially gifted at comedy, but irrepressibly inclined to joke.

This meeting, this realisation forbade doom. From then on Maria 'grew fond of the Biblical book of Titus, regardless of its Dutch, and from it drew comfort.' Titus would dress her wounds with lotion and herbs after the master had beaten her; Titus would get her a flower, a leaf, a speckled egg, a feather, even as the master refused to buy her clothes. Then one day Maria 'leaned upwards and held her lips near to Titus's lips.' And the abomination was complete.

Death by impalement and decapitation to Titus and by strangulation to Maria was the judge's sentence, when Maria shot and killed her husband after Titus's shot failed to kill him for beating Maria. The sentencing of Maria and Titus took place on September 1, 1714 and Titus lived for two more days after his impalement, giving up life on September 3, after which

His right hand and head were sawed off and fixed on the gates of Jooste farm as a warning to other slaves who might dare to love beyond their quarters.

This story, full of biblical allusions (for it seemed that Franz Jooste was one who kept the Lord's words in some sense), shows how far the people of South Africa, and humanity in general, have come. For 'today, they would be allowed to kiss, allowed to love and would surely have been acquitted from the charges of murder, for they were acting in self-defence'. From the latter statement, one can deduce that this story is meant to be a rallying call for their 'names to be cleared'. Yet, they were

'a contemptible slave guilty of carnal intercourse' and 'a woman who gratified her foul and godless lust'

I am extremely impressed by this story; not only for the quality and beauty of its prose (reason why I quoted part of the opening paragraph to the story at the beginning of this review), but also for the unlikely source from which the story was taken. With this story, Alex Smith has shown the wideness and deepness of the river how varied the fishes that swim in it. Read the true account of this story here.
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Brief Bio: Alex Smith was born in Cape Town but has lived in China, Taiwan and the UK. She is a teacher, textile merchant, a bookseller and an author. She has been shortlisted for and won several awards. In 2009 she was shortlisted for the PEN/Studinsky Award judged by J.M. Coetzee for Soulmates, which was also shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing and is currently part of the Caine Prize anthology for 2011 To see the Mountain, after appearing in the New Writing from Africa anthology. She won the 2011 Nielsen Book Data Booksellers Choice Award for Four Drunk Beauties (Random House publication). She was also the prize winner in the Tafelberg-Sanlam Youth Literature Competition 2010 for her youth novel Agency Blue. In 2009 her story Change was included in the prestigious Touch anthology of stories by 25 top South Africa authors.

ImageNations' Rating: 5.5/6.0

Other Caine Prize Shortlist: Waiting by E.C. Osondu (2009)

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 abroad. The story borders on being a catalogue of scatology with 'shit' bandied here and there. And such was the visual presentation of this filthiness that one could go without food for days after reading this filth-packed paragraph.

There were a lot of black dogs. They were our friends, they were our protectors. Even though food was scarce, the dogs never went hungry. The women would call them whenever a child squatted down to shit and the dogs would come running. They would wait for the child to finish and lick child's buttocks clean before they ate the shit.

Later on, when food became scarce, the dogs were killed and eaten as food. And must the dogs be black? Or what is the symbolic significance of a black dog? This is a clear example of what has become the African stories and the very ones that are noted and awarded. In the end, as the writer stopped narrating his story, all that has been covered were the desolate lives of a group of young people in a refugee camp whose only hope of survival is to be adopted. And this is the very stories that almost always put me off from my objective of reading African stories and promoting them. 

Per this story, and if this theme pervades Osondu's new short story anthology Voice of America, then I think I would pass on that one. This is not a matter of writing the so-called positive stories about Africa, but about writing stories not for the popularity of the themes. It is about writing because you have something else to say. How can there be a representative story if all that is said are on the extreme left.As it stands now, such themes have become crowded and I have read a lot of them to last me a generation. 

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Brief Bio: was born in Nigeria, where he worked for many years as an advertising copywriter. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2009. His book of stories Voice of America is due from HarperCollins in November, and his novel This House Is Not For Sale is due from HarperCollins in 2012. His short stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Guernica, AGNI, and many other magazines. With William Pierce, he coedited The AGNI Portfolio of African Fiction. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where he was a Syracuse University Fellow. He is assistant professor of English at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. (Continue reading) The story could be read at the Guernica site here and its pdf version could be downloaded from the Caine Prize for African Writing site.

Other Caine Prize Shortlist: How Kamau wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile by Mukoma wa Ngugi

99. How Kamau Wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile by Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ

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 eye. If you do not leave tonight, there is a chance you will be dead by tomorrow morning.'

That evening Kamau knew that he has no time left, if he should be arrested again torture would be the starting point, not the end. The remaining of the story follows Kamau on his way across the border, and into exile, under the guise of a Maasai warrior. It was on his escape that he witnessed the assassination of the coup plotters, including the man who presented him with the list.

The political tension in the country from which Kamau is running is not merely political but one mixed or influenced by tribal affiliations so much so that if a Gikuyu understands a Luo, he is considered to be

diluted, to be on the fence, to be compromised. It was to be dirty.

Even then it was the conversion into one of the least regarded and most abused tribes, Maasai, that saved his life as checkpoints increased and the police hunt for him, searching every corner including cigarette boxes.

Mukoma wa Ngugi's short story with its political overtones and ethnic undertone, is worth the read. He makes the psychological effects of exile on the life of the escapee and the people he leaves behind palpable, as was visible in the silent communication between Kamau and Wambui. This story reminds us of the ultimate power wielded by most leaders and how difficult it is for the people to come against it without facing, first, the might of the government.

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Brief Bio: Novelist, poet, and essayist Mukoma Wa Ngugi is the author of Nairobi Heat (Penguin, SA 2009), an anthology of poetry titled Hurling Words at Consciousness (AWP, 2006) and is a political columnist for the BBC's Focus on Africa Magazine. He was short listed for the Caine Prize for African writing in 2009. He has also been shortlisted for the 2010 Penguin Prize for African Writing for his novel manuscript, The First and Second Books of Transition. Nairobi Heat is being released in the United States by Melville Publishing House September, 13 2011. (Continue reading)

ImageNations Rating: 4.5/6.0

Other Caine Prize shortlist: You Wreck Her by Parselelo Kantai

97. You Wreck Her by Parselelo Kantai

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 screaming in your ears, and your short-time is fumbling around you like he lost something important in your pubic hair. He finds your breast. He is clutching you like a handbag thief on Moi Avenue. His thing grows larger in your mouth, then trembles and the thin in your mouth grows soft and your jaws are aching and there is a tap on the window. And right there, on the uniformed policeman's face you see yourself.

This imagistic scene sets the tone and landscape of what is to be a story of hope and hopelessness, of exploitation and reverse-exploitation. Our nameless character referred to throughout the story only as 'you' - and here the reader could insert himself or herself or imagine the description of our protagonist who is said to be

too tall, too skinny and too dark,

had left home after the death of her mother and sexual molestation by her father. Inserting herself into Kenya's night-life, the protagonist joined a growing number of malayas, not only from Kenya but also from Rwanda, Sudan, Congo and from far off countries like Benin, in the hope of being spotted by an mzungu, entering into his life and being carried away to Europe. This is every malaya's  dream. However, due to her tallness, skinniness and darkness, the protagonist is almost at the last rank of the ladder. Attracting only the sad customers with gasoline-leaking cars who rant and ramble about their sadness.

Then she met Goort at a pub. Goort was the mzungu she had been looking for, for Goort - a war photographer and an arranger of 'dramas' - bought her new clothes and was willing to give her a new identity. Except that this new identity would require a lot of fabrication and genealogical engineering. Promising to make her a model - like Alek Wek - and take her to Europe, the protagonist agreed. She was to

remember that you are a child soldier from Sudan whom I discovered resting under a tree in Yei County, near the border and not having eaten in three days. He said you have to remember that. Also do not forget that your mother was raped by soldiers and got pregnant with you only to die in a hail of bullets at childbirth. He said drama was what would make the world love you, such a beautiful creature rescued from such ugliness.

And that was how our protagonist found her way into Europe as a star with no education: her pictures covering several magazines. Things however turned on its head when Goort brought in another girl, this time from Angola, because that is where the drama was now, not Sudan. This new girl took her position and soon the protagonist was back home, and together with the karao (police), ripping off mzungus.

Parselelo panders not to any side of the divide: malaya or mzungu. This is strengthened by his use of an unnamed character, which created some form of detachment to the character. Yet, a named and relatable character would have increased the impact of his delivery. As an investigative journalist, Parselelo Kantai might have done a lot of research in this subject matter to deliver it as he did. He showed how people get on the street and remain on the street and the exploitation that goes on by people who pretend to offer help only to rip, exploit and degrade them further. Most of these exploiters are drawn by the helplessness, ignorance and expectations of these penury street girls. Yet, in the end these girls become something else. No one would enter this business and be the same. The initial shyness is the first to go, at least facially - though deep down they aspire to be something better than what they currently are. The erased shyness, timorousness and timidity is replaced by another superficial trait: temerity, the only requirement of this trade.

Parselelo Kantai's short story is worth the read and good enough to be, not only on the shortlist, but to win.

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Brief Bio: Parselelo Kantai has a flair for sounding the alarm. Formerly the editor of the East African environmental quarterly Ecoforum, Kantai wrote and oversaw the publication of "A Deal in the Mara," which shed light on the corruption in the management of the Maasai Mara. Kantai, one of Kenya’s most pointed investigative reporters, has contributed to a series of East African magazines and dailies and is currently working on a novel set during the 1970s Kenyatta years. In 2004, Kantai was runner-up for the Caine Prize for African Writing for his fiction piece ”Comrade Lemma and the Black Jerusalem Boys Band.” (Source)

ImageNations Rating: 5.0/6.0

Other Caine Prize Shortlist: Icebergs by Alistair Morgan

96. Icebergs by Alistair Morgan

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 loves painting. Moorcraft told him of her artist daughter, Melissa, who comes to visit once in a while, promising to introduce her to him when she visits.

It was during one of Melissa's Cape Town visits and her father's introduction that the two: Melissa and Bradshaw, a man old enough to be his father, struck a relationship to the chagrin of Moorcraft. But Bradshaw has his secrets and when they started coming up, through several media outlets, the concern Dennis Moorcraft could no longer sit whilst his daughter is taken advantage of. But the daughter has decided and the relationship between father and daughter is already a strained one. 

"I'm just worried, Melissa. Can you understand that? Can you understand someone else's feelings for once?"

"Fuck you."

"Please. Melissa. Why don't you come over and we can talk about this properly?"

Melissa would become embroiled in political mudslinging that threatens her very life and of which survival meant giving up everything she had and those she had laboured for, the least of the two being her father, to live incognito.

This short story is a beautiful story and one I would have voted for to win the 2009 award. It packs a lot of emotions and intrigue within its few pages and shows how much more there is to Africa than the archetypal stereotypes cemented in most writers' and readers' minds. It exudes hope for African stories and even though there is political corruption lurking somewhere within its pages, it does not takeover the story. The main events surrounds the relationship between a single lonely father who still cares about his children, want the best for them but still have to decide where childhood ends and adulthood begins and her daughter set in her ways with unshakable thoughts and decisions. Should one leave ones child into the jaws of doom even when the child insist that he or she is no longer a child and his or her decision must therefore be respected? Could you sit idle, hands folded between your thighs, when you know that a particular decision would lead your love one into trouble even if that person insist on being left alone? At one point or the other we have been in both situations, and that is the beauty of the story and of life. Children always think they know what is best for them, parents always think that having acquired experience they know the effect of certain decisions and also they know the ways of the world. This is supported by a proverb in Twi which when translated is it is adulthood that no one has reached before and not childhood. This is a superb story and has all the ingredients of a short story.

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Brief Bio: Alistair Morgan was born in South Africa in 1971. He is the first non-American to win the Paris Review's George Plimpton Prize. His debut novel, Sleeper's Wake, was published in 2009 to much acclaim. He lives in Cape Town. (continue reading). His short stories: Departure and Icebergs have appeared in The Paris Review. Icebergs was selected for the O. Henry Awards anthology for 2008 and Departure was also selected for the National Magazine Awards. You can read it at The Paris Review's Site or get the pdf at the Caine Prize for African Writing Site.

ImageNations' Rating: 5.5/6.0

Other Caine Prize 2009 Shortlist: The End of Skill by Mamle Kabu

45. The End of Skill by Mamle Kabu

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 continuing the father's business of Kente weaving. According to him this work brings no financial rewards fitting enough of people of his age, this his father wouldn't listen to even if he conveys his thoughts in a not so bluntly a way.

However, Jimmy is only satisfied and fulfilled when he is weaving the Kente cloth and his father knows this. So Jimmy was to leave the village of Adanwomase to Accra with the aim of finding a different kind of job - one that would pay the bills and make him and his father live a financially-fulfilled life. But what if this dream could only be achieved through the only thing that Kweku or Jimmy has no peer - weaving? And what happens when he found that he shared his father's sentiment about the fate of the Adweneasa Kente cloth in the hands of expatriate and others alike who would treat this Kingly cloth just as another decorating piece? What happens when passion meets money?

This is a wonderful story, one that I have never believed could be told. It speaks of the wealth of stories in the country and how we need not stretch too far to gain ideas to write. The story is also not what people usually refer to as the 'typical' African story. It encompasses the village setting and the city setting and it is so true to life. We each have a story that begins not from the city, but somewhere remote.

This story together with the other shortlisted authors: Parselelo Kantai (Kenya) for You Wreck Her, Alistair Morgan (South Africa) for  Icebergs, EC Osondu (Nigeria) for Waiting and Mukoma wa Ngugi (Kenya) for How Kamau wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile, together with the best from the Caine Writing Workshop were published as Work in Progress and Other Short Stories. Kabu is also the author of 'Human Mathematics' published in Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multi-racial Experience edited by Chandra Prasad, W.W. Norton (2006) and 'Story of Faith' in African Women Writing Resistance: Contemporary Voices, edited by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez, University of Wisconsin (2010).

Mamle Kabu

I recommend that you each read this story here. Or you can purchase the entire anthology, Dreams Miracles and Jazz, which include seasoned authors such as Binyavanga Wainana, Segun Afolabi, Sefi Atta, Brian Chikwava and Biram Mboob, here.

An interview with Mamle Kabu would be up on this blog soon. Keep watching.

29. The Wasp and the Fig Tree by Brian Chikwava

Brian Chikwava is an African writer. His short story Seventh Street Alchemy was awarded the 2004 Caine Prize for African Writing and Chikwava became the first Zimbabwean to do so. Brian is among the exciting new generation of writers emerging on the African continent. Although born in Bulawayo, Chikwava's formative years were spent in Harare, where he attended university and frequented the popular artistes' venue The Book Café.

The Fig Tree and the Wasp is a short story I read at the Granta online magazine. This short story is an interesting and thought-provoking piece. It defines the author-artiste and projects him very much. I have not read anything by Brian save this short story and I am very much impressed by his writing.

The freedom for independence, which led to freedom of indulgence, the contraction of the 'long-illness' disease and the death of the the victim, is the trajectory upon which the story travels. The lives of men and women, boys and girls in the new Zimbabwe was likened to the behaviour of the wasp in the fig tree. According to the author '..in the fig-wasp world, when all the girls have flown away to lay their eggs elsewhere and propagate the species, the fig fruit only goes down with the boys. In the world of men, when the rot set into the compounds and townships, it spared neither sex. Big jawed or winged, they all came down in the silent darkness of their fruit', thus the title of the story.

 

Brian uses two characters Silingiwe and Screw Vet to represent the new generation of females and males, respectively, in the new Zimbabwe. The story also portrayed the hypocrisy in most African homes where any communication on sexual health is abhorred yet they live or dance away their sexual fantasies. This was aptly said in the story '...acting out their sexual fantasies but not talking about sexual health.' The acting was made prominent by the new wave of waist-twirling dance, iskokotsha, which took the new Zimbabwe by surprise leading to the new wave of sexual promiscuity and sexual indulgence leading to death and thus breaking the long-practiced tradition of children burying their parents. 

In its entirety, the story deserved to be acknowledged. Read the short story here at Granta.

ImageNations' Rating: 5.0 out of 6.0