For the love of Africa, for the love of literature, for the love of you, my dear audience of the "interwebs".An anthology; of what was said, what was heard and more importantly, what was written.African Stories.
Your teeth have fled their nest.
Dust rules over the Holy Book.
Untouched buttons of your radio look on.
Curtain folds are like a nurse’s starched uniform.
Your soup bowl has become a roach’s pool.
Your appetite is painted in dull colours.
Your walking stick is the centre in the spider’s handcraft.read more
Walking by the riverside,
Imagining dark eyes,
Tiny fish in Blue Ocean,
Crocodiles struggling to feed,
Hippos in the deep,read more
You are a boy of ten again. You are on the bus, and the trees seem to be going faster than the bus you are seated in. You are on the Kampala–Masaka Highway. You cannot wait to reach Kampala as it will be your first time there. The excitement darts through your body like grasshoppers jumping from grass blade to grass blade. You keep standing to catch a glimpse of the speeding trees, and then sitting down heavily onto your mother’s lap as if you are falling into a chair padded with cushions.
“But Vincent, why don’t you settle down?! You will even break my bones! Now see...” Your mother points down to the heavy lemon green sash of her gomesi. Its tassels are trailing on the bus floor, covered in red soil.read more
Headphones edged with brio,
bulging over skirted sofas.
Sport is the new sex.
Dogs versus coyotes on the tight
end of the stereo.
Hazard lights stitch footsubishis and TV
chicken into seams of Nokia eleven hundred housing.
In loose sprays, cracked for patches
of grey I save English names one cocktail
at a time. Tusky Big Brother Africa house
mates sniff my lemon bracts. I’m middle
middle-class with a chance of un|dress
codes. Raglan sleeves, push-up bras, harem
culottes, wine-glass heels and a backpack full
of silence. I will never wear myself out
trying to get rich.read more
I still recall its sweetness when he gave it to us. Uncle Tom found us playing in the banana plantations. We were searching for nsenene, the grasshopper which appeared seasonally when it rained in our village. We searched for them on the ground and in the folds of the banana leaves. The first time we tasted it was when aunt brought it back from Kampala, “Nakato and Kato come and get some sweets,” she’d cried. We were plucking the legs and wings off nsenene in the backyard of our grass-thatched hut. The sweets were different colours. I unwrapped the white vuvera, polythene paper, from one and threw it in my mouth. I felt the sticky honey sweetness fill my mouth and I swallowed.read more
We used to fight flies and heat
In the bullet ridden grass thatched huts,
We lived in the hope of milk and honey.
We tried to share the little we got with guerrilla forces
Who lived in hope too and tried
To survive with little or no food and water
Tyre sandals for shoes and old clothes looted or donated.read more
That same night,
He picked me along the way.
He charmed me with his bundles.
He assured me of pleasure each day.
He took me around his castles.
He asked me to stay.read more
Poetry is the school I will never graduate from
because no matter how hard – I try
I will never tell it all – the secret way of its patterns
And how the same letters form different syllables to form different words,
And how they fall – in front or behind one another, and if re-arranged would create a whole different story...
It is how emotions run
High – Low – Calm – Serene
Vivacious, like the sun at noon, surreal like the fantasy it promises
You never know when poetry goes subtle or quiet. How even when there,
It grows deep like a river that bleeds
when the dry earth has sucked out her waters...poetry...read more
You have probably noted your dreams down in a well decorated pad, in careful handwriting, one that you use only when it is something very important. You use a pen that was given to you as a gift or one that’s unique from all the other pens. You feel that if you use rare materials to write your dreams down, the faster they will be realized. You tear the paper out of the notebook, fold it and keep it under your pillow, where no one but you and God - who will help you achieve those dreams - can see.read more
It was Thursday, a day not much different from any other day of the week. Winter was harsher than the previous years and the pale morning sun shone from an ashen sky. Majid watched his daughter cough and curl up on the floor which had been newly laid with a not-so-old carpet that he had picked from the dump the previous day. It spread some warmth to their one roomed desert home in the settlement of Panar. Pneumonia was rampant and he had taken his daughter to different hospitals before a doctor finally agreed to attend to her. He was advised to keep the little girl warm and give her some medicines before it got worse.read more