January 2017

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The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

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VOLUME: 1 - ISSUE: 10 - January - 2017

Columns: Sotto Voce-Indira Parthasarathy 04

Letter from London: John Looker 07

Musings Of An Axolotl -C.S.Lakshmi 11 Poetry:

Adjei Agyei-Baah 18 Mercy Ikuri 19 Akor Emmanuel Oche 20/94 Clรกudia Cassoma 34 Agbaakin O. Jeremiah 37

Tendai Mwanaka 40 Karin Anderson 53 Fayssal Chafaki 58 Muhammad Ismail 62

Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva 96 Tom Jalio 98 Fiction:

Sharon Tshipa 45 ZP Dala 64 Sima Mittal 74 Book Review : Maakomele R. Manaka/Nyamu 50

Short Stories/ Peter Ngila 79 Theatre: One Act Play/ Fani-Kayode Omoregie 21 Author Interview: Zukiswa Wanner/ Kariuki wa Nyamu 84

THE WAGON MAGAZINE KGE TEAM 4/4, FIRST FLOOR, R.R.FLATS, FIRST STREET, VEDHACHALA NAGAR, KODAMBAKKAM, CHENNAI - 600 024

Phone: +91-9382708030 e-mail: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com www.thewagonmagazine.com The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

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‘those slanted eyes’ in the room silence like thunder

PRASAD'S POST

- Chenou Liu

(The phrase, ‘slanted eyes,’ is a racist slur that refers to a person of Asian descent)

* India is the second most populous country in the world with 1.3 billion people, nearly a fifth of the world’s population, amounting to 18 percent of world population with more than two thousand ethnic groups and representing eight major religions of the world; 780 languages are spoken in India; 29 states are there and every state is unique in its own way and in tradition and culture, they differ from each other; there are about 3,000 castes and over 25,000 sub-castes.

Incredible India!

Only the continent of Africa exceeds the linguistic, genetic and cultural diversity of the nation of India. Naturally, African literature is as diverse as the continent itself, as in India, with several characteristics and themes, prevalent throughout much of the written works emerging from Africa.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

4 To quote Tanure Ojaide : ‘This definition of literature takes note of place with its people and society having ‘aesthetic modes’ and ‘cultural and social structures.’ Language is not the prime focus in this definition of literature, whose ‘essential force’ is ‘its reference to the historical and experimental’ Having this in mind, when I decided to go for an exclusive edition of TWM concentrating the continent of Africa, I sought the help of these young writers /poets/ Artists, namely: Kariuki wa Nyamu, Peter Ngila, Margaret Muthee and John Joshua Gibu.

They have associated with me in selecting the works of various authors from different regions of Africa and editing them too. I am grateful to them and their efforts.

Also I want to express my thanks to John Looker who took an initiative on his own to recommend a few authors. That is how we got the poet Karin Andersen from Cape Town.

I stand aside and look forward to the ripples and reflections.

John Joshua Gibu

Born to a Bamasaba couple of Education professionals, with circumcision tradition from the foot of Mt.Elgon in the Eastern region of Uganda.

Gibu is an ancestral Kyabo Clan name of talented persons who were blacksmiths, wood carvers and stone carvers who used a rudimentary approach to producing items in old times with great inspiration to capture the indigenous culture. He is the founder and chief trainer at GIBUart (Gifted and Inspired Brothers-Uganda), a community based organization that empowers vulnerable unskilled youth- school dropouts- through trainings in practical skills and crafts, for self reliance, in Jinja. He is a qualified Fine art teacher. My sincere gratitude to John Joshua Gibu. He has provided the art works, including the wrapper art, in this exclusive venture, even putting aside his other commitments.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

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SOTTO VOCE INDIRA PARTHASARATHY

Staging Parallels

Many years ago, in the nineties of the last century, there was a big explosion in Chennai, in the first week of May, an explosion of theatre activities. Forty plays in fifteen days at the same venue, two plays a day, and three on Sundays, is no mean achievement. Quantitatively that is ‘aesthetic abundance’ for you.

The sponsors of the dramatic deluge, if I remember correctly, it was called Nataka Academy had this democratic concept in mind, when they organized this show, to bring the ‘minority theatre; and ‘majority theatre’ under one roof, literally and metaphorically.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

6 The ‘serious plays’, as they were fancied, were to start at 5.45 pm to be followed by the ‘popular shows’ at 7.30 p.m. The idea was the ‘committed’ audience for each can get exposed to the other, if they choose to see both.

The categorization itself proved disastrous and counter-productive as the hall presented an empty look for the first part, what with ‘open-minded’ many yet to muster courage to sit through a ‘serious’ play.

Waiting for the audience (not for Godot) the ‘serious’ play started invariably late, and the ‘committed’ majority for the unpretentious popular stuff would occupy the empty chairs, when the ‘high brow happening’ was still on. Having no clue to what was going on the stage- every character stretched pronouncing each word in what appeared to be the most unnatural and archaic accent, the audience became restive and did not hesitate to give expression to their reaction in no uncertain terms. The organizers had planned a ‘matrimony’ between ‘popular’ and ‘serious’ theatre but what ultimately happened was the minority was minority and the majority was majority and the twain never met.

It escapes explanation why the ‘serious’ theatre guys acceded to the proposal for putting up their performance just before the regal pageantry of the comedy shows; one following the other, so soon.

There is no denying the fact that even the committed few followers of the parallel theatre, after a heavy dose of ‘seriousness’ doled out to them by the preceding performance, stayed back to enjoy the comedy kings, with a willing suspension of their critical faculties, just to relax in the atmosphere of overwhelming insanity.

It is not being uncharitable to the parallel theatre. Dissent is born out of strong conviction and it has to have distinctive character and identity. In the West, the leaders of the parallel theatre movement are totally dedicated to the cause and even, if they fail in their performance, their sincerity is in evidence. One cannot be so sure of the sincerity and application of most of the avant-garde theatre persons, except in the case of a few rare exceptions, in Tamil Nadu.

Mostly it seems to be an elitist exercise or pampering one’s The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

7 own ego that one is different from the rest. Under such circumstances, it is no surprise that an average theatre-goers’ preference is ‘for the old and familiar hat’. Theatre, being a social institution, it has to communicate.

In the west, a Brecht, a Beckett and Ionesco are all tall figures in their respective theatrical forms, because they were ‘ideologically charged’ and they had strong convictions. Most of the self-styled avant-garde theatre practitioners in our country do not have any basic artistic or ideological compulsion to make their own statement or stamp their signature by presenting a theatre that could confirm their identity. Most of them are pale imitations of the modern western plays, totally unrelated to our cultural heritage of the past.

In our theatrical tradition, music constituted the intrinsic part of the performance. A good theatre director, in my view, should be well-versed in all our past classical as well as folk theatre forms to get them integrated elegantly with a visionary conceptualization of modern theatrical production.

‘Silappadikaram’, though it is called an epic, is the finest example of a total theatre, blending classical and rural music and dance forms, obtained in all the regions of Tamil Nadu strongly supporting an excellent story of an ordinary woman challenging a king seeking justice for her husband, who has been put to death by a royal blunder. Those who perform ‘Silappadikaram’ as a music and dance theatre fail to do justice to the dramatic story line, to bring into focus every character of the story that has been subtly and beautifully portrayed by the dramatist.

Let us look forward to a Peter Brook emerging from Tamil Nadu to project this play in its multi-dimensional format that would be the finest illustration of modern Tamil theatre to give us a great theatrical experience.

Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name of R. Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright. He has published 16 novels,10 plays, anthologies of short stories, and essays.He is best known for his plays, “Aurangzeb”, “Nandan Kathai” and “Ramanujar”.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

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Letter from London - 3 from John Looker

Us-es and Thems

Dear Reader, This being the Africa edition, I wonder if you could make a guess at who said this recently: “One of the most dangerous kinds of people in the world today, I think, are people who go around mobilising ‘Us-es’ by stigmatising and demonising ‘Thems’. It’s easy to do. It works. But then you’re stuck with the results, and the results are that you can’t turn it off – you can’t turn it off!”

It was the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, who gave this year’s Reith Lectures on BBC Radio.

He was talking about ‘identity’ and the way we tend to classify ourselves and others according to creed, class, colour and so on. His third lecture was delivered in Ghana, since he is himself of Ghanaian The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

9 descent. He had been speaking about colour and demonstrating what a crude and distorting concept it has been. These words were his reply to a question in Accra.

As a jumping off point for this Letter, I feel they could take us in so many directions. The world seems deeply divided in 2016. And yet there are always grounds for hope.

In the United Kingdom we have recently had a new report on integration in our most isolated and deprived communities. This is the somewhat disputed ‘Casey review’, a report from Dame Louise Casey who had been commissioned to advise the government. As she herself said: “I wanted to consider what divides communities and gives rise to anxiety, prejudice, alienation and a sense of grievance; and to look again at what could be done to fight the injustice that where you are born or live in this country, your background or even your gender, can affect how you get on in modern Britain.”

Louise Casey is something of a celebrity guru on social issues. She travelled and consulted widely. As she expected, she found discrimination and disadvantage: black boys still unable to get a job, Muslim girls getting good grades but no decent employment opportunities, and so on. But she also found minority communities that were isolating themselves from wider society, often through holding on to cultural and religious practices that run contrary to British values and sometimes British laws. Moreover, Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups had the lowest levels of English language of any minority group in Britain, and their women were twice as likely as men to have poor English.

She has been criticised for emphasing the presence of these problems among British Muslims of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage. Her defense has been that it is better to speak openly of these matters, otherwise “we leave the ground open for the Far Right on one side and Islamist extremists on the other”. While her report made a number of recommendations for action, her primary aim The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

10 was to promote a transformative debate.

Religious differences had been the subject of Prof. Appiah’s first lecture. He argued that religion is not only a matter of beliefs.

Equally important are religious practices. A community of believers may be held together by common observance of dietary rules, norms of dress, shared festivals and so on. We can see how such customs help to hold a community together and preserve its identity over time – even, as with Jews, over millennia. But, of course, these shared practices also emphasise their difference from other communities, including the host community, if they are a minority. ‘Us’ and ‘Them’.

Is that necessarily dangerous? Aren’t variety and difference something to be celebrated? For a while, here in Britain, this multi culturalism seemed a peaceful way in which to live together. Then the fault lines started to show up. Moreover, it’s not so easy to celebrate differences when one community insists that its own practices should be observed by others, or is heavy-handed about compliance among its own people.

Through Facebook, I have come across an article revisiting a 1948 book by the Indian statesman and thinker B.R. Ambedkar (The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables?). I was struck by an extract in which he wrote “there are two elements in every religion. One is that religion is inseparable from sacred things. The other is that religion is a collective thing inseparable from society”.

That is not an observation I would have made, having grown up with a sense that religion is the personal search for belief, even if it feels like stumbling through a dark wood at night.

But I can see the validity of Ambedkar’s remark for many. And where the practice of religion emphasises what is sacred, what is taboo, what the community requires of the individual – then one can see how inter-communal variety can turn into conflict.

There is a new film in the cinemas which strikingly shows how we poor humans can overcome divisions, and does so by portraying an African man and an English woman who fell in love and married.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

11 I’m talking of ‘A United Kingdom’, starring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike in the true story of Seretse Khama (heir to the throne of Bechuanaland, later Botswana) and Ruth Williams (a London office worker). Following their marriage in 1948, Ruth Williams lost her job and was disowned by her father; Seretse Khama was in disgrace at home. Their marriage provoked a constitutional crisis both in Bechuanaland, whose people deeply resented the imposition of a white queen, and the British Empire, compromised by colonial habits, links with South Africa, diamonds – and racial prejudice. They endured years of patient struggle, exile and betrayals.

The film is beautifully made and moving. Do see it if you can. I am not spoiling the plot if I tell you that love triumphs. Not simply romantic love, but the love in which hurt people open not only their hearts to others but their minds to new ways of thinking. Arrival sends you out into the night marveling at our capacity for love, courage and change. It is optimistic about our potential to overcome division.

Let’s be optimistic shall we?

John Looker lives in southern England. He has written poetry all his life and now, in retirement, draws on the experience of a long career in the British civil service, on family life and on international travel. In his book The Human Hive, available through Amazon, John Looker explores our common humanity, down the ages and round the globe, by looking through the lens of work and human activity.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

12 MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL

C.S.LAKSHMI

The African Journal of Mothers, Flamingoes and Butterflies In 2002 I attended the Know How Conference held at Kampala in Uganda. It was my first visit to Africa and I was looking forward to meeting women writers and activists from different countries. I may have written about it elsewhere at that time but it is worth recalling some of those experiences. The Kenya Airways took off late and I slept through the flight. When I woke up at Nairobi the sky was a riot of colours and I saw even a deep maroon on the sky. From Nairobi it was a smaller plane to Kampala. Arriving at Kampala airport was like landing in a lush green forest. The trip from the airport to the hotel which took an hour was like a drive from Kerala to Nagercoil.

It was a very similar landscape with banana trees, mango trees and jackfruit trees. And familiar tiled houses and kiosks along the way.

The conference had been organised by ‘Isis’ (taking its name from the Egyptian mother goddess, considered as the mother of the universe who symbolises creativity, knowledge and women’s power) and WICCE (Women’s international Cross Cultural Exchange). I found out later that ‘wicce’ is an old English word for a sorceress!

Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro, who was President of the Board of Directors, Isis-WICCE, who delivThe Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

13 ered the key note address, was not there to talk about ancient goddesses or witches but modern technology. Bill Gates had said that Africa needed better healthcare and not technology. Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro put Bill Gates in his place saying African women needed computers like the pot they carry on their heads, as easily available and as important. That was really a spirited speech but what followed the next day was not very different from what could have happened in an Indian village engaged in “empowering” women. I had had some taste of it here a few years ago when there was a consultation on gender and development. The entire development model had been geared to kitchen gardens for women and sewing machines for widows.

After a morning session where they began to sound like bad words when we broke for tea some of us wrote on the black board ‘No more kitchen gardens and sewing machines for the next twenty-five years.’

It created some uproar and men from some NGOs thought it was male bashing and so on. The visit to the African village next day was not anything different from the sewing-machines-and-kitchen-gardens syndrome.

Nakaseke village we went to was a one and a half hour journey.

We were going to see the Women’s Tele-Centre there. In the village the women had gathered in large numbers. Some hundreds of them in their best dresses welcomed us with a loud yodeling sound. The Tele-Centre was a library with computers. Illiterate women operated the computer with a C D Rom giving them spoken instructions. The instructions were all about poultry keeping and vegetable farming.

From the Tele- Centre we were taken to a room were sure enough the women had displayed their work: vegetables grown, cakes baked, mats woven and so on. Even hens were there to show how they kept poultry. Is that what technology had taught them to do? So what was new? The Tele-Centre had a van. It was driven by a man, of course.

Then there was the usual welcome dance and young girls and boys did some wonderful dancing and the girls spoke and sang about mothers of today and tomorrow. That is how women were to be “empowered” by being good mothers with the help of technology.

The good mothers bit suddenly brought tears to some of our The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

14 eyes for parallel sessions on the theme of Peace and Conflict which were going on had revealed some horror stories of war in Sudan and Congo. There were stories about rebels coming and abducting girls from north Uganda, taking them to Sudan and getting them forcibly married to soldiers. Their job was to cook for the soldiers and beget children. There was one instance of a son being killed in front of the mother and of not allowing the mother to bury the child but burn it before the rebels and their putting off the fire when the body was half burnt and violently raping the mother. And then there was that absolutely unbearable act of the rebels after the rape when they forced her to cook the half burnt body of her son and eat it in front of them.

After that particular session if anybody had so much spoken about the inevitability of war or political conflict in the present world we could have killed them. Singing happy songs about being good mothers before a bunch of foreigners, both whites and others, some of us felt, only heightened some of the tragedy of their lives. The entire thing ended with what I saw as black comedy. The European funder whose idea the Tele Centre was, congratulated them and exhorted them to be good mothers and told them she had brought them all a gift. She opened a bag dramatically and took out goggles! That was as far as technology would take the African women. I thought wryly when each one of them politely took the goggles and put them in their bag and quietly walked away ignoring invitations to be photographed in goggles.

To get over the Nakaseke Tele-Centre experience, three of us

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15 took a trip to the source of the Nile and Bujagali falls. The Nile was a breathtaking experience. One could see it cutting itself off from Lake Victoria. From here it travels 6400 kilometres through Sudan and Egypt for three months to join the Mediterranean. With champa and hibiscus bushes with pink hibiscus flowers in the garden above we were suddenly in some kind of a heaven far removed from the reality of what Africa was in the sessions we attended. The Bujabali falls which was spread out, pouring down with such force, seemed like a feral woman with its green and frothy water. On the way back we saw mud houses, thatched and tiled houses. There were fruit vendors selling jackfruits, papayas and bananas. There were also vendors selling boti kababs on skewers and tandoori meat. And some vendors also sold roasted and peeled raw bananas.

I found out that mashed raw banana is their staple food called matooke. I was surprised they threw away the stem and flower. I couldn’t relish mashed raw banana with peanut sauce much. Roast potatoes and fruits were a regular part of the food spread out every day with meat, chicken, fish and beans. We gorged on the juicy mangoes but almost everyone had a stomach upset!

Coming from Kampala to Nairobi was a totally different experience. Nairobi is much bigger and one can also see the dominance of the Gujarati community there. There was the usual safari and the trip to the Nakuru lake driving on a road covered with fog feeling as if one was driving into infinity and then being overwhelmed when all of a sudden one encountered millions of pink and white flamingo birds! It was like a pink dream! And then came the Butterfly Centre. There were butterflies in glorious colours which came and sat on your shoulder, hand and head fluttering their wings. But what the guide told us sobered us somewhat. She told us about butterflies migrating from North Canada to Mexico. Since the life of a butterfly is only about six weeks, it starts flying and laying eggs on the way. It The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

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dies before reaching Mexico. The eggs are hatched and caterpillars become butterflies and they complete the journey of their parents.

Then they fly back to Canada and lay eggs on the way and die on the way. The butterflies that come out of the eggs make it to Canada.

An entire life spent journeying half way to your destination; and never seeing your little ones. No bonds; no ties. Just fly, lay eggs and die. With such a colourful body, what a short and seemingly purposeless life where one’s body remains only a feast of colours to others! That butterfly moment has remained part of my memories.

What I carried back with me apart from these memories, however, were the trip made to the Masai market which happened every Thursday and the children and young people’s books published

by Phoenix Publishers, Nairobi and the baby cloth doll I got Khintu, my daughter, designed like an African child. The Masai market reminded me of Ema market in Imphal for it had many women selling their wares. The women happily chatted with the buyers, let them bargain and laughed with them. Shopping there and even The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

17 getting cheated by those smart women was a joy no mall could have given. The story books with titles like The Coconut Girl, The Girl Who Became Chief provided many nights of happy reading for Khintu. A story she often wanted repeated was the story of Jessicah written by Patricia Farrell. The story is about Jessicah who loses her mother at the age of twelve and who decides to go to Nairobi in search of a father she has never known. In the city she encounters Granny Zippo, a woman full of wisdom and a friend of children. Granny Zippo survives by picking through a mountain of garbage known as Menengai. Jessicah joins those children and shares their adventures. And finally Granny Zippo sees to it that Jessicah can return to school.

Jessicah would shout with joy at the end of the story but Granny Zippo would tell her wagging her finger, “You needn’t think you can sit back and relax either. The thing about being a warrior maiden, and I should know, is that you have to go on fighting.”

Every time the story was told to her, Khintu’s eyes would become wet, for going to school was something she enjoyed most.

She danced her way to school every day. Needless to say that Khintu named her African baby doll Jessicah, spelling it African style.

C S Lakshmi is a researcher and a writer who writes in the pen name - Ambai.

She is one of the founder trustees of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women) and currently its director.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

18 PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

YONASON GOLDSON

All the things that might have been What happens to the road not taken? Does it wait for us to return, or does it blink out of existence? And if we do return, is it truly the same road, since we ourselves have changed?

What about us: do we divide into two at every fork, with one alternate version of ourselves taking one way and another the other? And if that is so, might we reconnect further down the path of life, or crisscross, or switch back onto the road we left untraveled?

What of the people we meet along the way? Are we destined to meet them no matter which road we follow, or do future friends and cohorts come into existence and disappear with every choice we make? Will we find our soul mates whichever path we choose, or do different choices make us different people with different souls and different soul mates?

If you’re expecting me to answer these questions, you might as well stop reading here. I have no more idea than you do, and maybe less. But I do have a story about crossing paths and hidden possibilities.

It was the autumn of ‘84, and my backpack and I were drifting through Western Europe on ten-dollars-a-day, trying to visit all the classic tourist spots without being touristy, trying to find the real people and the real land without missing the famous monuments and milestones.

Sometimes it worked. On a train from Luxembourg City to The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

19 Cologne I met Dieter, a journalist who ended up inviting me to his home for roast venison, Cognac, and Cuban cigars. In front of a London bar I met a retired professor who waxed philosophic about the ways of the modern world. And one morning on the Orkney Islands, I ducked out of the North Atlantic drizzle to find myself in a pub packed with raucous octogenarians who had just picked up their old-age-pension checks at the post office and come next door for “coffee morning.”

A different train, a different morning, a different bar, and I would have no story to tell. Who knows how many near misses there were, how many strangers on a train one seat away might have become fellow wanderers or intimates or partners-in-crime had either of us chosen a different seat, or had our eyes met at an opportune moment?

Again, I have no answers. But I did glimpse a few might-havebeens, all because of a chance encounter with a storefront window.

It was a hat shop in Vienna. Now you’ll have to trust me that I almost never respond emotionally to department store merchandise of any kind -- least of all, clothing. But here I found myself almost irresistibly drawn to a cream colored fedora dangling seductively on the other side of the glass. In that hat I could channel the cool detachment of Sam Spade, the dashing adventurism of Indiana Jones, and the suave sophistication of Cary Grant, all at the same time.

The price tag was dangling as well, 20 shillings, equal to 20 US dollars; enough to live on for two days. My heart throbbed over the hat, but my budget silenced my love pangs and prodded me away.

I had other business in any case. While I was experiencing the earthier side of Europe on a shoestring, my parents were crossing the continent in luxury on the Orient Express.

We had made no plans to meet. But I knew their schedule and, when I found myself next door in Germany, it was easy enough to hop on over with my rail pass and meet them as their train pulled into the station.

It was a good move. Parents always love to know their children are thinking of them, and mine couldn’t have been happier with The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

20 the three hours we spent together before they raced off to their next destination. So happy, in fact, that my father stuffed something in my hand as we said goodbye.

It was a bill, a twenty. Guess where I headed next.

The hat was still in the window, crying out for a new home. I found one in my size, handed over the twenty, and turned out onto the sidewalk a new man.

I’d like to tell you that heads turned from every direction and young ladies swooned as I walked past. Of course, if it were that easy, hats never would have gone out of style.

However, something else happened, something less dramatic but far more profound.

Within a couple of weeks I started hearing the same refrain almost everywhere I went: I saw you in Spain, said an Australian in Florence. I saw you in Rome, said a Brit in Athens. I saw you on the ferry from Brindisi, said a fellow American in Plakias. My hat, it seemed, had become one of the popular sights of Europe.

Which got me thinking; if not for my hat, these new acquaintances and I would never have known that our paths had crossed.

We might have been feet or even inches away from one another and passed by unnoticed. Indeed, maybe our paths had actually crossed before I bought the hat.

Think of all the people we never met who may have traveled parallel roads, lived parallel lives, driven cars the same way to work and pushed shopping baskets down the same supermarket aisles.

Think of the most important people in our lives, whom we might never have known had we missed a subway train here or made a traffic light there. And think of all the places we might have ended up, for better and for worse, if one tiny detail of our lives had changed along our way.

What if we could see how far the ripples go when we give a smile to a passing stranger, hold a door for someone struggling with too much luggage, let a car pull out in front of us, or chase down a pedestrian who dropped his wallet? What if we knew how urging the driver to wait for someone running to catch his bus would set The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

21 that person on course for an entirely different future. A little change in one person’s day could be like the beating of a butterfly’s wings to unleash a hurricane of kindness and compassion and goodwill.

In truth, we’re better off just imagining. Just think what life would be like if we actually foresaw the far-reaching repercussions of all our actions. With every alternative possibility revealed, we would be, like Prince Hamlet, frozen into immobility, stupefied by the vision of unintended fallout from our most innocuous choices.

Much better to be left in darkness, with only the modest glow of the moment illuminating our decision points.

And that’s precisely the point: we are never completely in the dark.

Like the currents of a river and the tides of the seas, the waters of time and fate carry us all along toward the same destiny. And if we reach out to those who share the stream we occupy at any given moment, the intertwining of our fates will bring amity and love into the world in ways we will only recognize after departing this world of darkness and entering the world of light and revelation that awaits us on the other side.

The Talmud says: All is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given; the world is judged for goodness, and everything depends upon the abundance of good deeds.

Whether or not we can change our fate or anyone else’s is not for us to know. But the good we bring into the world will endure, and the ultimate Day of Judgment will be tempered by the kindness we show to others as we travel the road to our final days.

Rabbi Yonason Goldson, a talmudic scholar

and former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, a keynote speaker with 3000 years’ experience and newspaper columnist, lives with his wife in St.Louis, Missourie, where he teaches, writes, and lectures.

Visit him at http://proverbsandprovidence.com.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

22 FLASH FICTION

JEFF COLEMAN

Death by Ice

If John didn’t find shelter soon, he would die.

It had been his thirty-seventh birthday. He’d always wanted to see snow, so he and a group of friends had rented a cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains to celebrate. A huge snowstorm had swept the region the night before, leaving behind humongous drifts of crystal white.

“Let’s go hiking,” Alicia had said, and everyone thought it was a great idea. They donned extra layers of clothing and snow jackets, took their phones for group selfies and resolved to be back in time for dinner. Unfortunately, John had gotten separated from the group.

“I have to go back,” he’d said after only twenty minutes of walking. “I want to change into my snowboots.”

“You know the way back?” Alex asked.

“Of course. A quarter mile that way,” he answered, pointing back the way they’d come. If it weren’t for the fact that they all used to tease him for having no sense of direction, he would’ve asked someone to go with him.

Now, John trudged through waist-deep snow and shuddered.

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23 He’d lost the path a while ago, so that all that surrounded him were large gray rocks and towering pines. The cold had leeched through his jacket and snowpants, seeping into flesh and bone, and he could no longer feel his limbs. Was this how he would die? Would he exit this world only thirty-seven years after entering it, all because of a pair of shoes and a bruised ego?

I won’t die. That’s ridiculous.

He reached out to steady himself against a nearby tree and paused. How long had he been walking? Two hours? Three? He needed to rest.

No! screamed a half mad thought that bubbled out of a partially frozen mind.

Just a couple minutes, he thought. A couple minutes to rest his aching muscles, a couple minutes to calm his nerves. Then he could press on again. In the back of his head, that manic voice continued to argue that he would die, but he wasn’t listening.

He dropped to his knees, rested his head against a nearby tree trunk. He reached back with numb hands to form a crude pillow, and wondered vaguely why he couldn’t feel the bark.

Just a couple minutes.

John closed his eyes. * * * He woke to scratching. His eyes fluttered, and for a moment he was dazzled by the golden light that filtered through the treetops.

Then he felt it again, painful. He stumbled to his feet and his heart leapt into his throat.

John was surrounded by horned creatures twice as tall as himself, balanced on horse-like haunches and blood-soaked hooves.

They reached out to him, scraping him with scythe-like claws. He scrambled back. Bumped into a tree. Fell into the snow.

They closed in, began to tear into skin and flesh. It was like having his heart carved out of his chest with an icicle. He cried out, coughing as his lungs hitched on the frozen air. He tried to drag himself along the ground and pull away, but they’d pinned him against the tree so he couldn’t move.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

24 Each slashing claw stole more of his warmth, until his teeth chattered like machine gun fire. “G-- g-- go away,� he rattled off.

Slash. Cut. He tried to fend them off with useless hands.

Slash. Cut. Black began to creep in around the edges of his vision. His arms and legs were now only dead, frozen weights.

Slash. Cut. The image before his eyes constricted to a narrow white tunnel.

Slash. Cut. Then light, dazzling. And warmth, suffusing. John marveled as feeling flowed back into his limbs. It was not the painful pins-andneedles sensation he expected, but a near instant restoration of feeling and motor control. The black that had conquered his vision dispersed. Now, he could see not only the world around him but more, a whole other realm that waited just beyond the threshold of space and time. There was love there, and a presence that wanted to protect him. John called out to it.

The horned creatures shrieked, shielded their eyes against the sudden burst of light. They staggered away, hooting and snorting.

The light coalesced, assumed form and substance. It was the most beautiful thing John had ever seen. It had come to his rescue because it loved him, and he found that he loved it in return. He was no longer afraid to die, not if the light would take him with it.

John opened himself to its embrace. He felt a tug. A pull. The weight of his body fell away, left to freeze in the snow. John gazed down at it with disinterest.

The light swept him up and carried him home.

Jeff Coleman, Modern Literary Fantasy Author http://blog.jeffcolemanwrites.com/ The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

25

AFRICAN LITERATURE

SPECIAL EDITION ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Kariuki wa Nyamu Peter Ngila Margaret Muthee ART: John Joshua Gibu

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26

POEMS

HAIKU FROM GHANA Adjei Agyei-Baah drought-the farmer digs into his breath * dry savannah the dotted castles of anthills * calling back her days young grandma darkens her hair with soot and shea butter

Adjei Agyei-Baah is co-founder Africa Haiku Network and Poetry Foun-

dation, Ghana. He also serves as the co-editor of the Mamba Journal, Africa’s first haiku periodical and champions an avant-garde type of haiku dubbed “Afriku”, which seeks to project the unique sights, sounds, and settings of Africa. His short Japanese poetry form has appeared in many international journals. He has picked the Editors’ Choice Award at the Cattails and The Heron’s Nest Journal and is the winner of The Heron’s Nest Award, March 2016 and Akita Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Award of the 3rd Japan-Russia Haiku Contest, 2014. Adjei recently released his first haiku collection “Afriku”, published by Red Moon Press (2016) in US and hopes to publish more collections as well in the other short forms of Japanese poetry The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

27

HAIKU FROM KENYA Mercy Nkuri midsummer heat wringing my heart of you * spring’s eaglet edged out of nest poor Icarus! * flash mob grasses dancing to a sudden spring wind

Mercy Ikuri is a Landscape Architecture student at Jomo Kenyatta

University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Kenya. She is an avid fashion sketcher and an archery enthusiast.

She had accidentally discovered haiku mid this year, wandering through the internet and it was love-at-first-sight. She was drawn in by the simplicity and later on, ensnared by the complexity that this simplicity sometimes camouflages. She hopes to delve deeper into the world of poetry.

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HAIKU FROM NIGERIA Akor Emmanuel Oche golden globes firefly lost in daylight morning star noon blur sunshine shadow form poets frame rice farm overshadow spring passage harvest period harmattan billows body buried in blanket at dawn

Akor Emmanuel Oche is a member of Caprecon Develop-

ment Foundation www.caprecon.net, Great Minds Organization, African Haiku Network, among others. Akor is arguably the first poet to write and translate poetry in Idoma, a language found in Middle Belt Nigeria.

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ONE ACT PLAY ASHES TO ASHES

F-K Omoregie

Characters: Ben Cathy Before lights come on, we hear strains of Charles Jenkins and fellowship Chicago’s Awesome. Lights come on to pick Ben ambling up and down the corridor looking at some speech notes.

Cathy is sitting at the dressing table in the bedroom, making up and singing along to the song. Ben is small, bald and bespectacled.

He walks with a slight limp and wearing a black suit, white shirt and a black bow tie. Cathy is large, bespectacled and handsome.

She is wearing a black dress and hat.

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30 Cathy: (breaking from singing)

you know I don’t mind standing at weddings. But I can’t

stand standing at funerals!

(She sees Ben pass the doorway, and raises her voice)

A o akanya gore ba na le ditilo gone kwa?

(Do you think they will have chairs there?)

Ben: (not paying attention)

Eng? (what?)

Cathy:

(enunciating)

Ditilo! (chairs!)

Ben: What about chairs?

Cathy: Do you think they’ll have chairs there?

Ben: Oh, of course.

Cathy: Of course what?

Ben: Of course, they will have chairs.

Cathy: Good. And I hope they’re padded. ga ke rate tse difa tse tsa

tshipi tse di kopelegang di bo di go tlapisa marago.

(I hate those metal ones that fold and pinch your backside) Ben: (not paying attention) yes.

Cathy: Yes, what?

Ben: Yes, they will have the padded ones.

Cathy: Good. And I hope the coffin won’t be open.

Ben: Of course.

Cathy: Of course, what?

Ben: Of course, it won’t be open.

Cathy: Good. Because I don’t think I want to see his face again.

Ben: What?

Cathy: (raising her voice)

His face. I said, I don’t think I want to see it again.

Ben: You won’t.

Cathy: What?

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

31 Ben: (raising his voice)

I said, you won’t see his face. They cremated him.

Cathy: (excited. she gets up and joins him in the hallway)

They did?

Ben: Yes, on Friday.

Cathy: (she turns her back to him and presents him with the

ends of her pearl necklace to fasten)

you mean they cremated him?

Ben: They did, and Monica had to watch. Imagine watching her

husband getting burnt.

Cathy: (again, not sure she heard right)

She what?

Ben: She had to watch.

Cathy: Did they force her?

Ben: (now finished fastening the necklace)

not really, but someone had to be there.

Cathy: (moves to the hall mirror to make sure the necklace is hanging properly)

I guess she wanted to be sure, just like a lot of us, that he

was truly dead.

Ben: You can’t say that… She loved her husband.

Cathy: And yet watched while they burnt him?

(She puts on her earrings)

I hated the man, but I don’t think I would’ve been

able to watch while they burnt him.

Ben: He wasn’t burnt. He was cremated.

Cathy: And what’s the difference?

(She finishes surveying herself and starts to go back into

the bedroom. She pauses outside the doorway)

but come to think of it…

May be I would’ve enjoyed watching him burn.

Ben: Cathy! You can’t talk like that.

Cathy: Why can’t I? He can’t hear me now, can he? You know Ben,

it’s good they burnt him.

Ben: Why? The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

32 Cathy: It prepares him for what he’s going to experience in hell.

Ben: Please, don’t talk like that.

(He goes back out into the hallway and starts consulting his file cards again)

and starts to sing along loudly to the song.)

Cathy: Can you?

Ben: Can I what?

Cathy: Watch while they burn me?

Ben: What?

Cathy: (Joining him in the hallway)

Would you do it because you love me?

Ben: Cathy, that’s a disgusting thing to think about! Why don’t

you wait till you’re dead?

Cathy: There’s nothing wrong in me wanting to know now if you’ll

do it when I’m dead. Well?

Ben: I don’t want to think about that right now.

Cathy: (consulting the mirror)

Do you think I can?

Ben: Look Cathy, let’s drop the topic.

(Cathy increases the volume of the player Ben: (irritated by her antics)

Please switch that god-forsaken music off.

(Cathy does nothing. She continues to sing along to the song. Ben picks up the remote control, switches off the music system and drops the remote control noisily on the dressing table.)

(Silence.)

Ben: Since when did you become a Christian?

Cathy: Since God took my cross away.

Ben: Your cross?

Cathy: Yes, and today we’re going to bury the remains of that cross.

Ben: (ignores her sarcasm, noticing her The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

33

surveying herself before the mirror)

and what’s all this business with the mirror?

Cathy: Oh, I don’t know. Old age, perhaps. Funeral, maybe. (scrutinizing her hair)

do you think I should dye my hair? It’s gray again.

Ben: It won’t make any difference.

Cathy: What do you mean?

Ben: Everybody knows you’re not young anymore. Look at your

face, for instance…

Cathy: There’s nothing wrong with my face! I just happen to have a

few more details than I used to have.

Ben: Those are wrinkles, my dear.

Cathy: Thank you for reminding me.

(snatching her hat and bag from the table)

I’m ready.

(They start toward the stairs. Ben stops suddenly.)

Cathy: Mathata ke eng jaanong? (What’s the problem now?)

Ben: I’m supposed to give a speech at the funeral. I want you to

listen to the speech.

Cathy: For Benjamin?

Ben: Yes. Have you forgotten it’s his funeral we’re going to?

Cathy: How can I forget? (putting her bag and hat down on the

table and turning away from him)

how can I forget…

Ben: Then what’s the problem?

Cathy: I’m just surprised that you’re going to give a speech at the

funeral of a man who dedicated his entire life to destroying you…

Ben: Hmm… He was my business partner, remember?

Cathy: And your twin brother, don’t forget that. But that didn’t

stop him from wanting to ruin you.

Ben: All the same, I just think it’s only proper that I say a few The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

34

words over his grave.

Cathy: (moving towards the plants)

over his urn.

Ben: What?

Cathy: (raising her voice)

His urn? When they burn them they don’t put them in a

grave, they put them in an urn!

Ben: Whatever. At least they’ll be burying something…

Cathy: They don’t bury ashes. They scatter them. (After a pause) by

the way, where do you think they’ll scatter the ashes?

Ben: Why don’t you phone and ask the people who cremated him?

Cathy: There’s no need to be sarcastic. I only wanted to find out

where they’ll scatter the ashes! If you don’t know, just say so!

Ben: Well, I don’t know.

Cathy: Good. (after a pause)

maybe they’ll scatter them on Gaborone dam. No. That won’t be fair on the fish. There’s enough pollution there already.

Ben: Cathy!

Cathy: (excitedly) I’ve got it. The best place to scatter them would

be in the main mall or the station.

(Very pleased with herself) That would be very nice!

For people to walk all over him like he liked to walk all over

people. Do you think he’d mind people walking all over him?

Ben: Cathy, shut your mouth. It’s my brother you’re talking

about. Don’t you ever forget that.

Cathy: Of course. How can I forget? I had the misfortune of being

his sister-in-law, remember?

Ben: Can you for one moment forget that you were his sister-in-

law and listen to my speech?

Cathy: (after a pause) Alright. (She starts toward the bedroom) The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

35

Let’s go into the bedroom so I can sit down while you read

the speech.

(She sits on the dressing chair) Ben: (calling after her) No, Cathy. It’s not right to give a funeral

speech in a bedroom.

Cathy: Why? Ben: I don’t know.

(He pulls her up and picks the chair and brings it out, setting it just outside the doorway in the hallway. She sits on the chair where he has placed it, and he moves towards the railing. Now he turns and appraises his set up. He returns and scoops up the chair and sets it down at the end of the hallway, near the stairs.)

Cathy: (chairless, standing)

Hmm… the things I’ve endured for that hopeless brother of

yours... Where do I sit?

Ben: You just sit down in that nice padded chair.

(He stresses “padded”) Cathy: (She crosses to the chair. she sits

after adjusting the chair’s position to suit herself)

Okay, speak. I’m listening.

Ben: (nervous, looks at the cards again)

I won’t be using them, I’m just checking to see if they are all here.

(Reads, then moves to the staircase)

The grave, or the hole or whatever, will be...

(looks around for a suitable location,

settles on the staircase itself)

here ... that means the crowd will be there. (gesturing vaguely beyond the staircase)

the preacher will be right here. (at the head of the stairs)

and Monica and kids will be in front here. (he has gone over to the right of the staircase The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

36

and “placed” them.

Now he returns to the railing and puts his cards away and

his glasses in his jacket breast pocket.

Now he addresses his imaginary audi ence quite cheerfully)

Well... afternoon ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been asked by

my sister-in-law, Monica, to say a few words about her hus

band, Benjamin. Who also happened to be my twin brother… I couldn’t refuse because of Benjamin, who when

we were kids used to tie me up and make me listen to

his speeches. So I guess this is my opportunity to finally get

my revenge. (he stops and talks to Cathy)

Is that alright? I hope I wasn’t too informal?

Cathy: Benjamin was never formal. Besides, if it makes you feel

like you’re finally getting your revenge, why not.

Ben: No, seriously.

Cathy: It’s okay.

Ben: Just okay?

Cathy: Okay, it’s fine.

Ben: Okay. Good. (he puts his glasses back on and checks his cards

briefly. He pockets both the glasses and the cards and goes back to addressing the crowd)

I’ll now take a few minutes to talk about Benjamin Mogorosi, who was my twin brother and my law partner and my life... (clears his throat) my lifelong friend. To quote Shakespeare, I come to bury Benjamin, not to praise him.

Because Benjamin does not need praise!

He was a fine gentleman, a good friend and neighbor to every one.

(Brief pause. Cathy lowers her head to hide her reaction to this)

There’s a saying in law school that the ‘A’ students make good professors, the ‘B’ students make good judges, and the ‘C’ students make good money. Well, Benjamin wasnone of the above. He was a ‘D’ student, that’s why he made The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

37

a lot of friends instead.

That’s not to say he wasn’t a good practising lawyer, he was.

To quote Shakespeare again, “He was a man, all in all, we will not see his likes again.”

(He bows his head very briefly, then looks to Cathy)

not finding them there, goes into the bedroom to look on the dressing table and finds them)

that’s all. (He takes out his handkerchief and wipes his upper lip)

What do you think? I mean objectively...

Cathy: (after a moment’s hesitation) I’m amazed you didn’t actually

nominate him for the presidency of this country...

Ben: (not catching the sarcasm) He’s dead, Cathy. Remember?

Cathy: That’s a very good reason. (Under her breath) I don’t think

Hilary will agree with you...

Ben: What did you say?

Cathy: I said, that’s a very good reason.

Ben: I mean the other one.

Cathy: I said … (hesitates) I don’t think Hilary will agree with you.

Ben: (Not catching the reference)

So is the speech, okay?

Cathy: (Gets up to look for her gloves on the hall table, and

Honestly, I don’t think I’m the best person to ask.

(She picks up the gloves) Ben: But you’re the only person here.

Cathy: (Carefully putting on the gloves)

Oh, of course.

Silence.

Ben: Is that all? Aren’t you going to say nothing more?

Cathy: (thoughtfully)

I’m afraid no.

Ben: Why? Cathy: Because I was told not to speak evil of the dead. Besides,

I cannot understand how a man like you could say The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

38

all those things about Benjamin without choking. But then,

I suppose being a lawyer makes it easy...

Ben: Makes what easy?

Cathy: Lying.

Ben: Lie? Cathy: Is the Benjamin you just spoke about the same Benjamin

who was your brother?

Ben: Of course, it’s his funeral, remember?

Cathy: Then I didn’t know Benjamin...

Ben: I know Benjamin was a bit- a bitCathy: Speak. A bit what?

Ben: A bit - you know?

Cathy: Look, there’s no need to pretend you didn’t know

Benjamin. He was a son-of-a-… I mean, he was a creep.

Ben: Cathy! It’s not good to speak evil of the dead.

Cathy: What if the dead was evil?

Ben: Cathy! He was my brother, remember?

Cathy: How can I forget? Look Ben, sit down.

Ben: Sit? We’ve a funeral to attend.

Cathy: I know. But sit down. I want to talk to you.

Ben: Can’t we talk after the funeral?

Cathy: I’m afraid we can’t.

Ben: But we’ll be late for the funeral.

Cathy: (She takes off the gloves, and moves

between the door and the railing)

Just sit down, Ben. This won’t take a minute. Sit right here.

(Indicates chair) Ben: Look, we’re going to be late.

Cathy: (quietly, but firmly)

Sit down, Ben. (He crosses very reluctantly to the chair and sits) Good.

Ben: (As he sits) Jesus Christ!

Cathy: I don’t think he can help you right now.

Ben: Who? The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

39 Cathy: Jesus Christ.

(She turns and walks away towards the head of the stairs)

He’s still compiling Benjamin’s sins, (She is now where he stood during his speech,

and faces him)

and what part of hell to send him to.

Ben: That’s rubbish, Cathy!

Cathy: It’ll only be too fitting to put him there, with all his clients.

Ben: Most of his clients were politicians.

Cathy: I rest my case. (After a pause) I see the point about the bedroom.

Ben: What?

Cathy: It’s not a good place for a funeral speech. It’s much better

out here.

Ben: (springs up and moves to her)

Look, Cathy, we’re going to be late! Remember, we still have

to buy some flowers along the way.

Cathy: (leading him back to the chair)

Believe you me, those flowers won’t be in a hurry to be put

on Benjamin’s coffin. You’ve given your own speech about

Benjamin, it’s now my turn to also speak about Benjamin.

So the grave, sorry the urn is there (indicates) and the

preacher over there and Monica and kids over there. (turns to the imaginary preacher)

Excuse me, preacher, but if truth be told, Benjamin

Mogorosi was a son-of-a-bitch.

(Turns to Ben)

I don’t mean your mother Ben. You know, if you were not

twins, I’d have wondered the whole of my life where your

parents found him! And he was a thief! I know it doesn’t

make any difference for him to be a thief since this town is

full of thieves and sons-of-bitches, excuse me again,

preacher, but I think you’re probably one yourself.

Ben: (getting up)

What? You cannot call the preacher a thief!

Cathy: But he’s bound to be. They all are.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

40 Ben: What? You cannot say such things in a church!

Cathy: Thank you for reminding me, Ben. Who allowed your

Benjamin to marry another person’s wife in a church?

(Ben does not answer)

you can’t answer, eh? And who allowed them to hold a

funeral service for a creep like Benjamin in a church?

Ben: Well, where else did you want them to hold the service? Is

that why you’re calling the preacher a thief?

Cathy: But he is.

Ben: Even if he is, you can’t say such things at a funeral! What do

you want the people to say?

Cathy: They’ll understand. They’re all thieves too.

Ben: (exasperated)

Just go on with your speech.

Cathy: Thank you.

(Addressing the imaginary gathering)

ladies and gentlemen, I’d not have minded if Benjamin was

just a thief or a crooked lawyer... But Benjamin liked to

humiliate and make fools out of people! You know … (demonstrating)

walk all over people. That too is not a big sin in this city

and I’m sure a lot of people didn’t even notice! But when

you’re the fool (Ben makes to stand up, sees the expression on

Cathy’s face, sits back down)

or the wife of the fool, you’re bound to notice.

(She pauses to look at Ben) Ben: I’m not a fool.

Cathy: Hmm… Is that all you can say?

Ben: What do you want me to say?

He was my brother, remember?

Cathy: A brother who enjoyed making a fool out of you. If you

really want to know what I feel about Benjamin, I’ll tell you.

I’m happy he is dead.

(Ben makes to protest, Cathy shuts him down with The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

41

a raised index finger)

She moves to the table)

I’m happy the thief is dead. I’ve waited for so long to be rid

of him and I don’t want you to keep that crazy memory of

him in your head that he was such a fine man.

(A pause, Ben walks away from her, past the chair.

That’s all I have to say. Let’s go and scatter the remains of

that thief.

Ben: (surprised)

you mean you’ll go to the funeral after all you’ve said about Benjamin?

Cathy: Of course, someone has to prevent Monica from falling

into the grave.

Ben: There won’t be any grave.

Cathy: Whatever. You know what I mean.

Ben: But I want you to remember one thing… I’m not going to

speak evil about my brother. This is Africa, remember?

Cathy: I’m not asking you to speak evil about him. All I’m saying

is, just talk about what he really did.

Ben: But he never did anything good!

Cathy: Ben Mogorosi, I rest my case.

(Pause)

You know, Ben, I can almost picture what’s in store for your

brother - in hell.

Lights fade to black out.

Fani-Kayode Omoregie (Ph.D) is a Senior Lecturer of drama

and literature at the University of Botswana (UB).

He was instrumental in establishing a Department of Theater Arts at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) and the Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) program at the University of Botswana (UB). While at UZ he chaired the Department of Theater Arts.

He has written and directed over a hundred plays for the stage.

He is the author of Stagecraft – a book on the technical aspects of staging plays, six volumes of plays, three volumes of collected short stories and two volumes of collected poetry.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

42

Angola

POEMS

Cláudia Cassoma POEM - 1

Poderosa poderosa, eu sou empowered, I am from the aftermath of my mother’s screams my father’s teaching on my bloodstream my face:

round, cute, it’s own definition of beauty

my brain and the full performance of its duty enwrapped in rags I’ve chosen going my way without being frozen open mouth, caring heart, working hands no need for marching bands taking my well defined curves through the crowd with confidence and grace not waiting to be given place bleeding life all over them because I can poderosa, eu sou empowered, I am quietly, firmly, not intimidated I am doing it The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

43 no need to scream my actions speak for me long dresses, tall scarves, lipstick doesn’t make me tart I’ve got my own way to live I know how much to give I’m hurt, I’ve cried but I’m more than just one I’ve soared to a new stage of existence I’ve been persistent breasts don’t make me heels, short skirts don’t degrade me I am more than your deluded intentions I’m my well augmented interventions poderosa, eu sou empowered, I am I walk for the crippled I see the unnoticed I speak for the mute I do for the unable I fight so it’s stable I am so we all can be porque eu sou poderosa because I am empowered Poderosa [Portuguese]: Powerful. In this context, “empowered”

Cláudia Cassoma is an emerging writer from Luanda, the capital of Angola. Her passion for writing has followed her since her early seasons, being ameliorated each day. Besides the act of creating written works, Cláudia devotes her life to social service making sure that she’s part of the change, she so deeply desires.

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44

Give me no flowers Cláudia Cassoma POEM - 2

wait not for the darkest day when there lays my body when you find reason to pray give me no flowers do not seed your tears o my skin let this not be your sin try not to say good things not if these aren’t your feelings give me no flowers pure petals full vases not if all I had were thorns if my greater sin was be born give me no flowers not when I can no longer sense when God rang my bell when I no longer enjoy when for termites they’re toys do not throw them on my hole let free my soul give me no flowers when finally I go to flowers I say no The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

45

POEMS

NIGERIA

Agbaakin O. Jeremiah

The Three Genres of Grief commencing is problematic. free verse is not free when you shop grief in poetry; first, you hide in the cover of allusion, rechristening the poet-persona to something too remote, classical or anachronistic to draw suspicionlike Judas or Othello. at the end, you’ve only worshipped poetry without commencing the rites of healing. to praise grief, prose is the best way. it licenses you to spit every letterrepresentative of each cell unit of pain. with drama you have to mobilize every action with words of how you first kissed without plunging too deep into polishing the scene to a sheen. you may parenthesis a whole Act The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

46 without saying anything yet. but in poetry, you struggle to measure your losses with the scarce stanza.

Elegies of Silence dear bard, now you must pin your fist to the paper and breed violence of verses out of her silence. the silence of that night in Aleppo is too unholy. you must be the fire that rouse a taciturn city; but writing about loss does not measure lossour city already is an anthology of lossthe first pellet tore through the hymen of peace. see, the slumber of BuniYadi is just a prologue to an anthology of despair. put your sword to this papyrus and give birth to a chapbookin your mind, some Saracen boyswith eyes kohled in dunes and grief they said your brown paper is a reminder of home empty of songs except this elegy of silences.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

47

Love without a lit Dear Orpheus, Is it not obvious? that you’ve gone as autumn fingers slip into the icy bowels of winter.

I do retain a gift you cannot take if your heart to me you couldn’t make.

Your memories are herbs that heal So I’ll grow a garden of times, uphill: The part where our lips first did communicate in wet kisses, very close to the school gate; Your silence thence, was the very first omen that the fire will fade as ovulation in women.

Did you lie when you said you did melt?

Truly, those four magical seconds have I kept in salt and locked up away from recollection to preserve them from mind’s adulteration.

Now, I gloss over only the last kiss for that was borne out of cold business You wished I said I enjoyed it but of what use is a romance without lit?

Agbaakin O. Jeremiah, a NIGERIAN poet and

campus Editor is a final year law student in University of Ibadan. He won the maiden Ogidigbo Poetry Prize, was shortlisted for Dwarts Poetry Prize; and is a sixtime runner-up of Briggite Poirson Poetry Contest.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

48

Zimbabwe

POEMS

Tendai Mwanaka

Thank you, Shava

The Great Eland bull. The Runaway Thank you very much. The one who carries heavy loads Those who challenged each other at Janga Those who were given wives in the country of the Njanja people Thank you my dear mutekedza, those in uHera Mukonde It has been done Great Animal, those with tails that are intimate with body Oh, how can one person’s words enter the soul of another?

Can I speak through you, my mouth keeps moving, your heart is still You can tell me anything, Shava Now, I try to speak through you The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

49 This is your story, Shava I pray never to lose your story I chose you for you You are my hidden prayer A saint as a point of moving from earth to heaven Herding for a new country together There was a rendezvous, a drink, a laugh, a kiss Hummingbirds motivating us to sound snatches of remembered songs A kiss? How many? Oh, I couldn’t say Holding you longer each time we say goodnight My mouth hungering to take you in Slowly moving each kiss closer to your mouth In the morning I would text you goodmorning and flirt in codes Sometimes, I didn’t know what I was saying The oars I carved out of my bones for the love of you The heart that opened my heart For the wheat of my heart Sprouting in your soil, the plant of my tenderness The soil where my roses blooms to the tune of your love You are my butterfly drinking from the soft heart of my roses You are the twin of my soul, a sanctuary of my broken wings Like two swallow birds, we have landed on an arm of a heavenly cloud And engraved our joined souls on the cloud’s skins In the balmy and bounty of the cloud’s rains we will grow old together Today, I present my heart and the keys of my soul to you As a dish of delight, Shava Your love overwhelms me with ecstasy like clay pots of sweetened drinks In the cave of the mystery of myth I chant halleluiah, I chant halleluiah, I chant halleluiah I love you Shava, I love you Great Bull, I love you The Runaway The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

50

I Remember I remember I was a child onceSome years ago I loved one.

Year, times I have been happy.

I remember, weren’t there sweet little Tappy, a friend, I dearly remember.

When I look back to those years, I remember the cheerful old ways.

By break of dawn we were at the river.

So chilly and cold we all shiver.

I remember how serene and silverThe river was as we fetched water.

The sun brightly shinning over Mozi Mountain Spreading his sparkling warm fingers Over lush green hills and valleys, lingeringBright blue mist sneaking from picturesque banks.

We could hear the birds singing from the sky.

A sweet lovely song from so far away.

Was it a song of a young man in love?

I remember sitting under our Mususu tree.

A tree as old as grandma Helen.

So immortal like the rock of ages.

Eating from Grandma’s black clay pots.

Pumpkins, yams, sweet potatoes and nuts.

I remember my sister, a garrulous glutton.

Gire, do you remember that tonnage of sweet eating, aha I want to laughThe Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

51 At how you used to brood over everything like mother hen over her little things jealous of any hands, eyes and mouthsdirected at your tonnage of those full mouths.

I remember me and my brother BernardGourmands were these two little brats.

Aha, so sweet and funny were the times.

I remember playing in dusty fields and paths.

A game of soccer during late winter days.

Rhaka-rakha, fish-fish, bottle dunhu, till dusk.

Never thinking of anything but play.

And like angels in paradise, who was a girl?

All equal, boys and girls enjoying gaily until we were hot and naughty from play.

We all swarm like bees for the river.

All that shrieking, giggling, splatteringWater flown so far into the sky-high.

I remember playing “Chitsvare” in Nyajezi.

At deep sage green “Tanganda” pool.

Ask our fathers they swarm there past.

I remember diving from high above into the cool sweet waters of Tanganda.

Was it buttered pumpkin leaves and “Sadza”?

Goat’s meat, fresh vegetables and Sadza?

“Rupiza” or “Mutakura” from cowpeas?

I remember eating delicious and tasty meals.

Our stomachs bulging tightly and shiny, like honeyWe washed down with sweet sour “Mahewu”.

Cupfuls of sweet sour down our throats.

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52 “Hwai, hwai huyai”, merry sweet little voices werecalling on young innocent sheep that we were.

“Tinotya”, what do they fear so clear a night?

A full moon wonderfully probing and bright like distant campfires, stars sparkling tireless.

“Mhomhi”, they are all gone to “Mutare”.

The wolves will never come back, not for us.

Do come please, “Chiuyai henyu”.

Trudging, treading, O, to thunder of flying legs, hello!

Bumping against one another, a tiny blot of humanity.

Here we come, fast, deftly and cleverly.

Oh thin air here! Aha Josephina is caught.

Until left only was Enia, our revered cat.

But no, she can’t go past us.

Yet those times have gone past.

We change fast, notice, we never!

Swept along the tide like waters in the river With nostalgia we admire youth rover.

What if we could go back, we all ponder?

Do the waters in Nyajezi go back, up the terrain?

Like dark flooding waters, big trunk trees and stonesThey make new pools, ravines, beaches and courses.

These scars we have are notices of changes and timesRoads, paths and places we have gone through.

Tendai Mwanaka lives in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe. Contracted books

include, Zimbabwe: The Urgency of Now (essays), Finding a Way Home (stories/ novel), Revolution (poems), A Dark Energy (novel). Books published: Keys in the River, Voices from Exile, Zimbabwe: The blame game. He is also a visual artist, sound/musical artist, mentor, translator, scholar, theorist, reviewer, editor, and critic. His work has been published in more than 300 journals in 27 countries, and been translated into French and Spanish.

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53

FICTION

Botswana

SHARON TSHIPA

Revelation Winter was slowly creeping in. With every given day, it added a pitch-black layer to the darkness that now blanketed the nation’s capital. Though Kethata knew nothing would pounce on her, anxiously, she ransacked her handbag for the front door keys.

As soon as she stepped in, she was assaulted by an unfamiliar noise which jumpstarted her heart. She stood motionless and attentive. The noise echoed again, louder than before. A voice, it was. A woman’s laughter.

“And then?” she enquired cynically as she ambled into the tiny bedroom she shared with Morwadi.

“He brought some well-rounded woman over,” Morwadi responded. She was sprawled on the bedroom floor reading a book.

“I see. He doesn’t want to go to heaven alone.”

“Who says he is going to heaven? Murderers don’t go to heaven,” she said matter-of-factly.

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54

For a man who loved spending time labouring in between the sheets, the fact that Morwadi’s uncle had stopped taking the very pills that guaranteed him extra years to spend pleasuring as many women before ascending to his eternal mansion did not make sense to Kethata.

One thing was for sure though. Despite being ill and off pills, the undisputable truth was that the man had energy reserves that gave him ample strength to escort his women to the world of no return amidst moans of pleasure. Unless the current one was a very gifted actress, Kethata doubted anyone could fake that much pleasure. But then again, the type he hooked up with could do anything for money. *** As the woman’s titivated voice filled the house again, Kethata wondered why he had stopped taking his antiretrovirals. It’s not like he spent any cash on the drugs anyway, all that was required from the selfish bastard who would soon die and leave Morwadi without a guardian was a few minutes of his time, just a few minutes of queuing at the nearby public clinic. Unless he shied away from the prying eyes of the judgemental saints who did not have to queue at the special dispensary for HIV/AIDS patients.

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55 “Eww, can she keep it down?” Kethata said when the cries got flashier. “She is out of control. It’s as if someone just told her she will be inheriting all his earthly possessions,” she murmured rubbing her groaning stomach while entertaining delicious thoughts of a dinner she still had to salvage from the kitchen. Quickly, she sneaked into her night wear. The trespassing moans were not going to mess with her appetite, a girl has to eat.

“Let me guess, you are not going to bath tonight?” Morwadi eyed her.

“Aah, is that a sentence from the book you are reading?”

“I will take that as a yes,” she whispered before turning to a fresh page.

Indifferent to Morwadi’s concern, Kethata remarked cynically.

“She sure is sweetening his last days.” But Morwadi did not respond.

Instead, she sniffed as if someone trying to discourage a steaming hot chilli meal induced running nose.

“Are you okay?” Kethata launched herself on the three-quarter bed next to Morwadi.

The silence that followed did not bother her until she heard more huffing and puffing. When she looked up, Morwadi’s face was fortified from her questioning eyes. It was buried within the pages of the novel she had been reading.

“Morwadi, what’s wrong? Hey, I didn’t mean to be nasty to your uncle.”

“Everything is wrong!” she spluttered. “Uncle Adimo is such an inconsiderate jerk you know that, but then again that’s how he got HIV isn’t it…”

“Okay, you need to calm down. The guy is dying and he is just trying to make his last days memorable, he means no harm…”

“No… he is not only inconsiderate he is also selfish. He had thirty years of a great life, and when he got sick he had the chance to buy himself more time on earth but no, rather, he swaps his ARVs for Tlhamalakane River water seasoned with prayers. He is not even thinking about me. I only had what? Fourteen years of a healthy life and I have spent the last five years wishing away my death-day.”

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

56 “Seriously, now you are being hysterical. Who says you are dying?

If he dies you will lose a guardian but that doesn’t mean you will die too. Besides, you are at university now and are old enough to take care of yourself.”

She wondered if Morwadi had heard a word that had come out of her mouth.

“Maybe I should just stop taking the pills and die too. What’s the point in waiting?” Kethata felt as if someone had cut her insides with a scalpel. She shook her head as if to wake herself from a horrid dream.

“What are you saying?” she asked trying not to take the implication to heart.

“I am HIV positive.”

Kethata was nonplussed. As far as she knew her friend was a virgin. “Oh my God did your uncle…?”

“No! Of course not! I got it from my mother. I used to clean up her wounds and stuff before she died. She got it from my father. In the early nineties HIV wasn’t a popular topic among many African families, its symptoms were dismissed as some end result of witchcraft.”

She shrugged, as if what she had just said qualified to be categorised as trivial.

“So how did you find out you had it?” Kethata still could not believe her ears were saving her right. But from Morwadi’s serious face she knew that this was not some belated ‘April Fool’ prank.

“Uncle Adimo worked here in the city where he easily had access to doctors and medication. When he got sick he told the whole family, but in turn they all shunned him. When my symptoms started to show he suspected what I had and took me to the doctors who confirmed his suspicions, after which he took me in. He did not want me to experience the stigma he did in the village, so we stayed here in town.”

By now, Kethata’s mind was whirling neither here nor there.

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57 Her hunger vanished. It simply drowned in the deep-end of her consciousness. She felt a fear she never knew she could. Thoughts of the things she had shared with Morwadi dashed past the screen of her memory - instances in which she could have acquired the disease.

Yes, they shared a room. They ate the same food and have hugged often, but now that she thought of it Morwadi had always been careful. She never let Kethata touch her often bold head, which she kept that way because it endured sporadic rashes. It may not be relevant, but Morwadi had made sure they did not share the bed ever, which was why she now sat ramrod straight on the thin mattress spread alongside the bed, trying to read Kethata’s mind.

‘Very considerate’, Kethata thought while trying to compose herself. Morwadi needs me now more than ever; she knocked some sense into herself while strangling the little voice which questioned her HIV status.

“So why am I only finding out about this now?”

“I feared you would feel exactly the way you are feeling now and then try to hide it for my sake,” she answered with an understanding smile.

Kethata could only hug her. “I will need some time,” she fought back tears burning at the slits of her eyes. Her efforts were thwarted by the sing song moan resounding from Uncle Adimo’s room. The girls could not help but laugh.

Sharon Tshipa is a Media Practitioner, Writer and Social Entrepreneur based in Gaborone, Botswana. As far as literary writing is concerned, she has short stories and poetry published in literary magazines based in the United Kingdom (UK), Nigeria, Uganda, and Botswana. Her short story titled ‘Like Little Ones Do’ won her a 2013 Kola Magazine Award in Nigeria. She also won the 2015 Poetavango Award for Short Fiction for her short story titled ‘Reality for Sale’. In February 2016 she was long listed for the Online Writing Tips Fiction Prize. Sharon is a CACE Africa 2014/2015 Writivism Writivist/ Mentee. She is also a Bahati Books writer and a 2016 SSDA Flow Workshop Participant. Tshipa is a 2016 African Writers Trust, Editorial and Publishing Training Workshop participant. She has contributed to a historical play called Sechele 1: A Historical Play published in 2011. When not writing short stories, Sharon writes music, and poetry.

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58

Book Review

Flowers of a Broken Smile

by Maakomele R. Manaka Reviewed by: Kariuki wa Nyamu

Maakomele Manaka was born to a parents of an artistic in-

clination. With a natural artistic gift as a poet and writer and a strong artistic heritage, Mak, as he is popularly known, was destined to be an artist. He become a sought after poet as well as headliner for various festivals and events including the annual international Urban Voices Poetry Festival which took place in South Africa. Over the years on various stages of Urban Voices he has performed with an internationally and locally acclaimed poetic icons. He was commissioned to perform for the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela.

Title:Flowers of a Broken Smile Author:Maakomele R. Manaka Publisher:The Ink Sword, Kimberly, South Africa Year Published:2016 Pages:84 Available:Order via maakomelemanaka@gmail.com @R150

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59 Maakomele R. Manaka’s ‘Flowers of a Broken Smile’ appositely celebrates women’s space in the contemporary African civilization.

The author warily counters the horrors of hegemonic masculinity that have for ages yoked Africa.

In “Broken Flower,” the persona, having assumed a vantage role to censure male barbarity against womenfolk blatantly yells, ‘Who will circumcise

the foreskins of patriarchy

from little boys.’

By questioning such vindictive ideologies, the author enlightens that they are ostensibly archaic. The implication is that any form of male chauvinism leveled against women ought to be tamed.

It is apparent that Manaka’s intent is to powerfully rewrite the African woman’s experience. The argument is that in present times, a woman should be venerated for the phenomenal role that she indiscriminately plays. The poet therefore refutes any form of misrepresentation of women’s place in society.

In “My Single Mother,” the poet pronounces

‘Her wisdom is a tree

growing inside of us.’

In this poem, the author matches a woman’s role with man and outrightly situates the former on a higher societal pedestal. This phenomenon is infrequent among male writers. In “Broken Flower,” the poet asserts, ‘Where are the women no men, just women coz men do no Man no more I want to woman and know my blood.’

The male voice deployed here is intrepidly feministic. Therefore, Manaka’s persuasive manifestation of womanhood is admirably realized.

This book also explores the subject of sexual passion and lovemaking thus it is utterly decorated with myriad erotic scenes. Man’s exploits of woman are manifest.

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60 In “Heat Wave”, ‘She speaks half English and half erotica I listen to her tongue gently stroking my spear while her passionate eyes slowly move to the quiet sounds of “ooh.”

In this poem, the persona amorously recounts and also fantasizes on matters of sexual passion and play with a woman.

The language used intensely employs innumerable nature images and symbols. These are expansively and vividly organized in such a way that they skillfully articulate myriad concerns of love, romance, fantasy and esteem. There is also a frantic and nostalgic yearning for lost love as well as bearing with the discontent that comes with unrequited love.

The beauty of this collection is also proven by its rich lyrical poems. The verses are adeptly structured in such a way that they are not only pleasant to listen to but also pleasurable to recite and read.

This propensity might even persuade those who argue that poetry is complicated and dreary to reconsider their view and consequently attest that it is indeed a beautiful art.

‘Flowers of a Broken Smile’ is Manaka’s third Poetry collection.

It is a great literary gift which will fascinate all kinds of readers. It can also be resourceful to scholars undertaking research on countering hegemonic masculinity as well as a feminist reading of male writers writing women. This book is well crafted, riveting, educative and stirring.

Kariuki wa Nyamu is a highly artistic Kenyan poet, radio playwright, editor and high school teacher. He got graduated from Makerere University in Uganda. He is published widely both in print and online. He is presently pursuing an M.A. (Literature) at Kenyatta University, Kenya.

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61

POEMS

Cape Town, S. A.

Karin Andersen

The shoemaker Rusted nails patch the sea-damp rotten wood of my front door.

Its skin of paint grows thicker every year.

One hundred coats of white or green a chipped tortoiseshell of a cobbled door.

The threshold sags, foot and stumble worn admitting mice, impatient wind and salty dust.

Thirteen children grew up here in a lavender garden behind a crooked wall, their father a canny man who cobbled shoes He came from Sri Lanka, worked for his freedom, set his heart and home here by the sea, built a row of houses, owned a horse and cart.

His scattered grandchildren, a motley patchwork still dream of lavender, sea winds and cobbled streets.

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62

Spring equinox I’m down in the valley fingering the fat furry pods of lupins and up above in a cave people have gathered I hear them singing.

I wonder if I could piggyback my pleas on their prayers but then I see that god is here in the plump seeds and in the wind that sets my teeth on edge like bad chalk on a blackboard. it’s a fine time to climb a mountain to be closer to heaven or to be a tadpole tumbling in a river swollen by late rains, while the full moon hides behind the sun’s skirts waiting for dark.

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63

Trekking The sugar in the bottom of the cup has hardened into brown crystals the scum of foam at the top has dried too, trapping an ant intoxicated by the mark of your lips.

It never was, yet I have seen it.

I excavate words long since decayed add them to to the lines of prayer flags shredded by the wind.

The flags hang from temples that mark the path to the mountain’s summit.

I place stones on cairns and count my steps.

This pilgrimage will not bring back your life nor undo the past, will not re-fashion this moment to include you, me, in the same smoky room sharing dahl from a wooden dish butter floating on the surface of our tea.

You will not share these memories.

I have nothing that was yours, no dress, no teddy bear, no favourite book, no box in the cupboard holding treasure nothing to give my unborn grandchild, no way to say “this was your mother’s, now it’s yours”.

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64

An epiphany I found him on the contour path walking through a field of daisies baby in his arms, singing songs to the south-easter smiling at her sleeping face.

Yesterday I drank tea with his wife.

She wants to leave him, says he’s useless, he doesn’t take care of them.

He told me that since the accident his whole life has changed.

Now he ignores the voices in his head, the ones that say he isn’t good enough.

All that matters now is love and this new life.

We say goodbye at the crossroads, our boots golden with pollen.

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65

Do the whales remember?

Here wild freesias grow on the forgotten graves of slaves and sailors there whales flirt and float and flap their tails and bear their calves in rolling waves and sing their songs to all who heed and just there on the harbour wall there, the vats stood on burning coals and boiled and stank of flesh and fat while men wielded knives and shouted jokes.

The sailing boats are in the bay, summer winds blow through the pines, the mountain wears a pelt of flowers, Who asked the question? Who will answer?

Born in Zimbabwe, Karin Anderson also lived in France, England and Tunisia. At the moment she calls Cape Town home, but that may change soon. Until then, she revels in the sea and mountains and all the life in between.

Her blog: www.sometimesilove.wordpress.com “Sometimes I love it, sometimes I post; sometimes it’s all in my head and not out there in cyberspace.

Visit me anyway; perhaps I’ll entertain you for a while”

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66

POEMS

Kingdom of Morocco

Fayssal Chafaki

A Poem Devoted to Ban Ki-moon over the Issue of Moroccan Sahara (Part One)

O Mr. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon!

Today, after ‘tis talk, ye wilst reap na a’ boon We, thy fake face to the world, must expose and show ‘em the daemon’s truth, I suppose.

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67 How old are ye, O Mr. UN Secretary General?

How mony ludicrous nights be spent after all?

Let I remind ye, yesterday, ye wert so young, poor, very poor, like yer brother Kim Jong whom now, thanks to yer greed ‘nd betrayal, Ye hast transformed into ane Monster, loyal.

O Mr. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon!

Great difference betwix the sun ‘nd the moon!

The Moroccan Sahara issue be na a’ game Methinks I discuss wi’ ane wise, na ane lame Ay! ‘Tis be why North Koreans do suffer!

Tell me their brethren sold ‘em wi’ sulfur.

Na a’ thing be surprising! Mr. Ban is blind: Keep digging fo’ ane solution ye can na find who ye defend, hounds? Wi’ whom ye stand?

Ane bunch o’ hungry thieves ‘nd ane silly band!

Soon, ye wilst hear frea us, soon, very soon O Mr. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon!

The Moroccan Sahara wilst trigger World War Three Open the Gates o’ Gehenna! Make the Zabanya free!

Fo’ tha’ Southern Part o’ ur’ Hameland we wilst die and we wilst inform ye simply as to why Mr. Ban’s creed be Divide et Impera Ur’ creed be Defendere et Vivere a’ Today, Mr. Ban, ye call us colonizers Which be ane honor fo’ us, idolizers!

Ah, ye see! Ye be confused ‘nd I explain to those who claim supremacy a’ plain O Mr. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon!

Prepare yer back to face ane strong typhoon!

Since ye call us colonizers, gea’ us ur’ Title Ur’ rank, seat, rights, lands, ‘nd all things vital Leave Ceuta, Melilla, ‘nd Gibraltar, Free the Wales, the Scott lands, Ireland, so far The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

68 Show us so’ democracy! Where be yer motto?

Where be ur’ right, as colonizers, to Veto?

We should have by now the right to nukes and live the life o’ kings, queens, lords, ‘nd dukes.

The Moroccan Sahara, ur’ soul, far beyond tha’ dune, O Mr. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon!

Ye hast insulted us, be ready fo’ the same insult Let us see if ye can bear such heavy result!

A FEARSOME KNIGHT Part -1

A Poem in Tribute to the Old Arab Jahilia Poet and Knight ‘Antara bno Shaddad Al ‘Absi

He marched dighted wi’ Poise, ‘nd stout, A fearsome Knight who always fought: A sword, a spear, a shield, a bow, And woe would fall upon his Foe. In ages past, back in the Time, The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

69 His name is marked on Ancient Rhyme, Born to a slave, born his skin black, The father o’ him called that bad luck Neglect boy, he rode a horse, And far wert flown away by force, A Desert empty but frae wolf ‘nd beast, Wi’ coarsening band bousing the feast; He proved a Peer to all the Braves, And sent some thousands to the graves; A man is black, and a man is white, Thou blame me why, blame Aphrodite!

The Knight wert Firm; he knew the Lord The Lord be Just; Thine Grace afford!

O Knight o’ Knights, remember thee I! Today thy Bard thy style apply.

Thou stood against the Cursed Devil, Giggle weasel, middle diddle, evil, The Knight o’ Knights came back ‘nd spake In tongues foreign it said he’d lack.

Fayssal Chafaki

The Poet of the Kingdom of Morocco Born in Rabat, on March the 15th, 1975, Fayssal Chafaki, also known as the Poet of the Kingdom of Morocco, is an Arab Moroccan poet whose poems are determined by uniqueness with a very classic poetic style that still conveys modern and contemporary messages in a fit manner. Fayssal Chafaki also composes poems in English. His English poems have seen the light during his university days in the year 1998.

He composes poems in English covering mainly variant aspects of modern life and poetry genres. The poet’s style in English does not differ from his Arabic one. The poet still preserves classical English in his poetry. The poet has composed more than a 100 English poems. Most of the poems, in both languages, are recorded in videos and published on­line and in social media sites. The poet has attempted composing poetry in Russian as well.

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70

EGYPT

POEMS

Muhammad Ismail Poet / The Old Singer

Humanity plan Behold I stand stretching my hand with peace and love please don’t hesitate it is our fate let us not waste our last chance respect the difference support the Common and share what we have humanity plan

ON FIRE Flower on fire perfumed smoke it’s what you admire but you can’t talk it’s love and desire the unwritten verses and the unspoken words The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

71

Adolescence virgin to virgin it’s time to bloom down the lake red mix with blue adolescence whispers

Truth Truth is lost in contradiction the modern world in full makeup against virgin nature

Muhammad Ismail is a

seasoned Egyptian poet and writer. His love for the arts dates back to three decades ago as a singer, composer and song writer. That is why he writes under the name The Old Singer. He writes in both Arabic and English.

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72

FICTION

South Africa

ZP DALA

Who will do for me now?

His wife died yesterday. And tomorrow he would sit in a line at a government hospital, waiting for his diabetes medication. Life goes on. The need to fuel life is stronger than the need to die with the dead. Today, he would clean his shoes. He would scrape off the mud of her rain-soaked grave mound from his ungainly brogues. It is all he would do, today.

His mourning for her had been swift. It shocked him how quickly he had finished his own private goodbye. It took only one fitful sleep. The long night after her funeral had been too consumed The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

73 by his own mortality, his own creature comforts. Why wallow in thoughts of why she had gone first?

His frets at midnight took him into his own failing body; the constant urges to pee when nothing came out, the itchy diabetic skin on his feet, the blurring glaucoma. Those were the important things, more poignant than the slippers of the dead that sat in their usual place at the far corner of the room asking him to mourn their loss.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, poised like a falling tree, having returned from yet another futile toilet trip, he kicked the pink slippers away under the heavy curtains. They tripped him up, and he lurched forward, grabbing velour curtain fabric to steady his body against the attack. He swore. Those slippers with their worn out faded soles. They laughed in his face. She was gone. He was the one left behind at the bus stop.

Somewhere, bubbling right on the surface of him, he resented her for leaving him to face his own daily care alone. It was selfishness.

Nothing else. Worries about simple things, like who would cook his food, darted across his restless mind, even at her funeral, whilst the Imam invoked her place in the Gardens of Paradise.

He recalled asking himself that self same question as they lowered her white shrouded body into wet, loamy earth. Who will do for me now? Now that you are gone.

Men always went before their women. Wasn’t that the usual way, the decent way? But he survived her. A left-behind man was a flailing man; a barely surviving man. A pitiable, nobody-man who nobody wanted to care for. But he had to survive. His body betrayed his fleeting lust to go along with her into a dark grave. His body whispered to him that it would fail and choke him, and blind him, and take away his balance, his taste buds, his bowel movements and his sight.

But it would cling to him like a tenacious vine. His own body’s prisoner. He knew that it would throw him onto the cripple bed long before it gave up his ghost. No one would plant frangipani trees to bloom their erotic smells into the mounds of death At her grave-site he had been gripped by strong fear. What The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

74 would happen to him? Who would care for him? Who would cook for him? Who would lay out his clothes every morning, and clean his toothbrush and plastic comb?

And the deep fear made him reel forward as if wanting to fall into her grave. A strong hand pulled him back and he peered myopically at the fresh young boy who held his shoulders and supported his stooping frame.

His nephew. He had nodded at the boy, telling himself that the youth of this boy should somehow melt into his own aging body. He craved youth. He craved life. Even here, as they came to bury his wife, he craved life more than anything.

Sara.

She had been his wife for 55 years.

Years of no consequence. Years of no arguments, no disagreements, years of nothing. She was a silent sylph that simply inhabited the vacant corners of rooms, always stooping forward in her gait. As if walking tall made you stare death in the face saying, Come, Take Me. Her downward slope, her downcast gaze, all done so she could pretend that Death would never find her looking into its eyes. Like a wanton woman.

Dutiful wife and mother, no challenge to a man. The only legacy she left behind was service. She did for him. That’s what she did. No one could remember who she was otherwise.

She never failed him his comforts. His food would always arrive on the kitchen table, on time, food placed on a warped tin tray painted with pink cabbage roses. His vests would be ironed flat like paper love letters stacked on shelves, only to find themselves laid out every morning next to trousers with perfectly straight-ironed flat fronts and matching shirts with crisp collars.

Sara – the silent, silent wife. His mirror, his antithesis. While she involuted into stale silence, he ranted, raved and raged. Fighting with the wind, living in the past, the ugly-beautiful past, a whole dance hall filled with swirling skirts and smoke from bootlegged cigars.

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75 If Sara ever knew where he went on Friday nights, she never told. He said the work -“Kaam” - and she understood it for just a word.

“Work.” Yet Sara knew, it never was work that made him use cologne.

He hated her for not putting up a fight; such discipline, such resolve, such blindness. Maybe that was the cancer that ate her. The secrecy of tumours.

In her silence, her face turned away from his maddening hunger, she had drowned herself in doing things. Food appeared like miracles in her kitchen, lacy little doilies and ceramic horses prancing in delight, suddenly arriving on shelves and tables. In the cycles of breathe in, breathe out, he struggled with attempts to keep from running away in the middle of the night.

Two children grew up suddenly before him. Him, never knowing how they had arrived, how they had battled teething and tummy aches, and how they had somehow sprang into adulthood. All he knew was that one day he had looked up from his newspaper; his son was a man, and his daughter was a wife.

All the while, he had buried himself in world news, jazz music, obscure literature and dreams of the past. The past so peppered with languid afternoons of sneaking into the backrow of the Shiraz cinema to watch double features of Bollywood melodrama, of kissing women who were not yours, and burning palms on silk stockings. A man had to live.

The past was the coffin, the place you eventually went to when all the music died. The place Sara could never follow him to. Her coffin was cloth. His became warped woods, rivetted together by rusted nails.

Again, she had won. The angels would fear to tread her footpath, the pious path of no wrong-footings. As he had kicked and screamed his way through Life, she walked its road with Grace. A slap in his face.

It was only obvious that she would go first. Fitting, that he would see the clean white muslin sheet that wrapped her. That the sheet would mock the filthy one that would one day cover him.

Love and Fire, the twisted twins were never coveted by her.

Hunger did not eat her. She was not that type of woman. Time had ticked on the metronome. Those padded footsteps, the soundtrack to The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

76 the maddening domesticity drove him into frenzy. Calm, measured walks, woman floating over cheap tiles.

Doing and doing and doing. With each meal delivered on time and each lay-out of clothes on the spare room bed, he grew furious.

His thoughts stayed always on beautiful lipstick red girls at the dance halls of the Casbah. The Casbah days, the Casbah nights. That frustrating labyrinthe of alleys and passageways that unearthed gems and hid Freedom’s sons in lattice.

The muezzin calling the faithful to prayer on a Friday noon, men in clean white skull caps parading from The Indian Trading Quarter to touch their forehead to the green carpeted ground of the large mosque.

Men who would discard skull caps as night skulked in, donning expensive suits and stylish shoes, walking through the alleys of the Casbah, throwing cigarettes into drains, hearing the band playing scales, warming them up, calling the faithful to dance; to sing; to drink; to drown in revellry with beautiful girls with shiny blonde hair, and billowing petticoats.

Coming home on a Saturday dawn, he was observant of his saturnine wife. Always in her long pale coloured tunics, always with a tight scarf around her head. As the latter years took her fingers into gnarled arthritis, the scarf was never tied well. He wondered what her hair looked like. He couldn’t remember her hair; or her smell; or her feet.

He only recalled the morning that life had left her, left through her feet, to pool like the limpid eyes of a dog on the floor. Staring at him, begging him to pet Death’s soft head. He had stood next to the death-bed, knowing she was dying. And death had seeped downwards, swept beneath her clothes, down from her chest, away from her legs, and had seeped between her toes as she went.

His daughter had sobbed out loud. And then, he had realised.

He was a widower. A good day to die, people said. A Thursday was almost a Friday. A day before a holy day, during a holy month in a calendar full of holy months. Ashura, she went.

He needed to forget her, his failing of her. He had to go on.

He had gone on by the necessary ritual. By polishing his shoes.

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77 Removing the caked up mud from her grave-site with a thick stick, and then polishing away the dust that had risen as his son and nephews shovelled clods of Earth onto the pine boards that covered her. Now, with shiny black shoes, that he would wear to the hospital waiting lines, he had sat outside in the Winter sun growing drowsy with its sharp warmth. Tomorrow, in the endless snaky lines towards the pharmacists hatch, nice women would look at his shiny shoes.

The repetitive polishing and the heat of the sun made him drowsy and melancholic, reminiscent....

“AK....tell them to play that song I love....AK, did you hear me?

AK, dance with me. AK?” “Abdul Khaled, I am gone.”

“Sara, you ghost…you have died. Leave me to wither away now.

Now that you are gone. Who will do for me?”

He jolted awake. The voice had echoed in his ear. Celeste. Was her name Monica? Sheryl or Shanti? Maybe.

Sara?

Where was Monica now? Maybe she too was dead. Shanti too.

Dead. A left behind man. Even your dancing partners left you. To sit on the benches and mourn them.

Sara?

Perhaps her name was Annie. Or Francine? Was it Nina?

Sara?

Clutching his thighs to stand up, he groaned and walked into the house. He went to sit at his place at the kitchen table and looked at the clock. The cabbage rose tray was conspicuously absent. The smoke coloured glass of tepid water, the two steaming bowls, the tiny chipped bowl of mango pickle.

Absent.

Somehow he convinced himself that by staring at the table, his food would appear.

He shuffled in his chair, cleared his throat loudly, then scraped the chair backwards on the tiled floor making a dragging unpleasant noise. He stood up, shuffling and rifling with exaggerated noises, finding the cabbage rose tray, clattering it down hard on pale green The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

78 Formica.

The noise brought her, Zainub… his daughter-in-law, scampering down the passageway into the kitchen. Her face was bloated with sleep. Her mind counted sleeping pills. Did I take four? Or was it three? Did I take too little?

Quickly, as she ran into the kitchen in her bare feet and a black cloak abaya hastily thrown over her, he saw her swing the veil over her face. Something ugly and unhappy came forward to embrace him. Even his son’s daughter hid her face from him.

He stared at her back as she cracked eggs with trembling hands. He heard the clink of a fork beating yolks into whites. As she swung around to grab salt, her veil caught in the metallic claws of a fake purple gemstone on the front of her cloak. She delayed the frying, trying to unhook the fabric. Doing a strange, comical hopping dance attempting to free her face from her breast. The oil on the stove smoked.

“What’s this Zainub? Niqaab “ he said gruffly, gesturing at her face veil.

“Babu-ji, hum sujhawe nahin gailey....” She trailed off, but she understood it all. Every word in that harsh language.

“Pssssht, Samjhawe, Samjhawe! Gujarati Bholo che!”

He twisted his mouth, and rapped the tray with his knuckles growling at her to speak only in Gujarati with him..

“Koy marrie parvaar nee karthu? Oo bho bhookie cho….”

He bemoaned to the stale air… “Doesn’t anyone care for me in this family. I am so hungry.”

“Maaf Babu-ji,” his daughter in law mumbled.

“Maaf-Maaf ki Saalo” He muttered a cuss word, and rapped the tray again.

“Kaa cheh maru kawanoo?”

He asked loudly, for his food, knowing she was trying to cook it.

“Maaf Kee Joh, Babuji, hum abhi khaana pakawathe” She muttered again, flailing at the attempts of the language, trying to tell him that she was trying rapidly to cook his food The fried egg smell surrounded his irritation like an orb, The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

79 waiting to devour him before he devoured it.

Zainub grew conscious of her face veil. But she didn’t flick it backwards to display her face, even to her father-in-law. Maybe he would notice the puffy depression that ravaged a once pretty girl.

She needed to hide that she had forgotten his lunch because she had been crying.

Bloated unhappiness that went beyond the death of a motherin-law she missed so much, Sara who she understood, too well.

The language of English never became a bridge, between a mother-in-law who only spoke Gujerati, and a timid daughter-inlaw who barely spoke Bhojpuri or Urdu.

It was a strange communication dance. English didn’t work.

Zainub’s Gujarati attempt didn’t work. And all attempts at Bhojpuri and Urdu, were poured out with the evening dishwater. But motherin-law and daughter-in-law seemed to find some way of communication. Maybe because they both loved the same man. Maybe because they both knew the language of a disappointed slipper-walk from kitchen to bedroom and back again, and back again, and back again.

He finished his lunch with a badly fried egg and some microwave roti. Zainub felt that she had failed him badly. It seemed that everyone had left the house on the morning after the funeral. Even the children ran off to steal mangoes from the neighbour’s tree. Even the son of Sara, the husband of Zainub, the Son, Irfaan….had rapidly run off to a job that probably didn’t need him there. He did this often.

They left her there alone, with an angry old man, the day after he had buried his wife.

Sometime, at two in the morning, Zainub woke up with the loud, shrill wailing of the house alarm. Her husband, Imraan, had not returned home yet. She grabbed a fuzzy nightgown and threw it over her shoulders, rushing to silence the alarm before it wake up her sleeping baby girl.

She found her father-in-law standing at an wide open window, staring at the dark garden, oblivious to the loud alarm and not knowing that the open window that had caused it.

“Babu-ji! Babu-ji.!”

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80 He didn’t turn to look at her. She fumbled with the alarm keypad.

In the silence that follows the alarm sound, the intimacy amongst people is exaggerated. They feel like survivors after a raid. And after Sara had died, every moment was a raid into finality.

“Papa,” she said again, and this time he turned to her. He was in a thin vest, the wind blew his sparse grey hair away from his face. He looked sad.

“Aaina… Khirki…bandh kardey. Bahut tanda hai. Aaina… Kirki, kirki….” She repeated and gestured to the window.

“Jaa yaha thi!” he growled, and waved her away.

“Papa, thu …aap…“sick” er…bhimaar hojayeghe… Sick. Sick…

Bimaar…”

“Jaa,” he repeated, gesturing angrily for Zainub to leave him alone at his open window, staring into a gardenless garden. The flowers had died, the day Sara’s kafan was bourne away.

“Papa….” She trailed off. She could hear the baby crying in the distant room, knowing it would take hours to settle the child down now.

“Marro Poiro kaa che?”

He asked, ignoring her growing anxiety, but persisting anyway, asking for Irfaan the son that Sara’s body and his body had created long ago, on a full moon night; Zainub’s husband; Irfaan.

“Oo chalh gail. Chal gail… Oo kaam karath hai...”

Zainub imposed a lie, one she told often, of how Irfaan was always at his Office, working.

Suddenly, he seemed to have heard her voice for the first time.

He looked deeply at her with a recognition. He knew. A father knows his son. A father knows the day the son becomes the father.

“Kaam? Kaam nee malle. Kaam nee…” He whispered, telling his shivering daughter-in-law, the truth she wanted to hear or did not want to hear. It is not work, the place Irfaan is gone to!

Zainub tightened the nightgown around her shoulders, hoping The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

81 that maybe ugly pink cloth would make her body disappear into the earth.

It did not.

“Papa, sleep. Bistar…sleep…sohja…” she indicated towards his bedroom.

“Ji, beti. Ji,” he nodded a yes.

Slowly, both in bare feet on cold tiles, the left-behind man and the left-behind girl walked to their own left-behind rooms.

At his doorway, he finally looked at her face.

He could tell, she had been crying into her pillows.

Crying for his son, who was probably at a dance hall with a Monica or a Shanti. And Annie or a ….Sara “Sara Gujri ghiyo Zainub,” He whispered with the final recognition that his Sara, who did and did for him, was dead.

“Jee, Papa. Hum hiyaa hai.”

Zainub assured him, and left him at his bedroom door.

Papa, Babuji. Main Yahaan Hoo. Zainub is here.

ZP Dala (Zainab Priya) is a South African writer of fiction

and non-fiction essays. Her debut novel WHAT ABOUT MEERA was published by PRH Umuzi in 2015. Zainab has written short stories for various magazines and journals, including The Natal Witness (first prize winner – True Stories of KwaZulu Natal), Elle Magazine (Second Prize winner in Annual Short Story Competition), and Marie Claire Magazine, The New York Times and the Sentinel Literary Journal. She contributed an investigative journalism chapter to the book, CHATSWORTH, THE MAKING OF A SOUTH AFRICAN TOWNSHIP, engaging with the issues facing patients at government hospitals in South Africa. Zainab is a qualified physiotherapist and educational psychologist, and currently directs a NGO that addresses education of vulnerable and abused women and children.

ZP DALA Photo credit : Mortada Gzar The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

82

FICTION

Tanzania

SIMA MITTAL

A Grieving from the Grave

Trembling hands caressed the child’s orange overall.

Asha nuzzled its velvet smoothness across her saddened face.

Grief had made her usual coffee colored face pale and lifeless. A familiar lingering odor of the bananas that had often soiled that garment reached Asha’s nose and acted as a balm to her aching heart. The old cloth slid through and soothed Asha’s rough, toughened hands like the best coconut body butter there ever was. It had belonged to her three year old daughter, Fatuma.

As Asha sat on the cold, cemented floor of her one-roomed house, she remembered how Fatuma had worn it long after she had outgrown it because it was her favorite outfit. The numerous activities of the ceremony of 40th day of mourning for Fatuma had not tired Asha’s body but her heart was filled with sorrow.

Her heavy sighing pierced through her heart, creating electric The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

83 ripples that tore into the synchronization of her usually sound consciousness. Dar es Salaam’s warm, moist evening wind gushed through the small wooden window sending more chills down her back. Within her sorrow hid an uncanny sense of guilt. She reflected on how Fatuma had suffered a few days of sickness, then recovered and again tolerated another day of severe headaches. Finally Fatuma had given up on the second day of the second bout of sickness.

“Mama… mama, … I need you mama, I want to play with you!”

Asha heard her daughter calling from the grave but it was only the echo of a memory. However, Asha could still see Fatuma rolling and crawling across the same floor. She skipped and hopped right into Asha’s arms. ‘Moja mbili tatu, moja mbili tatu’ drummed in Asha’s ears until Fatuma’s sweet melodious voice became hazy and the memories passed.

“Asha, what happened? Why haven’t you slept yet?” asked Musa as he walked into the room.

It took Asha more than a few seconds to realize her husband’s presence and to respond to him.

“I miss Fatuma,” Asha cried.

“We all do, but you have to be strong,” Musa comforted Asha.

“Why do I always have to do everything? Why can’t you for a change take the lead?” Asha lashed back at Musa.

“I saw Fatuma all through her sickness, always beside her even when you were at work,” Musa said, still standing.

Asha shrugged her shoulders and raised her tone.

“I couldn’t help it. I had to be at work. We needed the money.

You don’t work, so nothing comes home,” said Asha, “And when you do, which is just occasionally, you always use most of it for your other wife and her children, hardly anything comes here.”

Musa noticed Asha’s impatience as she fiddled with Fatuma’s overall. “Asha, I try my best,” Musa said with an earnest look. “They are my family too. It’s not like we are any much better than you all.

We too struggle to pay our monthly rentals having very little left over for food. At least you have a permanent job,” Musa said.

Asha laid the orange garment beside her. She tilted her head The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

84 and placed one hand on it while the other cupped her chin.

“But you are here only once a week, we need you more. You know my work makes me leave home early and come back late. Our village maid can only do so little.” Asha continued.

Musa squatted beside Asha and looked into her saddened eyes.

“Oh Asha, I am so sorry. I wish I could help more but I just am not able to,” Musa tried comforting her.

Asha wanted to scream but her voice failed her.

She whispered, “Musa, oh Musa, it’s your fault, all of it!”

Musa sensed Asha’s restlessness and he knew there was something bigger that had to be bothering her.

“She wasn’t a son! You even said so when she was sick,” Asha almost screamed.

“Yes, I know I wanted a son and I was very much disappointed at her birth. And I believe she would have pulled through had she been a boy. But over the years I had learnt to love her just like a son,” Musa said.

Asha’s hidden guilt seemed to be surfacing again as the doctor’s words crammed her head, “Did you give her the witch doctor’s medicine?”

Asha’s hands squeezed the sides of her head.

“No, we did not!” Asha had stated to the doctor at the hospital the day Fatuma died.

Why the hell would we if we didn’t trust you. Asha would have loved to add, but she knew better than to offend the doctor who was attending to her ill child.

“You should have, maybe,” was all the doctor could say when Fatuma’s pulse sank completely and her heart beat stopped.

Asha was left flabbergasted that day when the doctor had said it but now it seemed to haunt her again. It bothered her how a man of such caliber would say such a nasty thing. But it was her own actions that seemed to be troubling her more.

“Do you think we did not try our best? Do you think we should have given her the village witch doctor’s medicines? Could we have saved her? ” Asha poured out a train of questions that had been eating her conscience.

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85 Musa put his hands around Asha’s shrunken shoulders and gave her a warm hug. “Oh Asha, Oh my love, my dear, do not let the doctor’s words affect you. He just said it so that we wouldn’t blame him,” Musa said.

“But still… do you think she would have survived had she taken the witch doctor’s herbs,” Asha continued.

In their embrace Musa continuously stroked Asha’s hair trying to relax her nerves. “I don’t trust witch doctor and their queer ways even though people call them wise,” Musa said.

“But Musa……I tried….I even took a huge advance to pay the medical bills,” Asha whined.

“Oh Asha, do not blame yourself for anything. You did your best. She was destined to spend only three years with us,” said Musa.

Asha’s heart wrenched with slow, silent thumps. Her heart was bleeding quietly from agonizing anguish of the sorrow of a child’s death. However there wasn’t a drop in her eyes because the pain in her heart was too much to cry.

“Mama, mama, I need you mama, I want to play with you,” came the similar voice again. But this time, it wasn’t Fatuma’s. It was her older sister, Mariamu’s, who had entered just entered the room.

Musa let go of his arms around Asha, when he saw Mariamu.

“Come here sweetheart,” Asha beckoned to her older daughter Mariamu. She hugged her tight, really tight, relieving her motherly instincts, as if she were hugging Fatuma. Mariamu ran back outside to play with her friends.

Musa kissed Asha and the two walked slowly towards the old bed hugging each other. Musa placed Asha gently onto the bed and tucked her in.

“I love you and I need you so much, dear Musa,” Asha mumbled.

“Shh…Shh, relax dear,” Musa stated.

His strong hands reached Asha’s neck and circled the back of her shoulders massaging her aching body, gradually drifting her into a slumber. He remembered his promise to his other wife.

When Asha woke next, she looked at her small phone beside The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

86 her pillow. It read 3.33am. She rose to remembering the ceremony of the previous day. But those haunting thoughts did not cloud her as much and her guilt had lessened. Perhaps the forty days of mourning had rubbed their therapeutics. She watched Mariamu sleeping soundly on the floor beside her bed. But Musa was not there. He was gone.

Would Musa pressurize her for the son he had always wanted?

Would Mariamu resume her after school tuitions which had come to a halt because the money was needed for Fatuma’s care? Asha pondered as she sat up in bed “Mama, mama, I need you mama, I want to play with you!”

Asha could hear her daughter calling out from the grave yet again. Her guilt had reduced, but her grief would still continue. She heard herself saying, “Fatuma my dear, I love you with all my heart.

I am sorry I could not save you but I tried my best. I want you to be happy always.”

Asha stood up and strode forward, towards the buckets. It was 4 am, time to fetch the water and store it in for the day. She knew that it was an exercising task but she had done it every single morning.

Resilient, sturdy hands picked up the empty buckets heading outwards to the neighborhood tap. Asha’s hardened feet soaked mother earth’s early morning dust ready to treasure life for this very day. She knew for sure, she would always love her Musa and her daughters Fatuma and Mariamu.

Sima Mittal, born in India, was raised

in Arusha, Tanzania, from where she moved to Dar es Salaam in 2002. She has studied in Tanzania, India and the USA. She loves reading poetry and children’s books. She has been blessed to be a part of the Writivism Programme.

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Book Review A Short Fiction Collection reviewed by Peter Ngila

A Handful of Dust:

Stories from the 2013 Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop The Farafina Trust Workshop is usually held every year in June in Lagos, Nigeria. The director of the workshop is Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Farafina receives applications from all over the African continent.

The workshop, funded by Nigerian Breweries Plc, is usually co-taught by Kenyan writer, Binyavanga Wainaina, among other writers.

TITLE: A Handful of Dust: Stories from the 2013 Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop AUTHOR: Various PUBLISHER: Kachifo Limited, Lagos – Nigeria.

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2015.

GENRE: Short Fiction Collection.

SHORT STORIES: 19 NUMBER OF PAGES: 247.

The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

88 I have read all the 19 stories in ‘A Handful of Dust: Stories From the 2013 Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop’ in two days, and wished for more. Most of the stories are fresh in multifarious narrative voices. I have to admit that this is the first short story collection I started reading from the very first story.

Suleiman Agbonkhianmen Buhari’s ‘My Family Tree’ is set in the advent of colonial occupation in a Nigerian community. The protagonist narrates the hereditary of his family through the generations to us, from Ubezein to Okugbe. His father, a crippled man, called Ubezein, despite his disability, acquires wealth and even gets married and begot children. Odenora, another relative, gets disowned by his father for marrying a white woman and relocate to Liverpool.

He changes his name to Denis and even tries to change his accent.

The most striking thing about this story is that we get to meet the protagonist in person only in the end. I read all along, assuming that, perhaps, the writer deliberately omitted the protagonist’s identity, but not until I finished it and I reread, just to be sure that I had not been deceived. The name ‘Ovuendaniso’, a relative of the protagonist, means ‘Because He Was Born in Midday, When the Sun was the Navel of the Sky.’ Another one, ‘Uwagbikieneben,’ means ‘Because He Was Born, While We Were Dancing with Swords.’

The title story, ‘A Handful of Dust’ starts with a quote from T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland;

I will show you fear

In a handful of dust…

The story opens with Kasi, the main character, his father and mother attending the funeral of his (Kasi’s) twin brother, Kamsi.

When the priest is officiating the event, Kasi is the only one to see Kamsi’s spirit standing behind a tree. In the story, Kasi communicates ‘through the heart’ with his dead twin brother, Kamsi. Kamsi haunts Kasi for betraying his being gay to their parents. Though only Kasi ccould see Kamsi in the beginning, their mother later observes the unusual opening and closing of doors. Using the ‘you’ voice, the writer of this story, Arinze Ifeakandu, makes the conversation between Kasi and Kamsi’s spirit attractive. Towards the end of the story, Kasi begs The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

89 his brother to stop crying because of missing his (Kamsi’s) boyfriend.

Kasi tells Kamsi of the agony the family suffers because of his (Kamsi’s) absence; no parties as usual; their mother cries a lot, holding his picture, her tears on Kamsi’s face. The story ends as Kasi requests Kamsi to lie down beside him on the bed, so that they can count the squares at the ceiling and roll a handful of dust.

In Uchenna Walter Ude’s ‘Any Last Words’ the protagonist, Francis, narrates to his father what really led to his being imprisoned to death. Humorously, Francis narrates how he was in love with Karina and how he couldn’t tolerate seeing another man kissing her.

How he killed the man. Francis tells his father that all the people who are judging him, the lawyers, the media and the public, don’t know anything about what happened. Interestingly, Francis falls in love with Karina’s voice in the bank, where she is employed, when the network is down; where Francis is in the queue to be attended along with other customers. Up to the point where Francis finishes telling his father what really happened, he uses the first voice. Francis even sneaks into Karina’s bedroom during one of this sexcapades; he sees a man kiss Karina, and he becomes very angry, angry that his Karina is a whore. When the man is walking away, he meets with Francis who is so angry that he lashes out at the man’s head with the rock he picked from the ground. Francis kills him, and when a shocked Karina comes along, he strangles her. Then when Francis is in front of the firing squad, Uchenna interestingly turns the narration into a third-person voice.

I must confess I am a fan of Kiprop Kimutai’s short stories.

In his story in this anthology, ‘Evening Tea with the Dead’, Tapradich is looking for some God everywhere. Her remaining son, Kiprotich dies and later visits her in the evening. Tapradich makes tea and Kiprotich reveals to her hidden village secrets. When Tapkigen, Tapradich’s friend dies, the former makes tea in the evening in the anticipation that the latter will appear like Kiprotich. Kiprop uses unusual similes in narration, consider this: “Tapkigen’s coffin resembled an overturned cockroach roasting in the sun.” Just like Tapridich, she prepares tea, with the hope that the dead Tapkigen would come back, just like The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

90

what Kiprotich did. But she doesn’t come, and Tapradich pours the tea, kneels down and prays for death from God. Abdulrashid Mohammed’s ‘Pink Soap’ brings out cultism – better than in Afrosinema. Jonke does not want his two children living abroad to visit Nigeria. He doesn’t want them to be implicated in his evil ways but this must be done as per his cult. We encounter Jonny, a member of the cult mostly, so it is difficult to say the story is really told in a third-person voice. He alongside the other cultists has a special interest in Jonke’s body. They usually make special ‘pink soaps’ out of the bodies of the followers. Johnny has the power of transforming to anything, including a bird. This story compares to Obinna Udenwe’s thriller, Satans and Shaitans, in that it presents the possibility of powerful people deciding the outcome of elections.

Pink Soap also brings out the possibility of people exchanging their souls for riches, like in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross.

‘A Night of Regrets’ is not just a normal cliché of couples cheating on each other. Vicky runs to her former boyfriend, Barrie, after her husband Debo cheats on her. Though the story is written in third person, the writer, Sifa Asani Gowon, interestingly makes it appear as though Barrie is the narrator, especially the flashback, written in italics, in which Barrie explains to Vicky what really happened the night she came to his place and was vulnerable. Barrie regrets why he did not copulate with Vicky that night, when he had the chance.

Vicky also regrets why she rendered herself vulnerable. But the two finally stumble upon an interesting solution. Barrie knows that that he lost a chance to be with Vicky; but it’s too late to mend ways. So, just to cut out the regret, on departing from Vicky, he deletes her contact from his phone.

A Lagos girl is raped and escapes to London in Adanna Adeleke’s ‘On Finding Home’. Told in the ‘you’ voice, the story takes us into Lucas’ and the protagonist’s affair. She tries to speak English with the accent of a white person, but cannot avoid her Nigerian accent. London proves not to be her home, as she breaks up with her boyfriend. Adanna’s language is as interesting as Kiprop Kimutai’s: “By the end of university, you are a dirty word.” The dirty word The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

91 the protagonist is talking about reminds us of Darlin’s tribulations in America in Noviolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. On coming back home, she is heartbroken on finding her father just the way she left him, torn apart by his words when she left: remember who you are. London broke her, with her lover, Lucas cheating on her. But her Papa’s hug welcomes her back to Nigeria.

The other stories in A Handful of Dust are: Aderoye by Gbolahan Adeola, The Third Silence by Kelechi Njoku, Origins by Timendu Aghahowa, Oil Bait by Rapulu Charles Udoh, I killed you by Damilola Yakubu, The Little Things by Adaora Nwankwo, Incense by Maryam Isa, Dying Alone by Efe Paul Azino, Siege by Faith Tissa, Pickled Papers by Lillian Izuorah and Lagos to Seville

by Tajudeen Koyejo.

That there are no available photographs or biographies of the authors makes it hard for you to discover the gender of some of the authors, given that most of their names are not the easily discernible English ones. But written by writers of whatever gender, A Handful of Dust: Stories From the 2013 Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop is very good, and I recommend it to everybody. I give this book a four out of five.

Peter Ngila is a 2016 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumnus Award recipient. His short fiction has appeared in Jalada Africa and elsewhere. He lives in Nairobi.

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AUTHOR’S INTERVIEW :

Zukiswa Wanner Interviewed by Kariuki wa Nyamu, an exclusive for TWM Zukiswa Wanner, a prolific South African journalist, editor

and the K. Sello Duiker Award winning author is presently living in Nairobi, Kenya.

Born in Zambia to a South African father and a Zimbabwean mother, Zukiswa was raised and educated in Zimbabwe before proceeding to Hawaii Pacific University for her Bachelors in Journalism.

Her novels include The Madams, Behind Every Successful Man, Men of the South and London Cape Town Joburg. She also writes essays, Children’s books, feature films, radio plays and has also contributed extensively to newspapers, journals and magazines. In 2014, she was named among 39 Sub-Saharan African writers under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African Literature.

Nyamu: Zukiswa Wanner, it’s my pleasure to welcome you to this interview.

I’m delighted you have finally found time.Well,let’s get down to business, whom do you think should aptly tell the African story?

Zukiswa: Anyone who wants to and can do so while ensuring that the place and the people are not written about in a one-dimensional manner.

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93 Nyamu: Africa is renowned for its rich tradition of oral transmission of stories; do you think this tradition is still alive?

Zukiswa: If the tradition of storytelling through oral transmission were not alive and well, then we would not have the Gcina Mhlopes, the Mshai Mwangolas and more recently, the Maimouna Jallows. So yes. The tradition is alive and well.

Nyamu: As a writer who has expansively travelled across Africa and even lived in England, what do you think is the reception of African Literature within and outside Africa?

Zukiswa: I think, as with many former colonies, there is a certain narrative of Africa that the colonial masters would prefer about Africa and sometimes there are writers who write it. What I am more interested in now though is the new energy I see on the continent where writers write so that a writer from Uganda gets more excited that they are read in Zimbabwe, Kenya or Ghana than in England. The reception on the African continent is therefore very much growing and, having been in the business for ten years; it’s a joy to behold. I was in the Indian subcontinent earlier in 2016 for Lahore Literary Festival and it was also delightful to purchase and read books by writers and, in reading and in conversation, I found some similarities between our struggles.

Nyamu: Thank you for expounding on that. Zukiswa, I’m glad to live in a time when Africa is blessed with a writer who fights for significant emancipation of society in the economic, political and social spheres. Basically, what I am trying to say is that you are a very vocal writer who engages characters intellectually regarding human concerns that affect modern

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94 African societies. In fact, I must commend you for living a liberated life as well as writing candidly about sensitive issues without compromise.

Would you like to sum up realization of this emancipation through your works?

Zukiswa: I like to think the works speak for themselves. I would have failed as a writer if I started interpreting for my readers present and future what it is I am purporting to say in my work.

Nyamu: I read ‘Men of the South’ last year in one of my MA classes, to be specific in a unit called ‘Modern African Literature.’ By the way, are you aware that your books are being studied in universities? All right, my point is, in Men of the South you boldly explore very sensitive societal issues such as gender identity crisis and African queer experience, something that many conservative Africans as well as writers, even queer ones, shy away from writing. What motivated you to delve deeply into such implicit issues?

Zukiswa: When asked why I write, I often respond that I write to entertain and to get my readers to question. In Men of the South, I was particularly interested in the idea of manhood in patriarchal societies that most of this world is. What does being ‘a real man’ mean? I liked how Mfundo expresses his relief that he is having a son instead of a daughter and the challenges he faces with contemporary manhood-s as imposed on by patriarchal societies. Incidentally, after I wrote it, I thought Men of the South as a talk-back to my debut novel, The Madams. And yes, I am aware of the use of my work in a few universities in some countries on the African continent, in the US, UK and Brazil.

Nyamu: Thanks for the elaborate response. I have for the longest time interacted with writers who never want to discuss their works.

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95 In fact, most would rather insist on leaving it to the readers to make meaning out of their creations. Zukiswa, I must say you are unique in that you speak about your subject, thematic concerns, style, motives and even intuition with a lot of enthusiasm, and you also seem to resonate very well with the characters in your novels.

Kindly illuminate this experience.

Zukiswa: Well in broad terms, I suppose I do but as those who have been in my workshops are aware, my way is not the only way to do it and I also really try to steer clear of interpreting my work for my audience.

Nyamu: You consciously set out to entertain readers in your works; do you also strive to teach?

Zukiswa: Less to teach and more to make my readers question themselves and their prejudices.

Nyamu: Okay. One of your remarkable accomplishments as a writer is being featured as one of South Africa’s most phenomenal women having been acclaimed for your enormous contribution in the literary world. You also facilitated Femrite workshop in Kampala, Uganda in 2013 and the Caine Prize Workshop in Accra, Ghana in 2015. Please tell us what these projects brought forth. Having achieved all this literary reputation within a decade of writing and publishing, I suppose it is not an easy task maintaining the high standards of writing and taking up challenging responsibilities that come with it, have you ever wished you were not charged with such a responsibility?

Zukiswa: I’m pleased you’ve mentioned that the Femrite workshop and the Caine Prize workshop were two different projects. The former resulted in the publication of Nothing to See while the latter resulted in most of the short stories in Lusaka Punk. Do I wish I were not charged with such responsibility? I have turned down literary responsibilities when The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

96 it clashes with my own writing, so no. What I have undertaken, I have done with the awareness that I can work on it. I am currently the African juror for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for instance, and before I agreed to do so, I had to check my schedule and see whether I was available to do so.

Nyamu: Alright. You judged Etisalat Prize for Literature in 2015, in which Fiston Mwanza’s novel Tram 83 won. That novel is translated from French to English, what’s your view about translations in the continent?

Zukiswa: We definitely need more. I am always saddened that I am unable to access a lot of literature from all over the continent because I am barred from access by language.

Nyamu: Having said that, has any of your novels been considered for translation to let’s say French or Portuguese?

Zukiswa: I am actually in discussion with a publisher in Cote d’Ivoire for a French translation of some of my works.

Nyamu: Please tell us what you think about the literary festivals and prizes which are currently coming up all over Africa.

Zukiswa: I think they are exciting.

Nyamu: Why is it difficult for majority of writers living in Africa to solely depend on writing for their livelihood? I mean, most of them have full time jobs especially in the Media, universities and other institutions.

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97 Zukiswa: I too have a part-time job in the media.

But I think this is true of writers worldwide.

Nyamu: Is it of essential that a writer regardless of academic or professional background to attend Creative Writing classes or possibly master classes for writing and editing?

Zukiswa: While I have facilitated the said Master classes, I have personally not taken part in any, so the answer would be no.

Nyamu: Zukiswa, almost all your novels have either won literary awards or been shortlisted. And I must congratulate you for that! Now, if I may ask, when you are writing, do you set out to write a great work of art that will either be shortlisted and/ or win literary awards? What does it really take to be a great prose writer?

Zukiswa: No I don’t. I write what sounds sincere to my characters and their settings.

Nyamu: Must a Creative writer strive to win literary awards in order to be recognized?

Zukiswa: I’ve answered this many times. No. Nyamu: To what extent have the earlier generation of writers offered mentorship to the new generation of writers in the continent?

Zukiswa: I don’t think it’s the job of any writer to offer mentorship to up and coming writers. The only mentorship a writer needs is from reading the works of as many different writers as possible. People become The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

98 better writers by reading widely and writing and not by having conversations with established writers.

Nyamu: That’s right. You must be ecstatic about having widely contributed material to newspapers, journals and magazines on an international scale. And closer to your new home in Kenya, you run a literary column on Saturday Nation newspaper named “Outsider Looking in.” In that column, you significantly share material about the writing experience and matters to do with publishing and other emerging literary issues… and as one of your ardent readers, I must honestly admit that I admire the fact that your articles are exhilarating, educative and thought-provoking. Gauging from the feedback you get, is this the experience from majority of the readers?

Zukiswa: Thank you. I however have no idea what the majority of readers think. They only communicate with me when they are not happy about something I have said.

Nyamu: Your latest novel London Cape Town Joburg is set in two continents, Europe and Africa, do you think immigration is still a ‘hot’ topic among the new crop of African writers, now that it has so far been explored considerably?

Zukiswa: I believe that there is no story that has not been written before.

So writers can still continue exploring storylines. It all depends on how freshly one does it.

Nyamu: Now that you are living in Nairobi, should we expect your forthcoming novel to be set here in Nairobi or Kenya in general?

Zukiswa: Don’t expect anything. I will write what speaks to me most. If Kenya manages to do that, I just may. If she does not, I won’t.

Nyamu: Alright. Moving on, of all your four published novels (so far), The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

99 which is your favourite? Do you ever read your novels?

Zukiswa: (Laughter) That’s like asking a parent who their favourite child is!

I like them all. London Cape Town Joburg is the most painful to read though.

Nyamu: Pick one statement that you love most from any of your novels.

Zukiswa: ‘Better to cry in a limousine than laugh in a taxi,’ from my second novel Behind Every Successful Man. It particularly resonates because I can’t afford a limo. (Smiling) Nyamu: That’s interesting. You also describe yourself as a feminist and activist; do you have any intentions of vying for a parliamentary seat in future?

Zukiswa: (Laughter) No! Why would someone demote themselves from being a writer to a politician? Why? Nyamu: Well, some do, but anyway, let’s leave it at that. Zukiswa, if you were offered a well paying job in a popular worldwide radio station to host a show about African writing every evening, let’s say from eight to midnight, what would you do?

Zukiswa: I would prefer to have the slot at an earlier hour. Possibly drivetime and of course I would take it. May be not every day though but certainly once a week or even once a month as I did with BBC Africa for a while…

Nyamu: All right, please pose a question that you would think your readers, particularly the ones who have never met you, ask themselves after reading your works?

Zukiswa: Why did you write about me?

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Wow! You’re very brilliant! Of course there must be one thing the world doesn’t know about you… What is it?

Zukiswa: I prefer the world continues not knowing.

Nyamu: What is the future of African Literature in this modern era of ICT? Zukiswa: I suspect it will become more popular as readers share their favourite reads globally.

Nyamu: You earlier hinted that this interview will be your last literary engagement this year as you are about to take one month’s vacation in order to spend valuable time with your family. Is it necessary for a writer to take up such a break and even switch off from social media for a while? Like you are intending to do…

Zukiswa: I can’t speak for other writers but I know it’s necessary for me. 2016 has been a really busy year!

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Nyamu: Okay. Do you love poetry?

Zukiswa: I like poetry a lot and appreciate it immensely. However, I dislike what some non-readers who write rhymes and never read poetry claim is poetry.

Nyamu: (Smiling) I’m pleased to know that you appreciate poetry. Now, as we wrap up, what would you wish posterity to remember you for?

Zukiswa: I don’t care to be remembered when I am gone. I want my heaven now.

Nyamu: (Laughing) That sounds very poetic! Zukiswa Wanner, I am dearly grateful for giving this interview full attention despite your busy schedule. You are such a great inspiration to African writers and a very firm pillar in contemporary African Prose! The Wagon Magazine wishes you all the best in your writing. Thanks a lot for your sincerity and lively interaction!

Zukiswa: Thank you very much for the lovely discussion.

Kariuki wa Nyamu is a Kenyan poet,

radio playwright, editor and high school teacher. He got graduated from Makerere University in Uganda. He is published widely both in print and online.

He is presently pursuing an M.A. (Literature) at Kenyatta University, Kenya.

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NIGERIA

POEMS

Akor Emmanuel Oche

CELL FELLOWSHIP When earth gets wet goats scamper for their pen horses for their stables and I for a room filled with darkness; Two fallen pipes across electric wires disenchanted, A roof dripping debris of stolen water.

When earth gets wet at noon I think of freedom in dark rooms; A narrow hole for light and stolid walls for alibi.

I cannot sit, I dread to stand...

The sky shuts her mouth I head out for the land the land of endless sojourners. *Ajaokuta is a Local Government Area in Kogi State, Nigeria and a town within it on the left bank of the Niger River The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

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PREDICTIONS

Rains fall in their due Seasons night darkness cannot blind their way.

A tree sprouts, then grows, it yields to the force of wind billows whose names cannot be traced...

I hear chatters from a distance let the pen dance in its stillness, soon, the light that shimmer will glimmer and glimmer and glimmer until it shines again.

AJAOKUTA 2016 She sits in the valley a queen to behold, bewitching beauty enrapturing the eyes, fascinating the soul.

The mountains adorn her majesty its streams of living water nourish her in all seasons--Ajaokuta!* The city where the brooks live the city where Niger seeks refuge from the suns burning rays thou art home to men prudent and not, in your ample bosom, a poet finds his pen and scrabble lasting songs.

Akor Emmanuel Oche is a member of Caprecon Develop-

ment Foundation www.caprecon.net, Great Minds Organization, African Haiku Network, among others. Akor is arguably the first poet to write and translate poetry in Idoma, a language found in Middle Belt Nigeria.

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UGANDA

POEMS

Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva is a

published poet, editor, actress, public speaking trainer and long-distance swimmer from Uganda. She is the founder of Babishai Niwe (BN) Poetry Foundation.

She is a Ugandan author, public speaking trainer,poetry festival coordinator and a long-distance swimmer.

She lives in Kampala with her husband and children she holds a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and in 2014, she was the BBC Commonwealth Games Poet, representing Uganda.

My Father The Diplomat, in 1985 In his office at The Uganda House, Daddy showed me a photograph of a real lion. not like the ones at Trafalgar Square that couldn’t even scare away the birds.

Then he showed me a photograph of a real clown, Idi Amin Dada. not like the clowns at Piccadilly Circus The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017

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The Student from Angola who had a house in Portugal (Don’t they all?)

On the bus from London to Edinburgh, I met a student from Angola. as he kept stroking the selfie that we took, He said, “Don’t let any Brazilian touch your head!”

My natural hair earned me an invitation to Portugal.

Back home, I remembered the student from Angola and the invitation to Portugal.

He called me often.

I called him as well asking for a donation’ to my children’s foundation.

His phone must have a problem because he doesn’t pick my calls anymore.

And our house in Portugal is a house on a map is a house in my mind is a house in a dream is the house that never was.

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KENYA

POEMS

Tom Jalio

Sowing seeds of resentment In Africa, you either die a hero or live long enough to become a lifetime president!

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The sickness cycle of a football fanatic Ninety minutes later, I’m numbed How am I feeling?

Each goal stabbed my heart How am I living?

I close my eyes and see replays How am I sleeping?

Sucker punch after sucker punch How am I breathing?

Facebook notifications pile up How am I chatting?

A week later is the morning after How am I coping?

Yet some people think it’s just a game How am I explaining?

Next season, I’m with the same team How am I leaving?

Tom Jalio is an editor by day, writer by night, runner part-

time. He won the Babishai Poetry Award in 2014 with There was once something special here. His short story, No rest for the wicked, appeared in the 2013 anthology Nairobi Grit. Other prominent works by him include Letter of Rejection, Mama Africa gives birth to poetry and Anatomy of a serial plagiarist.

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ART SKETCHES

BY JOHN JOSHUA GIBU

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My Sincere heartfelt thanks to all those who extended their cooperation in bringing this edition, particularly Associates Peter Ngila, Kariuki wa Nyamu and Margaret Muthee. My special thanks to John Looker and Dr. Vyjayanthi Srinivasa

FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY Published by Vel.Kathiravan, K G E TEAM, Chennai, India - 600024 Printed by Print Process, Chennai- 600014 / Phone: +949176991885 The Wagon Magazine -January- 2017