Kay Ugwuzor

The Tomb of Amani It lay in a sarcophagus in the vault of memory, surrounded by piling skeletons of free-thought fighters. In this tomb of regret, the debris of democracy piles up, each pile a generation of pain older than the pile beneath. Rumour is that only through death can one reach it… It lay in the tomb of regrets at the end of the memory lane, buried deep inside the heart of a dark continent, guarded by the phantoms of Lumumba and the pharaohs, whose silence through the ages compose black anthems of freedom in the idiom of a prison continent. Rumour is that only through resurrection can one preach it.. -  JKS Makokha JKS Makokha is the Kenyan author of Reading M. G. Vassanji: A Contextual Approach to Asian African Fiction. (2009). He teaches courses in African and South Asian Literatures at the Institut für Englische Philologie at Freie Universität Berlin in Germany. From african-writing.com

I am sitting on the edge of one of the back chairs of the department, hearing the rain fall relentlessly on the roof, on the road, on people. Millions of drops fall along the HOds car, washing away the filth but never the filth it has gathered over the years. I am tired, hungry. I imagine myself stubbornly waging through the rain to the cafeteria. You are sitting next to me, flipping through the selfies you have just taken on my phone. So concerned with your image in the photo that it seems you have forgotten I'm here. You edit them, filtering, cropping, collageing, trying to appear more than you are. I want to tell you you are absolutely stunning in the unedited photos, to tell you that your eyes are round and bold and beautiful like the full moon. But I don't, it'll be useless, I think so and I let you remain, not going beyond your 'don't you have instasquare? Or that editing app' questions. I'd mutter something  even I don't hear and download the app...

[Sweeping. Door creaks. Mama has entered] Chinatu: {excitedly} Mama good afternoon, Noh o! Mama: My daughter, good afternoon, kedu? How are you? Chinatu: I am fine Mama, very fine. Mama: Look at how you have managed to clean up this place. What would I do without your helping hands? Chinatu: [laughs] Mama, you would do a lot. Mama: I don’t think so o. these boys just frustrate my efforts in these house. They never do anything. All they do is go to wherever in the morning and come back when the sun has gone down, smelling of palm wine, asking of food and finding the path to their own rooms. They are twins and they are inseparable, almost every corner of this village knows them. Chinatu: But at least they help once in a while. Didn’t you say it was Chika that single handedly built the zinc shade in the back yard? And that Ihe’s came back from the farm last week with that antelope on his neck, that we’ve been eating since then. Mama: [sigh] Ok, I agree they ...

Let me tell you a story A boy goes to the river. He dances at the bank of it, allowing the water to gently crawl on his legs, pouring sand between his toes and running back. He loves the chill and the motony of it. He falls in love with the river and the way the orange sun fell behind it in the evenings. He wanted to swim. He wanted an intimate relationship with the river. To travel up and down its body, caress it through and through till he knew every detail of it and it's sweet scent. Yet he feared the river. He feared because he had heard tales of men who had gone in and never swam out. Whom the river, in its beauty had taken away to unknown lands. He would look at the river and see it calm, sober and welcoming but at the thought of going in, the river roared. The boy feared the river and yet, he loved it. I am that boy and you are the river. R ifts I cannot see beyond the smoke screen and the fog that is in your eyes I cannot, somehow, convince you of the power of love an...

I love my pastor. I love my pastor indeed. e be correct man. His God dey working well well. Me, I have not had child for eight years since I marry when all my mates them that I first to marry have born four, five child. Me I was barren. My mother-in-law come be very wicked woman that time. She call me winch and all sorts of name. she say that me I was ashawo before I marry, that I have already remove my womb and use for ritual for my small shop near filling station. But even doctor tell her that my womb is still intact, that nothing have touch it at all and me sef am not ashawo before. My mother-in-law come dey trouble my oga say make e go take another wife. My oga say he does not want another wife and I dey ok for him. But I observe and see say na lie. Manage manage no dey full bele. For the first five years I manage for my husband house upon all his mama wahala and all the small small things wey people  wey come see am dey talk about my problem, dey talk different different m...

Last year a visitor came to our house. He wore a dead grey suit and carried a famished bible in his left hand. His head was so bald that it gleamed under the orange light bulb at the door way, when Anita opened the door; it was the first thing I saw. Mama called him Prophet and said that he shall be staying with us for that week. That he’ll help us ‘battle’ the spirits that killed Papa. Yesterday she’d asked Anita, our house girl, to clean up the spare room. I watched her expertly push the two mounds on her chest, shifting, dusting and sweeping. When she was done, she exhausted a canister of air freshener and the pungent scent gripped the air. At the door, the bald black man stood with pride, his muscular frame occupied the doorway.  I watched him walk into the house, welcomed by Mother, in such a manner characteristic of a hardcore prayer warrior, never for a minute holding a canal smile. He sank into the sofa and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. He shut his eyes to...

It wasn’t the way he carried himself that gave him his reputation. He did not appear, as people would say, as the ‘type’. He had this dull brightness that fluttered around him; he was sluggish and overly unimpressive. In fact all that was attractive about him was his face and his naturally muscular body. The rumor that went around the department was ‘he fucks  good!’ While the ladies were the ones involved (for he was not gay) it was the guys that were most concerned. For some of them, it began to seem that they could no longer satisfy their girlfriends and that the girls needed some sort of higher power to work on them. However it was difficult to confirm his notoriety because it would be unconventional and quite childish to walk up to a mature guy and ask him straight up ‘did you fuck my girlfriend? She seems distant when I’m doing her’ and the girls would advertise how cheap they were if they asked him if he could do them. Hence, it was the intrepid ones that could request for...