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A Half Dance

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:13:25 -0400

“Half of a dance is better than no dance!”

I might have said, that first day, we spoke.

And I held her from when she began,

to the moment the close embrace broke.

I noticed her's, brown, & then mine shut, glued

her image locked within.

For a second, I peeped, her smile was all, I saw

A picture sealed in my forever file.

I was rebellious; a heart of stone,

But her voice was tickling my every bone.

I wouldn’t laugh but my heart would blush

He broke out into a warm love rush

I was fighting him to calm down.

She was calling him out with her eyes.

I was resisting with all my brawn,

But he broke out with ecstatic sighs.

Half a moment is better than no moment

Half a chance, than no chance

It left me stunned; alone on the dance floor.

undone

Old Pots:

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:49:36 -0400

Old pots burn slow

and worn hearts have no glow.

I’ve had too much hurt and strain

To bear pain again.

Old pots are coated with soot

and hearts grow to be as dark.

Love is no longer the heart’s root,

It’s like a fire that lost its spark.

Old pots can’t hold water

And hearts see nothing to seek after

The pots slowly lose all they hold

And hearts lose all they behold.

Old pots have no use

And hearts, no power to muse;

They mope around tattered and torn with heads aground

And the pots, battered and worn, grimly bound.

Old pots carry many stories

And hearts are very wise

Old pots are where most flies flock,

and hearts are where ships must dock.

Nature's Voice

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:28:22 -0400

The Voice is trying to speak,

Listen closely, do you hear?

Too much noise inside your ear,

Yet the message is very near.

It cries, melancholy is her song,

Who can see her tears.

The cost of her pain is dear,

It has been suppressed many a year.

It whispers in the wind,

I listen in my mind.

It’s a voice that none can bind;

That only the blind see.

It talks in the rain,

But no being is taking it in.

The calm words raindrops carry,

Get buried deep in natures green.

It shouts, it thunders, it storms!

the few understand, the many misunderestimate.

‘Care for me and keep me from harm!’

Is the first cause to which man is bound!

August 2001

Call for entries: Commonwealth Book Prize and Commonwealth Short Story Prize

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 05:30:29 -0400

The Commonwealth Foundation has made the call for entries for the new Commonwealth Book Prize and Commonwealth Short Story Prize. The prizes are part of a new initiative, Commonwealth Writers, an online hub to inspire, inform and create a community of writers from all over the world. Together with the prizes, Commonwealth Writers unearths, develops and promotes the best new fiction from across the Commonwealth.

Awarded for best first book, the Commonwealth Book Prize is open to writers who have had their first novel (full length work of fiction) published between 1 January and 31 December 2011. Regional winners receive £2,500 and the overall winner receives £10,000.

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2000-5000 words). Regional winners receive £1,000 and the overall winner receives £5,000. The winners will be announced in June 2012.

Storymoja Hay Festival 2011

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 21:38:50 -0400

The Storymoja Hay Festival brings together international writers and personalities to a temporary ’tented city’ in the heart of Nairobi where we celebrate stories, ideas, writing and contemporary culture through storytelling, music, books, live discussion forums, demonstrations, workshops, open mic sessions, debates, exhibitions, performances and competitions. More details here: http://storymojaafrica.co.ke/main/storymoja-hay-festival/

The festival runs from September 16 to 18th.

This year's speacial guests include Ben Okri, Chief Namweya, Tony Mochama

That Cunning Mask by Gabby Ozems Excerpt - CHAPTER 8

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 04:50:43 -0400

She lay in his embrace, moaning a maternal pain, tossing her arms and working her legs. With his lips he swallowed her
tears and soothed her face; this was her husband. She held his thumb, so surely a bystander would have
thought he was her giver of life. He soothed her hand with fingers from his other hand whose thumb was not held. His
eyes guarded about and his eyelids kept blinking; this was her father.

‘Hold yourself, Moya,’ implored Yiddi her father, ‘our flight is far from its destination. The blaring and clanking are
done in pursuit of us. Death sees us clearer as we are tighter engulfed.’
‘Painful, Pa-Yiddi. My tummy will erupt,’ groaned Damoya.
‘Naught shall erupt in you, sweet child.’
‘Something shall. Tiny, many blades slice me within. I’ll drop soon and die.’
‘You shan’t, Moya, its merely a sensation of maternity.’

She groaned her loudest of the night, tucking her belly and kicking her legs. She fretted in his embrace, which made
him as fretful, her husband.
‘It’s aggravated,’ communed her spousal Zowdor with his in-law.

‘Let me handle her,’ Yiddi communed back, picking and folding her into his own embrace. ‘Relax, Zowdor, fret less.
We did it once on foreign soil and we’ll …’
‘Forgive me, Pa-Yiddi?’ she went on a wailing spree. ‘My
willful disposition has left you in grave agony.’

144 § Gabby Ozems

‘You are blameless, my child.’
She stretched her hand to Zowdor.
‘Hush, sweet Moya,’ implored Zowdor, caressing her hand.
‘Forgive me, Zowdor?’ wailed she.

‘Hush,’ both men implored.

Damoya rocked her legs off the embrace and they formed a slant on the ground. She spun her bust, swaying her waist
and sinking her head downward till the whole of her lay flat on the ground. The men each tried to offer assistance, but
she crawled backwards, swerving them in all their efforts.

‘Go away,’ she implored. ‘I’ll be the snare of you. Here, I’ll end my journey.’
‘We won’t abandon you,’ returned Zowdor, caressing her temple.
‘You need help, Moya,’ Yiddi entreated.

With docile faces and affectionate gestures, she was beckoned to calm, which beckoning she succumbed to, and
while her violence jumped to calm the men heaved, their faces elated. Suddenly, she tucked her tummy and wailed
and gnashed.

‘It’s crumpling my stomach,’ she said.

‘What is?’ queried the men.

‘The baby, it’s swimming down. I feel slippery inside. It swims. Believe me!’

‘We do. We do,’ assured the men.

‘She may be due?’ Yiddi whispered to Zowdor.
‘But she’s only as pregnant as seven moons?’ Zowdor rejoined.

Wails Damoya, ‘My soul is slithering out of my skin!’
Yells Yiddi, ‘Let’s lay her in comfort.’
It was happening on a street on whose flanks lay two warped footpaths. Thus, seeking to lay their daughter and
wife on comfortable ground, the father and husband

Florence Nduku and the Immaculate Angel Salon Sisters Part 1

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:03:31 -0400

Florence Nduku arrived at Immaculate Angel Salon five minutes after nine. Vexed that it was not nine on the dot, she hissed lewd expletives at the cause of her delay - her husband. She drove into the reserved parking space, allowing her car to roll forward until it came to rest on top of the pavement. In so doing she parked too close to the entrance, so close in fact that she left only a tiny space for pedestrians to squeeze into the salon. Even she was not spared, the car edged an inch when she wedged her way around it, her huge buttocks compressed against the wall while her enormous thighs buckled the bonnet of the Peugeot 404, causing the car to bounce up and down as she passed. Her three employees, waiting for her outside, ogled in amusement, exchanging knowing glances. She glared at them ominously, daring them to speak. Silence.

They’d learnt the moods of their boss. Maybe the fried egg was crumpled that morning, they didn't know that it had burned. If they had known, they'd probably have asked the day off.

Alice

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 09:23:57 -0500

1
Alice paced their large Victorian bathroom like a loop in a movie clip, she would walk briskly towards the door and grasped the knob as if to free herself and then pause, turn around, and retrace her wet footprint back to the large vanity at the other end of the room. This went on for all of five minutes, but it felt like eternity. The lavender shower curtains and sweet rose petal fragrance clouding the room, meant to evoke a calm and restful mood, had no effect on her nerves. Butterflies vultured away in her belly whenever she looked at the multicolored assortment of pills temporarily decorating their white vanity countertops. She scooped the pills and cupped them in both of her hands and fell to her knees, begging God’s forgiveness for what she was about to do.
When she'd googled ‘how to abort after four months’, the search brought back weird sounding prescription drugs like mifepristone that a fifteen year old could never get her hands on. Still, it was whispered in the back alleys of Jakaranda Primary School that malaria tabs could do the trick within the first few weeks, so Alice calculated that upping the dose by a factor of five would do the trick for a four month old pregnancy. Malaria was so endemic in the area that malariaquin was dispensed like a fever reliever to anyone complaining of a high temperature; she would toss in some pain killers and a couple of PMS pills just to be on the safe side.

Her menses had failed without much ado for one week, two weeks and then on the third week, on a Monday morning, she was roused from sleep by such a revolting oduor that she felt squeamishness in the pit of her stomach. Squeamishness turned nausea, as she rushed to the bathroom to vomit. No sooner had the brownish-yellow bitter bile her left mouth than she succumbed to a debilitating panic attack. The realization that she was pregnant froze her!
Alice was academically gifted, she was perennially at the top of her class. She was the first born in a family of three children. Her two younger brothers had looked up to her in awe and admiration. Her mother admired her many achievements but from a distance, never audibly, but her satisfaction always shone through the silence. Dad was harder to please. Eager for male attention, she was flattered when the upper class boys began calling on her; they were so much more intelligent and mature than the children in her class. Their conversation was so much more substantial. She knew who the father was, but had not told him because she did not want to freak him out.
After a month, the life inside her began to talk to her heart and she began to feel the love bubbling up from within. She felt more important and joyful than she had ever felt in her short life. She was so happy, always smiling inside. When she was down, she cried. But even then she would place a hand on her tummy and be happy to be so alive and sad. By the third month, she was sure she would keep him, or her. But that was before she told him.

Changes

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:22:20 -0500

On Tuesday the 3^rd August my friends Karanja and Wafula found me in the company of a young lady in my room, looking gloomy as I listened to her endless chatter. Karanja's eyes darted from me to her, and an instant queer smile enveloped his face. I could see, though, that Wafula was intently scrutinizing her long, green dress and her toe nails coated with dust. I had noticed it myself, that ankle length mtumba dress bought somewhere in Gikomba market, if anywhere else, in the Green City in the Sun. But much more it now had an oval stain slightly above the knee. She had stained it in my room, for when she knocked; I was having a cup of coffee and was compelled to serve her one. Holding the cup on the left hand and clumsily searching her bag with the other, she accidentally spilled coffee on herself. She let out a small laugh, looked at the dress, wiped it absentmindedly and put the cup down to look for the book. She did not seem to find it, hence just asked;

“Was Hester Prynne a living, breathing person of gone ages or the creation of Hawthorne's genius?”

I was about to answer. I would have gladly gone into excruciating details about the legendary Scarlet Letter. But the sight of Karanja and Wafula inspired in me some loathing about myself, my lifestyle. All I was, all I did, was books. I practically lived in the library. Hence was doomed to discuss about the English, American, African, Latino and Japanese literatures with Mary and others like her who smiled away the burning sensation of hot coffee on their thighs. That feeling made me imagine myself in front of a mirror, looking back at image of a person I increasingly doubted whether was me or someone else that was inevitably growing morbid. Not once, not twice, was I told that this was a miserable way to spent four years of university life.

“I'm not sure I know anything about Hester Prynne!” I told Mary, dismissively.

A few minutes later I had changed and was walking past the poorly lit Roysambu pavements, walking a step or two behind my friends. For a Tuesday night something seemed magical. People were talking out loud, walking leisurely up and down the streets, in and out bars, looking particularly animated. Excitement coursed through me.

Commonwealth Writers’ Prize --Africa

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 17:24:18 -0400

Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2010 Regional Prizes were just announced.
The Africa prize is dominated by South Africa and Nigeria AGAIN.

Come on East Africans, lets go to work and do better this year.

Africa Winners
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubeni from Nigeria won Best First Book for I Do Not Come to You by Chance
Marie Heese from South Africa won Best Book for The Double Crown.

The shortlisted writers for Africa's Best Book were:

Trespass by Dawn Garisch (South Africa)

The Double Crown by Marié Heese (South Africa)

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)

Eyo by Abidemi Sanusi (Nigeria)

Tsamma Season by Rosemund Handler (South Africa)

Refuge by Andrew Brown (South Africa)

Kings of the Water by Mark Behr (South Africa)

The shortlisted writers for Africa's Best First Book are:

I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani (Nigeria)

The Shape of Him by Gill Schierhout (South Africa)

The Shadow of a Smile by Kachi Ozumba (Nigeria)

Come Sunday by Isla Morley (South Africa)

Sleepers Wake by Alistair Morgan (South Africa)

Jelly Dog Days by Erica Emdon (South Africa)

Harmattan Rain by Aysha Harunna Attah (Ghana)

more details available here