Chinelo Onwualu is a Nigerian writer and editor living in Toronto, Canada. She is a graduate of the 2014 Clarion West Writers Workshop, which she attended as the recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship. Her writing has appeared in Uncanny, Strange Horizons, and The Kalahari Review.
We live in a world where women are often expected to be our consciences – absolving men of responsibility for their own behaviours and choices. However, rarely are women allowed to choose for themselves what it means to be good or moral. We hold women to higher standards yet we do not reward women for meeting them, nor does society ever hold such baselines for itself. Rather, goodness is defined as whatever behaviour will benefit men and thus is always malleable.
So what happens when women define goodness for themselves? Well, in this edition we bring you tales of women and girls making choices and behaving badly – but not always in ways that you might expect. In Mirette Bhagat’s “A Bridal Shroud” a young girl takes control of her destiny; while in “Memento Mori” by Tiah Bautement, a woman decides the path of her happiness – with the most unexpected of partners; in H.J. Golakai’s “Lee-ah (Sister)” two friends determine the boundaries of their friendship on their own terms; while in Osahon Ize-Iyamu’s nerve-tingling “In the Garden Watching Nim Noms” a girl must decide how far she’ll go to become the thing she most desires.
It’s been a long, exhausting road to this edition. Between illness, unemployment, and new employment, we’ve had to make our own decisions about how to balance our unwavering passion for this project and our need to buy groceries, sleep, and pay rent. It hasn’t been easy. We’ve had to watch as our publication schedule, carefully crafted at the beginning of the year, was blown out of the water by the grenades of the daily demands of life. And you, dear readers, have had to bear the brunt of that.
We are deeply sorry.
We can only continue trying our best and limping along as we can. Sadly, this means we can only commit to one more regular edition this year. However, we leave open the possiblity of collaborations to come – particularly in celebration of our 4-year anniversary.
We want to thank Joseph Omotayo whose last-minute review brought this edition together, as well as Wole Talabi for his generous donation to this edition, and a continued thank you to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for making this year possible.
But our biggest thank you goes out to you, our readers, for sticking by us through our ups and downs. Your loyalty is beyond our capacity to repay. We humbly ask that you continue to bear with us.
In 2015 I completed a BAFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town. I create illustrations, videos of these illustrations and often represent sound through those mediums. I also paint on clothes people already own, 2nd hand clothes or cotton clothes made in South Africa. I believe in nature as truth, true technology & that animals know more than we ever could. I don't depict humans in my work as I want to eradicate the imbalance/hierarchy made by us over nature. I use vegan materials: art materials not tested on animals, not having animal ingredients, veg inks/recycling paper. Among many independent group exhibitions, in Cape Town, I have exhibited at Open Book Comics Festival, Gallery University Stellenbosch, Unsung Art, DF Contemporary, 99 Loop, Commune. 1, Rabindranath Tagore Centre (India) & Reed College (Portland, USA) through Emergent Art Space. I have a podcast interview available on the Eye Radio (Cape Town). I am also a drummer for Morning Pages sonic & visual ensemble which has released an album, independently toured the east coast of South Africa & hosts performances at various venues around Cape Town (since 2014).
Tell us a little bit about your background.
I was born and raised in Johannesburg and decided to study at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2011. I graduated in 2015 and have been a full-time artist based in Cape Town since then.
What inspired you to be an artist when you were growing up and why?
I daydreamed a lot and spent my time playing outside. Before 2000, my late grandfather sent us VHS tapes recordings of old Cartoon Network shows from Newcastle in the UK, before my household decided to get DSTV. Animation felt like the closest thing to the replication of imagination.
At that age, I also remember having completed a drawing while sitting at a table in my garden thinking I’d like to do this for the rest of my life. Spending time outside also gave me a love for nature and a deep need to be surrounded by it. Moving to Cape Town has given me access to nature and it is what inspires me to create as I think that it is truth.
What is the most challenging aspect of being an artist, particularly as a woman, in your country?
Subconsciously, I find ways to avoid being catcalled while walking. So if I can get lifts or take the bus that comes down my street, I’ll utilize that as a kind of breathing space so I can avoid the whirlwind of verbal harassment and have a peaceful headspace while getting art supplies/groceries/drawing money/scanning my art. I’m just too sensitive to it.
I have, however, seen male-on-male violence where my friends are laughed at or questioned by strangers because of their alternative appearance. I blame all of this on the competitive, shallow and insecure plague: patriarchy. It becomes exhausting knowing that each time I leave my house something confrontational is bound to happen – no matter how much we try to keep our heads down and move forward.
Outside of that, I think there aren’t many platforms for underground artists. I do wish that illustration, grungy and raw types of creations could be punted and supported just as heavily as Fine Art culture is. The other issue is the view on the costing of art and materials artists use: It doesn’t always have to be unattainable by the average person and I think there needs to be a shift in perspective. Luckily, I’ve found a few supportive channels, one of which is the online gallery, Unsung Art, and I appreciate their hard work greatly.
Are you involved in any other projects outside your regular job? If so, can you tell us which ones you’re currently most excited about?
I play drums and other things for Morning Pages. It is an instrumental audio-visual ensemble based in Cape Town. We narrate soundscapes to projected visuals created internally. We have a strong DIY ethic and, in September of 2016, we independently released our debut album Vernal Equinox and toured the east coast of South Africa. We recorded the album internally, created album art, merchandised and funded the tour.
Our next series of performances will take place at The Theatre Arts Admin Collective at the end of March. One of which will be a replica of our November 2017 set, ‘Dirge’, that we held at Alexander Theatre. It is our first official film where we’ve scored specific sound to a story that we’ve made, and it serves as a form of lamentation over the joint loss we experienced in 2017. I’m really excited about it.
What strategies do you use to carve out time for sketching?
I work full-time as an artist from home so there’s time for me to illustrate. I often multi-task by processing thoughts for pieces while doing tedious things like errands or housework. It’s become a habit and I think that is why, unfortunately, I am not as present as I’d like to be. Even my internet browser has multiple tabs open at once. My concern is carving out time to clear my mind more.
Are there any TV shows, movies or web series you would sneak out to watch right now?
I’m anticipating the release of the new South Park and I can say that I hope to find similar series to the first season of Channel Zero and something like The OA this year.
Who are the most exciting artists on the South African scene right now?
The artists that inspire me are Helo Samo, Frank Lunar, Lightfarm (Jason Stapleton), Oscar Oryan, and Louise Coutzer of Darkroom Contemporary.
What was the most discouraging time in your career and how did you overcome it?
Last year, in 2017, I experienced many losses and the stress from that made me sick, so much so I had to go to hospital. It was scary because it felt like my body was caving in and – it’s obvious to say this – but I didn’t realize the degree of my body’s strength when it was healthy. While I was in hospital, I got to do some research and think through how I could be kinder to myself because choosing this path is difficult and my negative state of mind is one aspect that makes it harder.
Looking back, is there anything in your career that you would do differently? Any major decisions you regret?
Everything is synchronistic and every move forward or backward is part of a complex sort of puzzle that builds on itself, which makes my path.
What is it you would most want to be remembered for when you’re gone?
I don’t feel art is an external thing you take on; I think it’s an extension of yourself or a tool that gets more of you into this realm. I want people to feel encouraged to embrace themselves. There are alternative pathways in sharing and making art and we don’t have to wait for someone ‘important’ to coin us an artist.
Also, caring for the environment, and making pieces on how we relate to it, is just as important as works that focus on social ills. Without Earth there is no plane for us to figure ourselves out, and I’d like for people to carry that in their conscience.
In 2015 Caitlin completed a BAFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town. She creates illustrations, videos of these illustrations and often represents sound through those mediums. She also paints on clothes people already own, 2nd hand clothes or cotton clothes made in South Africa. She believes in nature as truth, true technology & that animals know more than we ever could. She doesn’t depict humans in her work as she wants to eradicate the imbalance/hierarchy made by humans over nature. She uses vegan materials: art materials not tested on animals, not having animal ingredients, veg inks/recycling paper. Among many independent group exhibitions, in Cape Town, she has exhibited at Open Book Comics Festival, Gallery University Stellenbosch, Unsung Art, DF Contemporary, 99 Loop, Commune. 1, Rabindranath Tagore Centre (India) & Reed College (Portland, USA) through Emergent Art Space. She is also a drummer for Morning Pages sonic & visual ensemble which has released an album, independently toured the east coast of South Africa & hosts performances at various venues around Cape Town (since 2014).
Another year, another cycle of bringing you the best African speculative fiction we can find begins.
We are now 11 editions in, and each opportunity to produce a new edition of Omenana still feels like a new experience.
But the road to Omenana 11 was not easy. There was a time, after Omenana 10, when the thought of how we would continue the magazine filled us with trepidation, but here we are. We can never be grateful enough to Zimbabwean writer Tendai Huchu, whose timely support by gifting us his Nommo Award win smoothed out many of this edition’s rough patches.
Tendai’s support proved to be a great catalyst as it was followed by a grant from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America to run Omenana for one year. What can we say except thank you.
For this edition, as is our style, we are offering diverse themes from writers from across the continent. From mud dolls willed to life by magic, to science fiction that will give you a glimpse of the afterlife in the not too far future, and a young girl in Kenya forced to shoulder the burdens of her people – scapegoat-style. These diverse stories speak of a talent to spin tales that awe, shock, and inspire. These tales, which the African child first caught whiff of sitting by the feet of their mothers, and then repeated blemished versions of to their siblings and peers, these are the ones we set up Omenana to showcase.
Beyond the usual issues of time and manpower, we are ready to continue to offer you the best speculative fiction from writers from Africa and the African Diaspora that we can find. We will produce all the editions planned for 2018, and then we will look to 2019 – and to doing it all over again.
Blaize is a writer and programmer from Kwazulu-natal, now living on the Kapiti Coast in New Zealand. His work has appeared in Nature, Fantastic Stories, and the Kalahari Review, among other venues.
By Blaize M. Kaye
Seven minutes past Garbage Collection. I’m almost late to meet Abbie.
I burst into the library through the swing doors of the main entrance. They slam shut behind me and faces with perfect hair, skin, and teeth look up from their books and streams.
The regulars recognize me and turn their attention back to their words, but a few newbs and drifters watch me run through the reference section, with its rows of long desks and short desk-lamps, until I disappear into the shade of the taller shelves.
Poetry and fiction live here, and here Abbie will be waiting.
At the shelves labelled ‘CAS-CHI’ I slow to a walk, take a single deep breath, and turn into the row.
She’s dressed, as usual, in her red work coveralls. Her dark skin, like all second-classers, is smooth, flawless. Her silver hair is gathered and pinned in a loose bun.
“Where did you get to?” she asks, and closes the book she’s holding.
I never know quite how to answer this question, and so the best I can offer is a weak shrug.
She gives me a look that is part smile, part frown and slides the book back into its slot on the shelf. She runs her long index finger across the shelf’s smooth surface, as if she’s expecting to find dust.
But there can be no dust. They don’t simulate it down here.
Dust is for first class packages.
#
Abbie and I were old once, back when we were real.
I was older than her, by nearly a decade, and I’d always assumed that I would be the first of us to get really sick.
That is not how things played out.
It started with a headache. Abbie had had headaches for as long as I’d known her, so neither of us thought much of it at first. She took her usual cocktail of pills, lay on our bed with the curtains drawn, and waited for the pain to subside.
It didn’t.
Almost a year later, after the diagnosis, radiation, and initial surgeries, I found myself sitting on an old faux leather couch in one of Abbie’s specialists’ waiting rooms. My copy of Bessie Head’s When the Rain Clouds Gather was either somewhere in our apartment or on the back seat of the cab that had dropped us at the doctor’s office.
Cursing myself, I rifled through the stack of old magazines on the waiting room’s coffee table looking for anything to help me pass the time. On offer were tabloids with long forgotten celebrity scandals, and an improbable number of ragged DIY mags gone soft as cloth from repeated readings.
Next to the magazines was a clear perspex stand filled with corporate-sponsored information pamphlets. High gloss A4 pages folded twice and stacked back to back, dealing with everything from early adolescent opioid addiction through to survivor’s guilt.
The one I picked up, though, was a pamphlet with a picture of an older couple, late sixties maybe, sitting under a tree and watching the sun rise.
Make forever a reality, it read.
Cloying, but effective.
#
Eight minutes past Garbage Collection. She’s going to talk about books, and she does.
“Found anything worthwhile?” She asks, assuming I’ve been browsing the library, rather than running through it.
“Not really,” I say. I want to say so much more.
“I was hoping Chabon’s Moonglow would be up by now,” she says.
In second-class they only simulate books whose copyright has expired. Chabon is here though, and has been for decades. Abbie would find it if she looked down at the shelf again.
I’ve shown her once before, but things went badly when she opened the book to the edition notice and saw the dates. Panic and tears. So I leave Chabon on his shelf.
#
I called the number on the brochure. The voice on the other end gave me an address, a date, and a time for our free consultation. On the day, we caught the underground train into Durban central. Abbie took her pain meds and slept, leaning up against the window. I tried to read.
From the station, we caught a bus to a tall building of mirrored glass where we were directed to a small office on one of the lower floors. Here we sat across the table from a young man with a kind face, and a too white, too perfect smile.
“…Electronic Consciousness Preservation, that is ECP, has until now been the sole preserve of the very wealthy, but we’ve developed a product for the broader market,” he said, while a bright presentation played on a screen that took up half the wall behind him. Graphs and tables with kinetic typography and explainers for everything from the uploading process to our return on investment.
“Of course, in order to democratize ECP, we’ve had to make certain concessions,” he said. “It’s like the difference between flying Business and Economy. Sure, those up front have a little more legroom, but we’re all still getting to the same place.”
What was on offer was the “silver package.” An upload option designed specifically for pensioners. Here, in the machine, we call it second class.
The young man, still smiling, slid two piles of contracts, each as thick as a good paperback, across the desk.
“Just sign wherever I’ve put one of those little neon stickies. Accounts will take care of the rest.”
Abbie was always the more detail-oriented of the two of us. A patent lawyer until her 65th birthday, if she had been well she would’ve read every last page. That morning she could barely hold her pen. For my part, I would’ve signed anything at all if it would stop her hurting.
And so we signed.
#
Nine and a half minutes past Garbage Collection. Abbie smooths down the sleeves of her red coveralls. Next, she’ll roll them up. She does.
“They’ve turned up the heat,” she says.
Abbie’s coveralls are one of the “concessions” of the silver package introduced by our ECP provider.
When you’re uploaded and officially declared dead in the real world, all of your possessions–any property, investments, the remainder of your pension funds–are transferred to the upload provider. They reinvest these funds to pay for your server time. But that only covers a fraction of the cost. The rest is paid for by “reclaiming cognitive surplus.”
In other words, inside the machine, you have to get a job.
Abbie now works in Media. Her legal background got her assigned there. For 18 hours a day she would watch video and photo streams from the real world for violations of terms. Copyrighted material on video sharing sites. The merest hint of a female areola on a social network. The appearance of an underage performer on the flesh streams. Children being hurt in hotel rooms. People being hacked to death in basements and abandoned warehouses.
She hated her job.
I tried to remind her that it was better than the alternative. Better than being in the cold ground, or scattered into the ocean. She wasn’t so sure. Now, neither am I.
#
Eleven minutes past Garbage Collection. There’s not much time left and so I step up to Abbie and wrap my arm around her waist.
I lean in and take a deep breath, relishing the scent of her avatar. I’ll give the simulation engineers that, they’ve nailed the sense of smell. Must not be too computationally expensive.
“Weirdo,” she says grinning, and then pushes me away playfully.
“Hah, you’re the weirdo,” I say.
“Forget the library,” she says, “let’s go for a walk before your shift starts.”
“Okay.”
Thirteen minutes past Garbage Collection. We walk hand-in-hand out of the library and into the warmth of the simulated afternoon. A short flight of steps with a silver banister leads from the library’s entrance to the sidewalk. It’s going to happen any moment now.
I give Abbie’s hand one last, tight squeeze and then let go.
I take the stairs three at a time until I’m about halfway down and turn to look back at her.
“I’ll see you soon, Chickadee,” I say.
She gives me a puzzled smile that breaks my heart and then reaches out to put her hand on the banister.
She takes a step towards me, stops, and turns her head as if she’s heard something behind her.
Thirteen minutes, 30 seconds past Garbage Collection. This is as long as she has ever lasted.
The space around her avatar blurs, the light seeming to bend towards her. Abbie shines bright for a moment and disappears silently. In the same instant, she reappears at the top of the staircase. A glitch-skip of about two seconds.
#
Abbie and I had wanted children. I couldn’t have any. Not much more to say about that except that when it’s just the two of you, the whole process from signing the papers to uploading is very quick. Two days after our meeting in the city, men were sent to our flat to catalogue and pack everything we owned. As part of the silver package we were put up in a hotel the night before the procedure. Abbie was feeling better than she had in months, maybe knowing that it would be over soon.
We took a short walk. We ate pasta. We made love.
Yes, we still did that.
The next morning a car picked us up and took us to the squat, beige building that was the clinic just outside the city.
They gave us paper gowns and lay us on gurneys next to one another in the room outside the theatre. Her upload was scheduled first. A young nurse in brown scrubs came to take her into surgery.
“I’ll see you soon, Chickadee,” Abbie said as they rolled her away.
That was the last time I heard her voice. Her real voice, I mean.
#
Thirteen minutes, 34 seconds past Garbage Collection.
Abbie reaches out for the banister, exactly as she did a moment before. She takes her step towards me, stops again, and turns her head.
I search her face for any trace of panic or pain. That I find none there is a cold consolation.
Again the light bends around her, she shines bright, disappears and reappears at the top of the stairs, where she reaches for the banister.
What they tell you when you’re signing your life away, when you’re joining them in “disrupting the afterlife,” is that you’ll never have to worry about dying of natural causes.
Natural.
What they don’t tell you is that uploads on the silver package all run on commodity hardware. You’re not paying for redundancy.
#
The first time Abbie Glitched Out, I wasn’t with her. That’s what we call it in second class, glitching out. An error in the underlying software or hardware running our processes.
I was late to meet her at the library after work. Just a few minutes, but still, I wasn’t with her.
I found her in the library’s lobby surrounded by a small crowd that had gathered to watch her avatar shine bright and glitch-skip through the last few seconds of her consciousness.
She sat alone on a bench, leaning forward with her elbows resting on her knees, her head in her hands. Her silver hair spilled and shifted like liquid metal through and over her fingers as her right leg bounced up and down with a nervous energy.
If not for the flashes of light and the uncanny shift in the position of her leg mid-bounce, I could almost imagine that she was okay, still waiting for me impatiently.
I could almost imagine that she simply hadn’t seen me standing right in front of her.
After a while the crowd lost interest and drifted away and
I stood alone for hours watching her glitch-skipping. Watching those last few seconds of her process being repeated over and over.
Eventually one of the library staff, a middle-aged man with bright blue hair and a gray suit, put his hand on my shoulder.
“Do you know her?” He asked.
“She’s my wife.”
“I’m sorry.” He said. “You should log a ticket with Support. Sometimes they can do something.”
The Support Centre was sympathetic but firm in reminding me that when we took the discounted silver package, we agreed that our consciousness wouldn’t be distributed across multiple machines. They explained that one of the clauses in the “silver addendum” stipulates that in second-class you’re not ever fully backed up. And so, when there’s even a minor failure, even a single corrupt bit in a matrix a million bytes wide, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be coming back.
While they were under no legal obligation, they stressed, they were willing to attempt a process rebuild with what data they had. As Abbie was a valued customer they could attempt to take her apart and reset her to her last known configuration, approximately fourteen minutes before she began to glitch.
I told them to do whatever they could.
They told me our conversation was being recorded for quality and legal purposes.
The reset was scheduled for the next invocation of the Garbage Collector, the process where any unused memory is released back into the system. They calculated the precise location she would respawn, rows CAS-CHI in the poetry and fiction section of the library, which is where I found her, searching for Michael Chabon’s Moonglow. It’s difficult to explain the relief I felt at that first resetting. The feeling of having Abbie back. Thirteen and a half minutes later, however, she bent down to tie the lace on her high, black work boots. She shone bright and bent down to tie her lace again. And again. And again.
I placed a second call to Support, they said they would reset her process. They did, and thirteen and a half minutes after that Garbage Collection, I lost her again.
I can’t remember how many times Abbie has glitched out now. How many times they’ve reset her process. How many times I’ve met her in the library knowing that thirteen and a half minutes later I’m going to have to let her go.
What they tell you when they’re pushing their second rate Electronic Consciousness Preservation plan is that you won’t have to lose your wife to the thing that is slowly but inextricably burrowing into her brain.
What they don’t tell you is that, instead, they’ll give you brand new ways to lose her over and over and over again.
#
Thirteen minutes, fifty five seconds past Garbage Collection.
Abbie’s back at the top of the stairs.
She reaches for the banister.
She takes a step and turns her head.
She shines bright.
Reset.
Repeat.
***
Blaize is a writer and programmer from Kwazulu-natal, now living on the Kapiti Coast in New Zealand. His work has appeared in Nature, Fantastic Stories, and the Kalahari Review, among other venues.
Tariro Ndoro writes poetry and short fiction from Harare, Zimbabwe. Her work has been published in many journals and anthologies, including Afreada, Fireside Fiction,La Shamba and Puerto del Sol. Links to Tariro’s work can be found atwww.tarirondoro.wordpress.com and you can follow her on Twitter (@MissTariN).
By Tariro Ndoro
They say the tears of innocent ones are like prayers that go straight to heaven and do not come back down without answers. Well, heaven probably heard eight-year-old Fara’s prayers on the day her twin brothers, along with some other bored village children, chased her to the stream. The boys carried sticks with which to beat their quarry and the other children ran after the trio, shouting and jeering with varying levels of excitement.
“Fight! Fight, fight, fight,” sang one particular troublemaker.
“Fara!” the boys yelled after her, causing even the birds in the trees to scatter and the field mice to shiver with fear. The rock rabbits and lizards scurried into the safety of the foliage, upset by the pounding of scurrying feet.
#
Fara hides in the reeds as always. Had it been planting season, the boys would have been too tired, too hungry to harass her any further, but this day has been a lazy day, and the boys are hungry for sport.
“She thinks she’s the only one in this village who knows how to swim,” says Jongito, the eldest of the twins, throwing away the rind of a guava he’s been chewing. “I’ll show her, if it’s the last thing I do!”
Fara is afraid. She trembles like the reeds she hides among.
Her heart thumps a steady staccato beat. Fara hears the sound of feet moving in her direction and she submerges one foot in the shallows. She knows that this time of year water snakes can sometimes be found here; she knows too that if her half-brothers set upon her, she’ll go home with bruises all over her body, and no one will say anything that the twins can’t laugh off.
“There, I see her by that patch,” exclaims Dodo, the younger twin by two minutes. Fara trembles, takes a deep breath, then swims to the other side.
#
This part of the river is almost stagnant. Fara swims underwater against the current, so her brothers can’t see her. It was her mother who taught her to swim like this, while her half-sisters sneered.
Fara climbs out on the far side of the river, where she finds clayey mud, and sits under a mupane tree. Across the water, Ilala, the chief’s daughter walks past and the twins follow after her. The twins are old enough now to know that girls aren’t revolting, and although marriage is nowhere near their minds, they still want to impress the girl.
“Say, Ilala, do you want to watch me catch a rabbit?” Dodo calls after her.
“Ahh, Dodo, I didn’t see you there,” Ilala says. “How are you and your brother?”
“We are well – if you are well.”
“Are you fishing in this part of the river? The fish are better upstream, you know.”
“No, we’re not fishing, we are looking for Fara. We were playing hide and seek, you see. Let us escort you to your home. Have you heard about…”
Their voices trail off, and although Fara is certain that they are gone for good, and she’s cold and hungry, she’s afraid to swim back to the other side. She begins to sculpt a doll out of the clay, talking as she does.
“Those were my brothers. You know, they can be really mean. Once they forced me into a shallow well and made me stay there for hours. If it wasn’t for one kind old man passing by, they would have left me there to die.”
It is not odd that she speaks to the doll as she works. It is her way to make dolls out of everything and speak to them. Her mother is sad enough without her adding her worries, for if her brothers are awful to her it is only because their mothers are awful to hers. They simply copy the bad example.
Soon the sun dips low into the horizon and Fara is afraid of being out alone after dark. She weighs her fears: the fear of the water snakes versus the fear of being out after dark until she remembers that further downstream the river is narrower and more shallow, and there are stepping stones to help her walk across.
She is almost home, so close she can see her mother working alone because her sister-wives can’t stand the sight of her.
Usually, the homestead is alive with activity at dusk. Girls work with their mothers to get supper ready while the boys help the young men get the cattle back into their kraals. The delicious scent of roasting meat makes Fara’s mouth water. Yet tonight, instead of the general hum of activity, everyone is standing still and staring at her. Fara looks down at her hands, her feet. She is caked in mud, despite all her efforts to clean herself in the river, but it is not the first time she’s returned home looking unruly.
It is not until her mother, Runako, calls out: “Fara, who is that you have brought with you?” that Fara realises that she has gained a shadow.
#
“Who’s your friend, Fara?” Someone else repeats the question.
One quick glance backward and Fara runs into her mother’s arms in terror.
The thing behind her looks just as she does, except it is heavy and clunky and made of clay, like the doll she had made down by the river. It is the doll she made!
Its eyes are lifeless greyish brown orbs, like the soapstone carvings that Nontrete, the famous village sculptor, makes. But soapstone carvings don’t follow people home.
The creature mimics Fara’s movements, but it is slower than her and it sways as if its body is too heavy for it to carry. Blobs of clay drop off its frame as it moves.
Fara’s heart beats so fast she thinks she’ll die right there.
It is Kamara, Fara’s stepmother, who panics first. She drops the clay pot she was holding and it breaks into shards at her feet.
“Do you see the tokoloshe Runako has made for us?” she calls out.
“She’s finally decided to kill us!” responds Nangai, who is also a wife to Fara’s father. “Aren’t you the one who always teases her, Kamara? You’ll be the first to die!”
Fara’s stepmothers speak in loud voices and upset her mother. She feels guilty for adding this burden to her mother’s shoulders.
“Don’t just stand there and stare, Nangai! She’ll kill us all! Call someone, send for help!”
Munhari, Fara’s father rushes from a neighbouring compound, attracted by the shouts and screams. He stops mid-step when he spots the doll.
“Quick! Dodo, Kono! Call the chief! Call the medicine man,” he cries, galvanising everyone into action.
By the time both the twins return with half the village in their wake, everyone who lives close enough to have heard Nangai and Kamara’s shrieks has gathered around Runako’s hut. Most of the boys are trying to look brave but their mothers are visibly shaking, and many of the toddlers are crying in fear.
By now the sky is a blue-black blanket and the stars are twinkling, the air is filled with the krtss krtss sound of the crickets. Fara and her mother stand before their hut. Fara would like to retreat inside, but the creature has stationed itself in front of the entrance, blocking her path.
“I told you that Runako was a witch. Why else did God close her womb for such a long time?” Kamara asks no one in particular.
Everyone nods in assent. Everyone except Fara and Runako, who stand as still as the creature that followed Fara home. All three of them may as well be statues.
“I tell you, I will not sleep in this compound unless something is done about that, that monstrosity!” Nangai is the first to shout above the sound of everyone’s whispers. Kamara stands behind her, egging her on.
“Since when has such evil been allowed to enter our village? I beg you; beat that Runako until she tells us what black magic this is!”
Kanyauru, an officious busybody with heroic ambitions, tries to pick the creature up, but he is unable. He finds she is heavier than granite. The other brave men of the village strike the doll with whips, sticks, and cudgels. The instruments break, but the river doll remains intact. Porani, the village strongman is summoned. His muscles ripple in his effort to move the creature, but the doll does not budge.
Finally, Shando, the village medicine man arrives. He shuffles to the front of the crowd. He stares at the river doll then nods his head, as though he can see something that everyone else cannot. The wrinkles on his face seem to furrow deeper as, with his instruments and incantations, he concentrates on the task before him. Everyone cranes their neck to watch him at work. By the time he pours the last potion onto the creature’s head, the sun is beginning to rise and the birds in the msasa trees stir, also watching the unfolding drama.
Everyone stills when the medicine man turns and faces the crowd. The gossips and the children, and even the cattle in the kraals wait expectantly.
“I have failed to cleanse this magic,” he proclaims finally, “the creature will have to stay. But if there is any trouble, it will rest on the head of Runako.”
Kamara and Nangai spit in the general direction of the doll, but other than that they can do nothing. The other would-be objectors are too tired to protest, and amble back to their own homes instead, leaving Fara and Runako alone with the river doll. However, Kamara and Nangai decide to stay in their friends’ homestead, and they take their children with them.
Fara thinks of running too, of going to some relative’s home and staying there until the scary doll has gone away, but her grandparents died long before she was born; her mother has few friends and fewer relatives.
Runako sighs and sits in the dust with her head in the hands. Fara thinks she looks like a little girl who wants to cry. She feels bad because, despite all the bad things people have said to Runako, Fara has never seen her crack like this.
“Well, are you hungry?” Runako finally asks Fara.
When Fara shakes her head, Runako nods but this does not ease the frown that has clouded her face since the doll arrived.
#
The sickness begins with the boys, the twins to be exact. Two moons after the arrival of the river doll, they begin to complain that their eyes are gritty and their throats are parched.
Fara watches on as their mother, Kamara, reminds them that it is always hot this time of the year, and that there is nothing to complain about. This doesn’t stop her from walking to the area behind Runako’s hut, where Fara and the river doll are helping Runako to winnow millet , and slapping Runako across the face.
“Whatever witchcraft you’ve concocted, Runako, I will search it out and pay you back,” she says. “You mark my words.”
Kamara always accuses Runako of witchcraft whenever her boys are sick. Fara knows Kamara wishes she was father’s first wife instead of Runako. The only reason her own mother was cast aside was because she couldn’t have children for a long time, and when the heavens finally smiled upon her, all that came was a girl. If Kamara hadn’t given birth to twin sons in her first year of marriage, she wouldn’t be as important as she is now. Fara hopes the twins die.
Soon all the children begin making pilgrimages to the river, carrying gourds, calabashes, clay pots, anything they can gather water with. They drink and drink but their thirst isn’t quenched.
Nanita, a short child of seven years, is the first to say she feels tired all the time, that her limbs are too heavy to carry her. Fara feels bad for Nanita, even though she refused to help her escape from the shallow well her half-brothers once trapped her in. Again, the medicine man is summoned to the village. Again he recites his incantations, and prescribes his potions. But in the end, he throws his hands in the air and shakes his head. He cannot divine this illness.
#
The day of reckoning comes with a cloud of dust. That is how Fara sees it — a whole horde of women walking so resolutely that the dust rises around their feet. They may as well be warriors on their way to battle, except they are wearing colourful wrappers and have only clenched fists in their hands. They gather at the clearing in the middle of Munhari’s compound in front of Runako’s hut, where they find her pounding millet outside. Fara and the river doll watch from underneath the shade of a msasa tree nearby.
A few men from the neighbouring compounds join the commotion and although the men aren’t as vocal as their wives, their anger is etched deeply on their faces. Nangai, who was absent when the rest of the women arrived, now walks toward the front of the crowd with the village medicine man in tow.
Fara is surprised by the fuss. At first, she too was afraid of the creature, but it would follow her everywhere and help her with her chores. The doll would even sit cross-legged next to Fara whenever Runako would tell folktales after supper. This unnerved her at first, but after a while as the doll began to look more like her than an overgrown mud pie, she began to speak to it more and more.
She almost jumped out of her skin when it answered her one day, speaking with a voice that sounded oddly like her own. That’s when she realised the river doll was the only friend she had and she named it Oseja, the same way she had named the other dolls she had made. Now, no one would believe Oseja was once made of clay, at least not by looking at her.
“It is Runako! Runako has bewitched our children. Her own child runs free and plays games while our daughters lie wasting in our arms,” shouts Oga Mahaya, the worst gossip in the village and de facto general of the mob. “Beat her until she spills it all! Beat her, beat her, I say!”
“We will not suffer witchcraft,” agrees Kamara, holding her twins to herself as if that will protect them from the mysterious illness that has beset the other children of the village.
“Runako must pay for this,” says Shuriya, who was once Runako’s closest friend. Fara watches her mother flinch when she hears this. She is used to Kamara’s barbs, but Shuriya has eaten in their hut on more than one occasion.
The village women have started throwing rotten fruit and excrement at Runako, and Fara and Oseja come to her mother’s side. They do their best to hide behind Runako’s wrapper but it is of no use. Stray missiles land on them. Fara’s eyes prickle with angry tears. This is her fault. If she hadn’t made Oseja then no one would have cause to shout at her mother like this. This is worse than all the bullying she’s suffered at her brother’s hands.
Munhari, Fara’s father has heard the commotion and rushes out of his hut. He raises his hands and comes to stand between Runako and the rest of the village. He clears his throat meaningfully before speaking.
“Yes, your concerns are indeed valid, but if we harm the girl, err, the river doll, it will bring dishonour to our village. If Runako is a witch, she cannot undo her curses if she is dead. Let’s call the strongest men to guard the hut then summon the paramount chief to judge the matter.”
The crowd is not easily persuaded.
“You only say that because she is your wife,” Shuriya says. “Do you want your other children to die? It is men like you, Munhari, who allow witchcraft to enter our village.” The village medicine man interjects, “Munhari is right. If the witch is dead, she can’t reverse this illness. We must find another way.”
One scoundrel throws cow dung at Munhari. The missile is swift but inaccurate, landing on the wall of Runako’s hut instead.
“Go inside and wait for me, my children,” Runako whispers to Fara and Oseja.
Silently, the two girls walk into the hut. Fara sits in the darkest part of the hut, her back against the wall, while Oseja sits near the door, watching the unfolding events. Fara can’t see the people outside but she can hear their angry voices as she drifts into a fitful sleep.
#
The next morning is unbearably still, unbearably silent. By the time Fara rises, the sun has travelled far enough in the sky for it to be a hot day. She feels thirsty and weak, then remembers she didn’t have time to eat or drink before falling asleep.
Blood curdles in her stomach as she recalls the shouts from the night before. Some people’s cruelty has no boundaries.
“If Shando is not strong enough to cure our children, he doesn’t deserve to be our medicine man. We must find another,” she remembers Kamara saying.
“Surely, there are men who are not cowards in this kingdom. Was it not Shando who failed us? If he fails again, we shall banish him along with that witch,” Shuriya said.
“Banishment is mercy. Who is to say they won’t bewitch us from wherever they settle?” Oga Mahaya asked. “We must burn them, all three: mother, child, and tokoloshe!”
“Yes!” shouted some people in the crowd but others argued it was too drastic, too cruel. By the time Fara fell asleep, no clear decision had been made.
Fara sits up and notices Oseja is still sitting by the door and looking out toward the outside world. The side of her face that Fara can see is radiant. She looks so pretty that if Fara didn’t know she had been a doll before she would never have guessed it now.
“Where’s Mama?” Fara asks.
Oseja shrugs without turning back to face Fara.
Fara walks toward the door and braces herself for angry villagers throwing all sorts of objects at them and saying horrible things about her mother. The scene she sees instead makes her blood run cold.
The strong men set to guard the front of the hut have turned to clay, like Oseja when she first left the river. Kamara has turned to stone, her hand frozen in the process of throwing an overripe zhanje toward the hut. The zhanje is still ripe and green bottle flies buzz around it. Oga Mahiya’s body is also frozen but her nose is still fleshy and brown and the whites of her eyes move around in anger and accusation. Fara looks back at Oseja and a smile passes between them.
Fara runs through the crowd of frozen people and finds the statues that used to be her brothers. They are completely solidified and she feels even gladder. All the mean people who said cruel words to her mother and her are gone!
“Mama! Mama,” Fara calls, eager to tell her mother the good news, but Runako is nowhere to be found. Again she weaves through the sea of frozen people, taking care not to bump into them lest they fall on her.
She finds her mother behind her father’s hut. Runako and Munhari stand together, holding hands, but when Fara looks closely she realises that their legs have ossified and their faces are ashy.
Fara’s heart pounds in her chest.
“Oseja,” she calls out, “Oseja! What have you done?”
Although she doesn’t hear the river doll’s footsteps, Fara knows she is right there behind her.
The river doll cocks her head to the side. “You want me to save Mama?” she asks.
Fara nods her head vigorously, not taking care to wipe the tears that roll down her face.
“But I will have to turn you,” the doll says, and suddenly Fara has a feeling that Oseja is older than she appears to be.
Fara looks at her mother, who has been laughed at by Munhari’s other wives and never said a word back to them.
“Take me instead,” she says.
“Are you sure?”
Fara nods her head. Her legs begin to feel heavier and her throat is so dry she thinks she’ll die. Fara wants to tell Oseja to stop but then she looks at her mother and reminds herself that big girls aren’t selfish. The last thing she remembers is a fat drop of rain landing between her eyes. She wants to wipe it away but her hands have turned to stone.
#
When she wakes, it is like one of those days when she’s gone to bed feeling tired and awoken with every muscle feeling rested. There is no thirst and no pain. She is in a clearing in the forest, a place she almost recognises but doesn’t remember visiting.
“You’re awake!” Oseja cries happily and the events of the past days rush back to Fara. A cold wave of panic hits her.
“You were supposed to save Mama instead of me! You promised.”
Yet the river doll, now fully human, simply giggles and grabs Fara’s hand.
“Come with me,” she says. She drags Fara as she runs along, weaving through the trees, until they stop at a different clearing. This one is larger and filled with music. Fara sees many people gathered, laughing and happy. People she has never seen before. Oseja drags her into the crowd and points at a beautiful woman in a red wrapper.
“Mama!” Fara cries but Runako doesn’t turn toward her. A younger version of Fara’s father appears beside Runako and embraces her. If Runako looks prettier than she did before, then Munhari looks younger than ever. It is as though many cares have been taken from their shoulders and they are happy again. Fara has never felt this elated.
“Yes, that’s Mama but she can’t hear you.”
“But how?” Fara interjects.
“Your parents were willing to lay down their lives for you and you would lay down your life for them. You were the only selfless ones in the village. Everyone else remained a stone.
“Come,” Oseja says, taking her hand again. “This is a happy place for grownups. We are going somewhere different, where only children can enter.”
Fara is afraid of the unknown but she knows she must be brave, and more importantly, she knows that is ready for whatever lies ahead.
Tariro Ndoro writes poetry and short fiction from Harare, Zimbabwe. Her work has been published in many journals and anthologies, including Afreada, Fireside Fiction,La Shamba and Puerto del Sol. Links to Tariro’s work can be found atwww.tarirondoro.wordpress.com and you can follow her on Twitter (@MissTariN).
Tochi Onyebuchi’s debut fantasy novel, Beasts Made of Night, is a complex labyrinth of a creation. It opens with Taj, an aki, one who eats the sins committed by others and carries their guilt for pay. He is the best in the walled city of Kos and is referred to as both Sky-Fist and Lightbringer.
Taj has been called to the palace to kill and eat an inisisa, a sin-beast that has been drawn out of a sinner’s body by a mage. It is a job that can often overwhelm an aki, especially if they aren’t skilled enough. Escaped sins can attack and even kill people. Their accumulation, on the other hand, attracts the arashi, mythical creatures that can cause total destruction.
Sins, once eaten, form a tattoo of the sin-beast on the aki’s skin. The smaller the sin, the smaller the tattoo. After a while, these tattoos fade away. Taj is different, though; his don’t fade. They remain as prominent as they were on first appearance. Once Taj runs out of skin for tattoos, he is sure that he’ll cross over – a comatose state that is the price of being killed by an inisisa.
Taj’s capacity to eat sin sets him up for manipulation. He’s tricked into service of the king, for example, and Onyebuchi hinges his story on the secret plans, and intricate conspiracies and counter-conspiracies, that Taj finds.
*
Onyebuchi builds a world that, at a glance, can be quite dizzying. The city is run on a capitalist economic system based on the number of sins committed: The purest people rule the city – and the king and his royal family are the purest of them all.
Cleansing a sin is expensive, therefore the poorer one is, the more sins one is likely to carry around, and sin causes illness and even death. In his youth, Taj saw his mother suffer from an illness that would not heal. Getting an aki to eat her sin put the whole family in debt, which Taj is now working to clear while also providing for their living.
In this system, the aki are the lowest in rank; they are feared and despised. Children who are found to have the capacity to become akis are sent away to live with other akis and eat sins for the rest of their lives. However, Onyebuchi shows there are advantages to being an aki. No one wants to touch them, which makes it easy for them to manoeuvre through the city. At one point, a trader swindles a woman by selling her a drug to eradicate an illness that Taj knows needs a sin eater. And because everyone opens the way for akis, fearful of touching them, Taj manages to rob the trader of his money, which he sends home to his parents.
The intricate world Onyebuchi builds comes at a price, though. The dialogue often leaves the reader dissatisfied and some descriptions seem like hyperboles.
“We slap our hands together, and it makes the most satisfying sound in the entire Kingdom of Odo. It’s so good we can’t stop laughing,” Onyebuchi writes in chapter five.
But this does not diminish the story in any way. Onyebuchi’s tale is forward-oriented, moving all the time, and nearly every character has a purpose which they contribute to this motion.
Onyebuchi’s novel is, however, not a completely new invention of the wheel. There are similarities to other fantasy stories. Taj’s moniker, Lightbringer, reminds one of George R. R. Martin’s legendary sword in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. The act of sin eating comes up in Jeremy Crane’s character in Philip Iscove’s TV series, Sleepy Hollow.
Onyebuchi’s Beasts Made of Night also borrows heavily from biblical narratives. The Christian idea of sacrifice, in which animals or plants took the brunt of human sin, has been around since the story of Cain and Abel. The story of Jesus dying for humankind’s sins is at the centre of Christian theology. Akis are sacrifices that take the brunt of human sin. Their fate, like Jesus’, is also to die in the end.
*
At first, reading the book was a little bumpy for me. The writer starts his novel as if in conversation with an old friend, and the first person narration does not make it any better. The immersion into the world of Kos was so abrupt, that for a while, I wondered what aki even were. Even after I learned they were sin eaters, I still wondered what sin eating was. This disorientation is increased by the introduction of other terms. However, as one catches on, like the storyline of a movie they’ve caught in the middle, one can get it as they continue reading.
This book doesn’t end satisfactorily, though. Perhaps this is to set the reader up for a sequel to tie the story up. In her review of the book on NPR, Caitlyn Paxon called it “The beginning of a great saga.”
There will be a sequel, one hopes. There should be a sequel. There must be a sequel.
Sanya Noel lives in Nairobi. He’s an editor at Enkare Review.
Advik Beni is a 19-year-old student at the University of Cape Town . He is in his second year of study. He is studying Screen Production, as well as majoring in English Literary Studies.
By Advik Beni
“It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” (Berger, 1972: 7)
John Berger, writer for the critically-acclaimed television show Ways of Seeing, aims to explain the notion surrounding the way people view art. This statement shows that ‘words’ and the ‘world around us’ have a pivotal relationship. Artistic creations are an interpretation of the world, but still carry with them a sense of truth.
For example, if an artist paints a cat they are creating a subjective and creative interpretation of this cat. When someone buys this painting, they are not buying the tangible cat but the representation of the cat. However, the fact that the consumer sees it as a cat means that it carries an element of truth. This is the same way in which fictional literature manages to comment on real world problems through fantastical constructs.
Berger shows a subtle preference for the visual’s ability to create a lasting interpretation of real world situations, over the written, though this is a whole other debate. But if many people perceive the ‘visual’ as being the more astute portrayal of the real world, then the comic book medium, which merges both literary and visual components into one seamless narrative, becomes even more important to discuss.
Jonathan Gayle states that comic books manage to “reflect the kinetic societal context within which comic books and comic book characters are created.” (White Scripts and Black Supermen, 2011). What Gayle is saying, is that the medium of comic books have a strong link with the real-world situations that it stems from. The comic is a mirror in which the societal circumstances can be understood. Thus, this discussion – by comparing The Black Panther and Kwezi comics – will aim to examine the politics surrounding the black body in comics and, in particular, the way in which these representations have changed.
Kwezi is a South African superhero comic that began in 2014, and has achieved a lot of traction in the South African market due to it being the first representation of a black South African superhero in this format. It follows the story of young boy named Kwezi who attempts to find his purpose as a superhero. As it was created almost 50 years after Black Panther was first introduced, it acts as an ideal candidate to track the way politics of the black body have changed. These politics include the representation of black identities, narrative structures, and the creation of fictional worlds. Black Panther and Kwezi were created at different times in history and in different spaces, therefore comparing them will allow for an analysis of the advancements – if any – of how black bodies and their stories have been presented to the world.
The main facets of these representations that will be discussed will be: the identity of the respective authors of these comics, the worlds the comics take place in, the main characters, and finally, the representation of African elements and traditions.
In economics, when looking at the condition of two countries it is advised to take either a peak or a trough from both countries for comparison – not a peak from one and the trough from another (Mohr, 2015: 411). Since Kwezi is still in still in its ‘inception’ as a comic, it makes sense to compare it to the ‘inception’ comics of The Black Panther series in order to examine how the politics around the representation of black superheroes has progressed over the last 50 years. Thus, Kwezi #1-3 (Mkize, 2014) and Kwezi #4-6 (Mkize, 2016) will be compared against the early days of The Black Panther, specifically the Fantastic Four #52 (Lee, 1966) up to Jungle Action #5 (Thomas, 1973) period.
***
The superhero comic has always been a medium in which the white power fantasy was able to operate on a primary level. This means that stereotypes, especially those pertaining to black bodies, were immortalized in early comics. Until the civil rights movement affected the media in the 1960s and 1970s, the representations of black people in many comics were routinely racist (Wanzo, 2010: 96).
The Black Panther character was created in 1966 when the Civil Rights Movement was gaining significant social awareness, though it emerged from the pen of two white men – Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This creation is what philosopher Frantz Fanon describes in his book Black Skin, White Masks as “The white man justifying the black narrative through a schema of masochism.” (2008: 136) In other words, the creation of Black Panther was merely one example in which the white population was attempting to understand the black narrative by assimilating it.
The introduction of the Black Panther character was a business decision implemented to profit off the black man’s struggle. This was made clear when, for a short spell in the 1970s, T’Challa’s alter ego’s name was changed from the Black Panther to the Black Leopard in order to disassociate the character from the Black Panther group which was gaining traction among primarily Black populaces during the Civil Rights Movement. Whatever noble aspirations that might have been associated with those early days, this act showed a preference for marketing and making money as opposed to making a bold social statement.
However, with the creation of Kwezi we see it is possible to fathom a progression that allows black writers to create a self-narrative with a more contextual and appropriate social commentary. Kwezi was created by a young black artist named Loyise Mkize. The fact that the creation of a ‘black comic’ was done by a black individual is a major advancement. Although many story arcs in ‘black comics’ have now been taken over by black authors, black-created comics are not as common as they should be. This means that the comic features a more socially aware narrative based on lived experience rather than through secondary accounts.
Speaking in a 2015 interview, Mkize said that he wanted his work to represent black excellence and that his audience must “See themselves in the work – as grand, majestic beings worthy of being referred to.” (Mkhwanazi, 2015) This shows an authorship whose priority is not just money. Mkize follows Burkinabe film director Gaston Kobore’s notion that: “If Africa does not acquire the capacity to forge its own gaze, so as to confront its own image, it will lose its point of view and its self-awareness.” (2006: xiv)
***
The next facet to be discussed is the fictional worlds that both The Black Panther and Kwezi are based in – Wakanda and the Gold City, respectively. Interestingly, this is one feature where there is a progression that is not wholly advantageous in the discussion of black bodies in comics. Both Wakanda and the Gold City have integral flaws and strengths in their construction.
Wakanda has two layers. On the peripheral layer it is seen as primitive and undeveloped, but on the inside it is technologically superior, yet still has a strong link to nature. In Mister Fantastic’s first visit to Wakanda he exclaims: “The entire typography and flora are electronically-controlled mechanical apparatus!” (Lee, 1966: 9) The strength of this is that it allows for a perspective of African modernity that does not rely on colonial technologies. However, this platform is fundamentally stereotypical. By construing that Wakandan technology is a mimic of nature, it intensifies the stereotypes of the African body as exotic in being deeply sensitive to nature (Milbury-Steen, 1980: 69).
The stereotype of the ‘exotic’ African landscape that was prominent in early comics is what the Gold City in Kwezi tries to stay away from, but in doing so it produces another flaw. Gold City is a homage to Johannesburg, but many of the aspects that give Johannesburg its character are stripped away. Professor Timothy Wright describes it as a neutralized Afropolitan Johannesburg that manages to circumvent the harsh realities of mine dumps and poverty in order to become a generic urban modernity. One which still casts black people as inheritors of a colonial modernity rather than creators (2017: 7). This leads to the neglect of the post-colonial structures that play a prominent role in forging an African city’s identity.
***
Next is the progression in the development of the main characters – from T’Challa to Kwezi. The late pioneer of new age black comic books, Dwayne McDuffie, had this to say about early black characters in the medium:
“In comics, there are two kinds of people. There’s Shaft and there’s Sidney Poitier. You’re one or the other. You’re either the baddest-ass bad ass who ever badassed or you’re, like, better than white guys. And those are the two things.” (White Scripts and Black Supermen, 2011)
Reginald Hudlin, author of several Black Panther comics, has openly stated that Black Panther’s initial runs fall into the Sidney Poitier trope in which maintaining your dignity through all tribulations was key (White Scripts and Black Supermen, 2011). This was an overcompensation for previous racist stereotypes.
Black Panther’s authors wanted to show that black superheroes could be equal, or even better, in comparison to their white counterparts. However, the Black Panther, in his initial appearance in the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby comics, was predominantly in America fighting for white people. This meant the character was often blindly following a sense of duty to a system of white supremacy. Because of this, the Black Panther of this period was a conflicted character who longed for both Western ideals and his African traditions. (Gordimer, 1973:9) In doing this the character’s creators unknowingly implemented the hyper-masculine and ‘impenetrable black skin’ stereotype upon the Black Panther showing a level of ignorance of the individuality of the black body.
Initially, the Black Panther was merely a friend of the Fantastic Four, whom he helped whenever they were in need. He became a source of improved technology and extra support in battles. It was not until after this initial run that the character helped his own country and people. The Panther essentially became a modern-day servant to the white community.
Kwezi, in the development of its characters, manages to diverge from the stereotype of the ‘Sidney Poitier’ comic book hero, a fact that is demonstrated through the absence of white characters in any of the publications. The character Kwezi begins as a young narcissistic kid with superpowers who morphs into a superhero as the issues progress. Throughout, Kwezi does not seem to have any longing for white ideals.
Kwezi’s creator Mkize seems to focus more squarely on the development of the character’s individual identity – rather than adopting stereotyped black character tropes. This comes down to the fact that Mkize has the lived experience of being a black person. This in itself is progressive because it means that the black identity can be more fully explored. Kwezi is a model of transformative blackness, which entails a black identity that is open to a multiplicity of developmental and transformative possibilities. (Wright, 2017: 10) It creates a narrative into which many Africans can situate themselves, instead of just being passive entities in a white power fantasy.
***
The final point I want to cover in relation to the progressive politics of the black superhero is African traditions. Given that both Kwezi and the Black Panther are from Africa, both their stories include elements of African traditions. However, the early days of The Black Panther do not actually include any purely African elements. This is partly due to the fact that T’Challa is extracted from his world very early in his narrative. The only African elements that are evident in his stories are a sense of monarchy which is shown on a purely superficial level to allow T’Challa to be seen as aristocratically noble – and thus, as a “noble savage” character.
Mkize, on the other hand, attempts to continually weave African traditions and elements into the narrative of Kwezi. He does this through the use of oral traditions as expressed in the Star People, an ancient sect of which Kwezi is a descendent. In Kwezi, the Star People are seen as mythical and of great stature, but nothing much is known about them as of yet. The Star People are based on an oral tale from the Dogon Tribe who believe that their oldest ancestors are embedded within the stars and have ceremonies to honour them every fifty years when these stars are visible. (Parin & Morgenthaler, 1963: 201)
Orality is pivotal in African traditions – with speech, performance, poetry, epigrams, and griots being an integral part of the continent’s means of entertaining, educating, expressing, and experiencing. Thus the inclusion of this in Kwezi makes the comic a distinct modern African piece. (Vambe, 2004: 111) These traditional elements are no longer suppressed, but are now used in order to add a richness and diversity to the narrative of the black superhero comic. The progressive politics at play here work as a means of allowing the African traditions to live on.
***
It is still clear that there has been a huge change in the politics surrounding the black body in comics over the past fifty years. Authors have shifted from white to black, characters have become more complex, and the inclusion of African traditions adds visual and textual depth. The settings may still need work but this just means that no body of text can truly be complete.
In terms of black super hero comics, it is clear there has been a dynamic shift in the politics surrounding representation. Black authors now have much more agency in creating their own identities and stories. Although Black Panther may not have initially been an instigator of this agency, it has managed to progress within its own timeline. From 1966 to the 2000s Black Panther has seen a massive amount of progression, with the introduction of Ta-Nehisi Coates at the helm of the recent run of Black Panther comics to the predominantly black cast and black production of this year’s Black Panther movie.
Following in this tradition, Loyiso Mkize has managed to create a comic book which has managed to add more layers to the discussion of black comics in order to progress a multiplicity of identities relating to the black superhero that had once been overlooked. So, although there has been progression in the new creations of black superheroes, there has also been an equally relevant progression in reinvigorating old creations – which, as a whole, portrays improvement and growth in the politics of black bodies.
Reference List
Armes, R. 2006. Epigraph. In African Filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara. United Kingdom: Edinburgh University Press Ltd.
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Advik Beni is a 19-year-old student at the University of Cape Town. He is in his second year of study. He is studying Screen Production, as well as majoring in English Literary Studies.
Derek Lubangakene is a fiction writer and screenwriter living in Kampala, Uganda.
He is a contributing editor at Deyuafrican.com, an online repository for contemporary African writing.
His work has appeared in River River Literary Journal, Prairie Schooner, The Missing Slate, The Kalahari Review, Lawino Magazine, and the Imagine Africa 500 Anthology, among others. He is currently working on his first novel.
By Derek Lubangakene
When I was eleven, my best friend could kill you with a handshake.
He almost killed me the first time we met. On that fateful day, I was out of class having been caught passing a chit in Mr. Mboyo’s maths test. Given the choice between touching my toes and receiving canes, or getting reported to my mum, the schoolmistress, I chose being reported. I knew my mum would be too busy to punish me if I kept out of sight. I might still get suspended, or have to dig an anthill, or sweep all the classrooms in our block, but all that was nothing compared to Mr. Mboyo caning you.
Mr. Mboyo, afraid of the endless drizzle outside, scribbled a chit and sent me to the admin block. On the way to mum’s office I branched off into the library a.k.a. the computer lab. The 6E kids, busy thumbing keyboards and squinting at computer screens, didn’t pay me any attention as I sneaked behind the wobbly chairs on my way to the stairs at the end of the narrow church-like room. It was a miracle I escaped Mrs. Nadya’s all-seeing gaze. I locked the creaky door behind me, and climbed to the roof.
No teachers ever came to the roof. It overlooked the school farm, and if the wind was strong, it smelled like manure. It was the last place my mum would send a prefect to search for me. You could spend the whole day there and no one would ever bother you. Problem was I was so restless, I always got bored.
I waited for the drizzle to thin before squatting near the edge of the flat roof and shredding Mr. Mboyo’s chit into the rain-swollen gutter.
“What are you doing there?”
Startled, I turned thinking it was a prefect, but it was only the new kid in 6E, Asaf. Everyone called him Safi, like the juice. Yes, he was that brown. Not me, though. I figured if I never called anyone by their nickname they’d have no reason to call me by mine. Dunk, short for Duncan. That’s what everyone called me except for Malik, my arch-nemesis. He called me Dung.
I stood up to sneer at Asaf, but I didn’t realise how much taller he was.
“Mind your business,” I said.
“You’re littering, aren’t you?”
“Well done, Inspector Gadget.” I poked at his Casio DB-55 databank watch, “Are you going to report me? If so, I’ll report you too.”
“What for? I’ve done nothing.”
“For smoking,” I said.
“But I’ve not been smoking,” he said, his voice breaking. Some prefects had keys to the library and often smoked on the roof after class. Prefects were usually older kids, kids who couldn’t come to school unless they’d shaved. Though Asaf wasn’t much older than me, he was tall enough that if I grassed him the teachers would believe me.
“Yes you have.”
“No, I haven’t.” He turned his pockets upside down, and as though synchronised, a paper boat fell from each pocket. He dashed down to pick them, but I got to them first, on account of being shorter. I backed away from him and admired the boats. Well, catamarans. I’d seen many boats, but never a catamaran. The stern was solid while the legs were lighter and made of a brownish paper.
“Did you make these?” I asked. Origami had only recently become fly. Every kid could make a paper frog or paper plane, but I couldn’t even fold a cone. I made my hate of paper-folding public, yet secretly longed to master the skill.
Asaf lunged to grab the catamarans from me. I spun to dodge him, but he hit my shoulder and I dropped both boats into the drain. Asaf chased after them, but the rushing rain chucked them over the roof before he could snatch them. Instead of helping, I stood frozen.
He rose; his eyes twinkling with unshed tears. I leaned over the edge of the roof and saw the boats in the drain below. They looked like butterflies crumpled by a clumsy, sweaty bully.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“Don’t tell me your sorrys. Just leave me alone.” Asaf headed for the stairs.
“Hey Asaf!” I called after him, but he didn’t stop.
I ran after him and grabbed his hand. The way he sent me flying over his shoulders and down the stairs was the baddest jujitsu I’d ever seen; he must have had a black belt in kung-fu. But this was more than kung-fu. An electric current tore through my body like that time I was shocked by the flat-iron. This felt like six flat-irons at the same time.
He ran down and knelt beside me on the landing, murmuring, “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I never meant—”
He gripped my right hand in his, making me shake even more, then my left hand and… I can’t explain it… it was like he absorbed whatever it was he’d zapped me with. I stopped shaking. I remembered to breathe seconds later.
“Please don’t report me. I’m sorry.” He got up and ran away.
The stagnant water on the stairwell soaked through my khakis, though I think I might have wet myself also. I lay there for a while, telling myself what had happened was only a weird, weird dream. I promised myself to steer clear of the new kid… but then I saw Asaf’s watch lying where he’d knelt.
*
I didn’t see him at the weekly P.E. class in the pitch behind the mess hall, or at Friday’s general assembly. I considered keeping the watch, but my curiosity wouldn’t let me. I had to find out how he’d zapped me.
A week later I saw him bobbing across the quadrangle. The bell for end of break had rang, everyone was rushing to class like scattered ants. Asaf stood out in the middle of all those people, like that scene with the lady in red in the Matrix movie. Asaf walked the same way she did, his head down, his movements measured as if he was trying not to be noticed.
I followed him and cornered him around the canteen.
“What’re you doing?” Asaf asked.
“Nothing,” I replied. He looked at me like he was considering zapping me with his eyes… I shifted my body sideways. Narrowed his target.
“Leave me alone then,” he sidestepped me.
I reached for his hand then thought the better of it. “I have your Casio. I picked it. I didn’t… here, take it.”
Asaf stared at me a moment, then held out his hand, palms flat and open. I placed the watch carefully, making sure I did not touch his hand. He pocketed the watch and turned to leave.
“I’ll be at the roof later. If you want to race paper boats,” I said.
“How? There’s no rain today.”
“I know. But I can fetch a bucket of water and—”
“I have extra classes.”
He bounced.
Later that day, right after the bell for the end of extra classes rang, he showed up. He hovered by the roof door as though considering a clean retreat if anything went wrong.
“You came.” I couldn’t hide my excitement.
He shrugged. He walked over and crouched beside me to look at the crumpled comic I was reading.
“You can read if you want,” I said.
“Hmmn, superheroes? Only babies read superheroes.”
He unzipped his bag, pulled out a comic with a dark blue cover. On the front of it was a man who looked like the explorer Sir Samuel Baker holding a long rifle, an Indian man dressed in gold and green silk holding a sharp silver sword, an ape-man, a ghost wearing a suit, and a lady fanning herself.
“What’s that?”
“The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”
“Sounds like superheroes,” I said.
“No. They’re anti-heroes.”
“What are ant-heroes?” Apart from Asterix and TinTin, I never knew non-superhero comics existed.
“You have to read them to understand.”
In the following weeks he would introduce me to Sandman, Akira, Moonshadow, and the Watchmen. Asaf hated superheroes. He didn’t believe in miracles or superheroes, despite being an unlikely example of both.
*
I lived in the teachers’ quarters, a tiny yellow flat barely enough for me, my parents and my twin sisters, Apio and Achen. Asaf and I would spend evenings at my house, reading comics and playing my Nintendo 64 until my dad returned and demanded to watch the news.
Asaf’s house was farther away from school, in the shadowy valley below the Blood Bank. We called it the Valley of Death because every year some hopeless kid would wander into the thick forest there and meet Mzee Polycarp, the ageless farmer who carried a sickle to chop off the head of any lost kid. Or so we were told. It was a stupid myth, but we loved vague things like that. Asaf’s house wasn’t much bigger than mine, but it was just him and his father so there was more space. It was neat, with an underlying Dettol-like scent filling the living room. Asaf assured me it wasn’t iodine or antiseptic. It was fabric softener.
“Ha-ha. Do you have a lot of khakis and corduroys?” I asked the first time I visited.
“No. The humidity is low here.” Asaf explained. “Fabric softener prevents static from clinging onto me.”
Marcus, his photographer dad was a lanky, narrow-eyed man in overalls. He and Asaf looked more like siblings. If he’d been shorter and hatted, he’d be Mario from the Super Mario game. I liked him. The shelves in their living room had more books than the school’s scanty library. They spent their evenings cooped up around desk lamps reading. Comics for Asaf and boring novels for Marcus. Silence was welcome here. Being an only child suited Asaf as much as being a single parent suited Marcus.
I envied Asaf. He didn’t have to deal with my mean, cry-baby sisters.
On their birthday that year they threw a party and invited all the kids from the teachers’ quarters, including Malik. Mum and dad had a late staff meeting and couldn’t be there. On top of that, the electricity went off mid-way, when we’d just cut the cake. Malik used the darkness to pinch half the cake and though he denied this when we lit some candles, he forgot the crumbs were still around his mouth. We sat in a large circle on the carpet, telling stories while waiting for the light to come back, but after thirty minutes Malik and the rest of the kids returned to their flats. It remained just me, Asaf, whom I’d invited against my sister’s wishes, and my disappointed sisters.
The lights returned as soon as the others left, but it kept flickering and we couldn’t put on the TV or radio. This further annoyed my sisters as they were missing their favourite show, Sunset Beach. When the lights stabilised, we’d have to let my sisters watch whatever they wanted, since it was their birthday. It was only eight o’clock, Asaf’s father wouldn’t pick him until nine, and we would rather have died than watch Sunset Beach. So I begged Asaf to perform for them instead.
I made them sit on the sofa then I rubbed one of their birthday balloons in my hair until the static was strong enough. Then I handed it to Asaf. Without touching it, he grabbed the balloon from my hand and raised it towards the ceiling. It danced above us for a long while then floated down into the space between my sisters.
Asaf bowed, rose, stooped to wipe his nose with the bottom of his t-shirt, leaving a dot of blood.
“That’s a stupid magic trick,” my sister Achen said. “You used a string to pull up the balloon.”
I shoved the balloon in their faces. “Show me where the string is?”
They swiped their hands over it but found no thread.
“You cut the thread when you pulled it,” Apio said.
“I didn’t!” I flipped my palms over to show them my hands, “See—”
They shook their heads, refusing to believe me.
“You cheated!” Achen shouted.
“Yes. You got us. We cheated.” Asaf agreed, pulling me away as I tried to argue further. “Good trick though, yes?”
But they looked at him funnily. Like him agreeing with them was fishy.
“What’s that on your nose?” Apio asked.
“Ewww! He’s bleeding,” Achen added.
Asaf wiped his nose again and turned to me. “I think the electricity is stable enough now?”
I nodded, finally catching up. Stupid me. I had forgotten the unwritten superhero rule—keep your superpowers secret. Asaf’s disguise was like Superman’s. He wanted to remain harmless like Clark Kent. Less trouble for him that way.
But like Clark Kent, Asaf’s secret couldn’t remain a secret forever. My sisters told the balloon story to Malik, one of the best science students of his class. At first, he dismissed it, saying it was only static electricity. I wasn’t there, but the way I heard it, my sisters were so firm on Asaf being some kind of Frankenstein that Malik decided he should investigate it himself.
It was all my fault, really. I never should’ve dissed Malik’s bussuu technique. Though he was reigning school champ, I had beaten him before, and felt confident challenging him. In bussuu, your goal is to slap your opponent’s hands until submission. Your opponent places their hands together, then you have to try and slap the back of their hands while they part their hands to make you miss. If you miss, it’s your turn to get slapped and vice versa. Malik’s technique involved pretending to sprinkle salt over your hands and slapping with both hands. Not illegal, but it gave him an advantage; he rarely missed.
And nothing would’ve gone wrong if I hadn’t got a knuckle-breaker from Mr. Mukisa for drawing on the edges of my science textbook earlier that day.
At lunch, Asaf and I showed up behind the canteens for the duel. Malik’s friends had spread word about the whole thing and the back of the canteen looked like a scene from the movie Fight Club. Even my sisters were there.
My hands hurt so much even Malik’s ‘salt sprinkling’ hurt. Malik bussued me, once, twice, three times. On the fourth turn, I threw my hands up.
“You win, Malik. You win!” I said.
“Are you sure? I can go slower, give you a fighting chance,” Malik circled me. Drawing cheers from the mob.
“No. I’m sure.”
“Wait,” Asaf stepped into the circle. “I’ll take his place.”
I tried to push Asaf back into the crowd, but he refused.
“Aahhh, let him bussuu!” chorused the mob. These kids had skipped lunch to watch this. They wanted to see some epic bussuu, not my weaselly surrender.
Malik bussued Asaf at least two dozen times but Asaf refused to surrender. When Malik finally missed, I begged Asaf to let his turn go, knowing what would happen should he bussuu Malik. But Malik was confident Asaf would miss on his first try, he insisted that Asaf go ahead.
“Take off the gloves, though,” Malik said.
Asaf hesitated, but finally slipped them off, handing them to me.
Then Asaf bussuued Malik, and Malik flew five feet into the mob.
Asaf stared at his hands with a fixed, blank look, then at Malik who was lying on the ground, shaking.
I rushed to his side and pushed him. “Go! Go away before someone reports,” I whispered loudly. He snatched his gloves and ran towards the dining hall, the mob parting easily for him.
After school, I went to Asaf’s house, but he wasn’t there. Neither was his dad. I returned home to find my dad waiting for me, ready to tell me I couldn’t be friends with that ‘dangerous fellow’ anymore. He made me go down to Malik’s flat just one floor below ours, to apologise.
Malik appeared to take my apology graciously, but when his mum wasn’t looking, he ran his thumb across his throat like the wrestler The Undertaker would right before he annihilated you with his Tombstone Piledriver.
The next day in Ms. Hadiya’s Home Economics class, Asaf faked nausea and left early. Mrs. Hadiya tried to pair me with Jemima and Nambi, but they’d heard about the Malik incident and didn’t want to be paired with a trouble-magnet like me. Baking alone was torture. My cake came out runny. Like thick porridge.
At break, I went up to the library roof, where I found Asaf making an origami something.
I sat beside him, “Hmmn, what’s that supposed to be?”
Asaf shrugged.
“At least it’s not as ugly as the cake I baked. Thank you very much bytheway.”
“I’m worried for Malik. I don’t know what I should do,” Asaf said.
“He’s okay. He’s a tough bastard that one.”
Asaf screwed up his face. “Maybe I should go apologise.”
“For what? They’ll probably think you’re crazy and call your dad, and suspend you for lying. Just forget it. In fact, we should be feeling sorry for ourselves. Malik is going to repay this. Trust me.”
And repay he did. He began calling Asaf El Zappa, and it spread like flu. He drew cartoons of Asaf— hair radiating from his head in fluffy spokes, eyes bulged out, with sparking hulking hands—and plant them all over the notice boards and toilet cubicles. Once he painted a pair of hands on the monkey bars and refused to let any kids play there, saying they were Asaf’s and anyone who played there would get some of his residual current.
I tried to get Malik to stop. I lent him my Nintendo, but he burned the shape of a hand around one of the pads.
“Don’t blame me, I found it like that,” he said when he returned it to me. “That’s what you get for letting El Zappa play with your things.”
I should’ve grassed him then, but the pad still worked, and Asaf begged me to drop it. Though Asaf never spoke about it, I knew he was suffering. Something in him seemed to have evaporated.
One day, Asaf, frustrated that this wasn’t ending, tried to pluck the latest drawings from the notice board but the paper clung to his hand. His rage had created an adamantine bond with the paper, despite his gloves. He swung and swung and swung, but the paper held on like gum. Malik and friends gathered around laughing.
“Don’t mind them,” I put my hand over Asaf’s shoulder. “They’re just jealous.”
Asaf shrugged my hand away. “Why do you care?”
“You’re my friend, that’s what friends do.”
“I didn’t ask you to be my friend.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you want so much to be my friend, Duncan?”
“Because…”
My mind went static, like the chewed part of a VHS tape.
“Just leave me alone.” Asaf walked away, still flapping his hand.
The next day there was another drawing, and the day after that. But they were all the same. Asaf zapping this, zapping that. Me in the background looking confused. It soon got old. In the meantime, Asaf wouldn’t talk to me, though we still had Home Economics class together. He’d do the work and leave. I’d go up to the roof and wait and wait, and Asaf would never show up.
A week later, at inter-house football semis, Malik kicked the football straight into Asaf’s face. Asaf had been standing on the sidelines, not even part of the game. Seeing him fold onto the pitch, his nose bleeding I rushed onto the pitch and punched Malik who had started walking away like nothing was wrong. Malik punched back. We scrapped like ruthless tomcats—scratching, hissing, cussing. It took the ref, my dad, separating us before I let go of Malik’s collar.
Malik’s mum and my mum sat us down in my mum’s office and tried to resolve the situation, but neither of us would grass on the other. In the end, my mum confiscated my Nintendo, and made both Malik and I sweep all five sections of our class for two weeks.
We left our mums in the office and as soon as we were outside I turned towards the sick bay. Asaf had been taken there with a bleeding, possibly broken, nose.
The nurse had just discharged Asaf when I walked into the sick bay’s lemon-coloured waiting area. He walked with his head bent upwards, pressing a cloth to his nose.
“What do you want?” Asaf scowled upon seeing me.
“Are you alright?”
“My nose isn’t broken. My pride though, that’s another story.”
“Didn’t know you had any pride to break,” I said, smiling.
He smiled back, then winced as his nose still hurt.
“At least tell me that bastard got suspended.”
“No.”
“You made it worse didn’t you?”
“Not worse. Just not better.”
“You shouldn’t have got involved then.”
“I was helping you.”
“Duncan, your help always brings trouble. Just don’t help me anymore. I have a plan.”
*
Malik and I didn’t fight, or talk as we swept the five classrooms that evening. I kept glancing at the doorway expecting Asaf to show up. But he didn’t. Nor did he come to school the next two days. At General Assembly that Friday, my mum announced Asaf was sick and wouldn’t be in school until Tuesday the next week. I grilled her about it at home but she knew only what she’d said, what Marcus had told her over the phone.
In Asaf’s absence, the drawings finally stopped.
Asaf showed up not Tuesday, but Wednesday. In Home Economics class we baked mermaid-shaped cookies. Ours had the best shape and Mrs. Hadiya made everyone clap for us.
“Keep it up and I’ll enter your names for the PTA gala competition,” she said.
“This is even better than my plan,” Asaf whispered.
“What plan?”
“My– our plan to defeat our nemesis.”
Malik had registered for the competition weeks ago. He was so sure of himself he didn’t mind showing everyone the scooter he’d be competing with. He’d made it from scrap. He’d come second in the previous year’s gala and won a Sony Discman. I was third and won a certificate. I hadn’t bothered to register for the gala this year. I didn’t have the energy to compete with Malik, even though the prize would be bigger. A BMX bike. I had already given up.
But Asaf wasn’t going to give up. We took Mrs. Hadiya’s advice and registered a joint project for the gala.
“What happens if we win?” I asked. Wondering how we’d share the prize bike.
“Beating Malik is the only prize I want,” Asaf replied.
“How are going to beat him?”
“Origami. It’s the one thing he can’t do.”
And so started our quest to make the perfect origami.
*
We spent our afternoons seated on the roof, despite the scanty shade, fiddling with papers, only stopping when the sky turned from the colour of a fresh wound to a blackened scab.
Asaf and I spent forever sketching, mapping and fidgeting with foil-backed paper and tissue foil. We perfected valley folds, reverse folds, squash folds, crimp heads, fold flaps, pleats. Asaf was obsessed with the idea of perfection, so we worked on each piece until it was as close to perfect as possible. Perfect catamarans, a perfect Titanic, perfect dragonflies. But nothing was quite good enough for Asaf.
Finally, while seated on the roof one late afternoon, a butterfly floated above us. It was unusual for a butterfly to soar that high. In that Asaf found the idea for his perfect origami. A floating angel. Making angels in origami was easy, but an angel that floated on its own – that was insane.
“How are you going to flap its wings? With strings?” I mocked.
He paused from his sketching, said, “You can either help me create something amazing or spend the rest of your life getting laughed at by Malik.”
I felt small with that statement, but he was right. Malik and I could trade blows every day of term but making this perfect origami would show the whole school what a talentless bully he really was; it would surely annihilate him. I agreed to help, but the way Asaf worked, I couldn’t keep up. He was like a mad scientist, like he had a deadline to beat, even though the PTA gala was six weeks away. Though his nose-bleeds and dizzy spells worsened, he wouldn’t stop. He worked harder after each failure.
“You don’t even believe in miracles, why are you trying to be God?”
It was one of those times I asked Asaf a question and immediately regretted it.
“My dad believes he will be God once he takes that perfect photograph. I am not trying to be God; I’m just trying to be better than my dad.
“Besides, you have to break an egg to make an omelette,” he said, quoting Ms. Hadiya.
“Not if you end up breaking the hen that lays the egg,” I said.
We spent a lot of time test-flying origami angels, and watching them crash. We modelled a mini-engine from the motor of a handy fan. But the angels couldn’t hold the weight of the motor or its batteries.
It was hopeless. As the days progressed the light in his eyes dimmed, he looked pale, like something ate at his stomach. Every time I asked if he was okay, he’d shrug and say: “Okay enough.”
In the meantime, Malik spent every break showing off his scooter. Asaf and I would watch from the roof as he charged kids five hundred shillings to ride it from the monkey bars until the end of the parking lot. The line was so long some kids would always end up fighting. I liked this, wishing some kid would mistakenly break the scooter. That never happened though.
One afternoon, after spending hours folding and fiddling with paper by the edge of the roof, Asaf started feeling dizzy. As we rose to go sit under the shade, Asaf lost his balance and fell backwards into the overflowing rubbish bins below. I knelt over the edge and saw him in the rubbish, unmoving. I called out his name but he didn’t respond. I rushed down and dragged him out of the rubbish then lay him on the veranda. Like in the movies, I slapped his face until he awoke.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“What happened? Where am I?” he asked, touching his cheek.
I explained what had happened.
“Stop lying,” he said. “I don’t even feel anything.”
His nose was bleeding though. And it wouldn’t stop. Usually it was just one or two drops which he’d wipe easily. This one kept on coming. Drop after drop after drop.
I braced him on my shoulders and we shuffled to the sick bay. The nurse made Asaf hang his head back and raise his feet, But the bleeding continued. After several minutes of this, she called my mum and they organised the school van to drive Asaf to St. Claire’s Hospital. Before we left, my mum called Asaf’s father and asked him to meet us there.
Marcus arrived like ten minutes after we got to St. Claire’s and a nurse took him in to see Asaf. My mum and I waited in the waiting area for another two hours before Marcus returned. He walked into the waiting area like a zombie. I’d never seen sadness like that. Not even in movies. He looked like his face was going to melt right off his skin. He didn’t even notice us.
I tapped Marcus’ arm. “Is he going to be alright?”
Marcus stared at me like didn’t know who I was. Then he shook his head. “A candle that burns twice as bright…”
Marcus sat in between us and buried his face in his palms. He didn’t cry or say anything after that. My mum put a hand on his shoulder and kept it there a long while. I wanted to do the same, but it seemed such an adult thing to do. I waited until both my mum and Marcus fell asleep, then I sneaked around the corridor opening the doors to different rooms until I found Asaf’s.
Asaf lay propped up on his bed, staring at the machines beside him. When he saw me come in, he smiled a weak, tired smile.
I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder.
“You’re going to get better, yes?”
He nodded, but wasn’t convincing,
I squeezed his shoulder, “This is bad, isn’t it—”
“Not as bad as you think…” Again, that weak, tired smile.
I pulled the visitor’s chair closer and sat down.
Despite looking and feeling so weak, Asaf wouldn’t give up on his origami angel; he believed we’d finish it in time for the PTA gala. He talked about what was missing and what we needed to do to make it work. He went on and on, not once would he talk about his sickness.
Over the next few days, we worked from his bed; he would prop a million pillows behind his back and use the floor as our scrapyard. Because he couldn’t work as hard as he had before, I had to be more involved. Problem was, he was the one with the master plan, and the coordinated fingers to make all that paper folding work. My crab hands were as useless as a pistol to Superman.
As Asaf’s health didn’t seem to be improving, mum volunteered to bring some kids from school to cheer him up. A bad idea. But once mum has got something into her head, good luck stopping her. The kids, including Malik and my sisters, came to the hospital with get-well-soon cards and balloons. Malik apologised and offered Asaf a go-around on his scooter. Asaf, in turn, made some balloons levitate and they all clapped and cheered. But after they had all gone he turned on me.
“Why did you invite that bastard here?” Asaf shouted.
“Who? Malik? He’s okay. He came as a—”
“I don’t care what he is. He came here to spy on our project, can’t you see that?”
“Can you shut up about the stupid origami for once. It’s not everything, you know.”
“How can you say that? Of course it’s everything. It’s our chance to beat that bastard and shut him up forever.”
“That’s not important anymore. I just want to see you better. That’s all I want.”
“You don’t believe I can do this, do you?”
“What? Asaf, come on—”
“Answer me!”
“No, I don’t. Not if doing it will also mean killing you. Malik can win the bike; I don’t care—”
“Get out.”
“Come on, Asaf.”
“Leave me alone! Go and never come back, traitor!”
*
For the PTA gala, I made a collection of origami Mortal Kombat characters, I even painted them… no one was impressed, least of all myself. Malik won first place. I didn’t even win a certificate.
Though I had stopped going to see Asaf, I thought of him often. So when father came home one afternoon and said he’d received a call from Asaf’s nurse in the hospital saying he’d requested to see me, I expected the worst.
I raced to St. Claire’s, panicking. I found him laying on his bed watching TV. Asaf had always been a skinny, half-starved looking boy, but with all the pillows propped around him, he suddenly looked fattish and bloated.
He saw me, smiled and waved me closer. “I think I’ve cracked the origami angel.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He whispered, “Take me to the roof and I’ll show you.”
The nurses were used to me staying over late, so they didn’t mind me sleeping over. When it got dark and the hospital slept, we placed some pillows under his sheets and snuck out using the service entrance. It was a long climb, but arm in arm we made it to the cold, dark roof. We sat on the edge and listened to the silence for a long while. When he was ready, Asaf got to his feet and stood, swaying in the dark, staring at the empty sky. He pulled out the origami angel from his pyjamas, and cupped it with both hands.
Asaf opened his palms and conducted its levitation using his left hand, like a puppeteer.
And it flew. It actually flew. It wobbled and kicked its little invisible legs, but up it went. It flew higher and higher, flapping its long majestic wings. Each inch it floated strained him like kryptonite, but he kept the bond with the angel strong.
It was beautiful and scary. I wished it wouldn’t end.
Finally, Asaf let it go. We sat down, and watched the pale stars as if our angel had drifted that far and was looking over us, though we knew it had fallen somewhere down in the parking below. We didn’t speak. Had we created the perfect origami? Had we tried to become God and passed? I don’t know. But what we’d done was unreal. Magical. Something beyond us.
We returned to his room. Though he was weak, Asaf was overjoyed. He wouldn’t stop smiling. He held my hand and didn’t let go. I slept in the visitor’s chair.
The morning after, I walked out into the parking lot and spent the whole day searching for the angel, but I couldn’t find it.
Asaf—Killer-Handshake, Dark Thunder, the Boy God—my best friend, didn’t make it past Christmas that year.
I choose to believe our origami angel floated up to heaven and didn’t come back. The same way I believe that somewhere in the skies above Asaf is forever looking down on me. Forever reminding me I don’t need superpowers to make the impossible happen. I just have to believe, like I had believed in him.
Derek Lubangakene is a fiction writer and screenwriter living in Kampala, Uganda. He is a contributing editor at Deyuafrican.com, an online repository for contemporary African writing. His work has appeared in River River Literary Journal, Prairie Schooner, The Missing Slate, The Kalahari Review, Lawino Magazine, and the Imagine Africa 500 Anthology, among others. He is currently working on his first novel.
Ray Mwihaki, also known as Rachel, is a creative humanoid creature who lives on the outskirts of Nairobi. She spends her time reading children’s books and other books, writing and making crafts, dreaming and cooking. Her work is driven by passion and the quest for a quiet, sane life. Her stories and poetry have been published in small publications, her plays have been staged and her films have been watched by few. She hopes that will change.
By Ray Mwihaki
It rained worms in the fifth year after the springs coughed their last. That morning, the entire village of Kiawamagira – women, children, men, and shapeshifters – prepared to go up the hill to the last mugumo tree to pray to the God of Kuyu and Umi. Each season, we would make a sacrifice at the tree to try to entice the clouds to come over the village in the valley. But season after season, the rains would pass our village by.
It was not wet but it was not dry either. The pipes that joined Kiawamagira to the water board grid 286 years after Nairobi had been connected, still coughed water and were the pride of every home. But for a failing farming community like ours, the water was no salvation. The yellowing plants mocked us. The sight of thinning cattle taunted us. And no matter how much we boiled the pipe-borne water, our teeth continued to turn brown.
We had come to believe that the failing rains were the reason the soil had started to kill most of what we tried to plant, the reason the village could not grow and the reason we could not leave. The ones who tried to leave would be struck by great misfortune and would have to return and live in squalor.
And the ones who were enchanted by the beauty of the valley and came to live there? Their fate would be sealed once they broke the ground they settled on. They would become one with the valley and all their deeds and misdeeds would carry the curse of Kiawamagira.
But Maahinda, the eldest son of the village, had promised that all this would soon be over. We just had to wait for a sign, go up the hill to where the decree was made by his grandfather, my great-grandfather, and unravel the net that his words had woven around us.
On that morning, the morning of the cursed shower, we buried our cell phones in a pit near the old spring, shaved our heads, and bound our necks with belts. We dug up the remains of our father’s fathers and stitched a bit of what was left on the collars of our everyday shirts.
I felt a shiver as daddy roughly stitched a patch of my great-grandfather’s rotting tweed jacket onto my tattered brownie uniform. I stared into daddy’s eyes and imagined what my great-grandfather must have looked like. I knew he must have been tall, but I doubted I would see the red rage that stared at me from the depths of daddy’s eyes.
That evening, there was a feast in every home, including ours. Mami had slaughtered and grilled our fattest bull. She spiced the carcass with lemon and garlic, and a bitter herb that was meant to keep us from getting too full too quickly.
“Where did you find spinach, Mami?” I asked. She always told me a story as I ate my dinner. It brought colour to the meal and I could almost taste what food must have tasted like when Kiawamagira was green and rivers flowed through it. I would feel the warmth of the bonfire that led lost travelers home. Though I had never seen strangers welcomed the way they were in Mami’s stories, I hoped I would see it someday.
“Eat your vegetables, Kui,” Mami whispered as she threw a worried glance in the direction of daddy who sat in a corner of the room, “and be grateful to Umi that you have green on your plate. Do you know how many people are starving in this village? Some only have the marrow from their cows to eat.”
“The girl asked a simple question.” Daddy’s rugged voice rose from the shadows cast by the peeling Cowboy cartons nailed to the mabati. “Tell me. Me, I want to know if you have been singing that silly song to the food. Poisoning me. Poisoning the girl with your tall tales.”
“Your daughter needs to know the laws of this land. If singing your father’s decree will keep us from starving and save this village for Kui’s children, I shall sing at the top of my lungs!”
“Where do you think telling her these things will get her?”
“They will keep her alive. They will teach her how to save this village. She is the only child left in your forefather’s lineage. You and I both know the long and short of those tales. We were there when it all began. She needs to know where we started to go wrong.”
“Nonsense! We are in the modern age! We have piped water and people wanting to buy our land. Don’t start to reason with your heart like Baba Njoki and his people. He wanted to give strangers our land. He wanted us to share the little that we have. Use your head! We need money to survive. We can’t go giving away our birthright to every beggar who comes our way!”
“We have always had plenty. We could always share. Even now when the curse…”
“The curse, eh?” Daddy sneered. “What about it, woman?”
“I am afraid.”
“Of what? A tree and a few words? What can it do?”
“Kill us. Like it killed Baba Njoki. Hanging by his belt, suspended on nothing but air.”
The laughter that released itself from my father’s throat cut the silence of the night like dawn cuts the darkness.
“The tree did nothing to him! You don’t even know the half of it. Baba Njoki was weak.”
“You also died that day. You are not the man I knew.”
“Eh, do I look dead to you?” He thumped his chest. “I am strong. I came back stronger the day Baba Njoki hanged.”
“Na uria nda gaya,
Mundu ona uriko
Ndakanagerie
Gutunyana kana kuuragana…”
“Weh, you girl! Don’t sing that song in this house!” Daddy kicked the table so hard the food flew and landed close to my chair. I slid under the table, grabbed a piece of meat from the floor and tore into it.
***
“As I have divided
Let no one
Try
To steal, to kill,
The matter is sealed
Before the god of Uyu and Umi
If anyone comes
To seek a home or food
Give, share
You with plenty
And this clan shall thrive…”
“…Whoever goes against this word, shall die
Even if they repent
For wherever there is no light,
No growth shall be
Kill him
Let their lineage disappear
And, Kiawamagira thrive and live forever!
That is my decree
And so shall it be, by God.”
Mami’s voice danced with the sound of the howling trees, lulling me in spite of the cutting words of caution that the song carried. She had sung my great-grandfather’s decree every night for as long as I could remember. Sometimes, she would tell me the story of the first trip they made up the hill to the mugumo tree.
“Where your guka’s father was, God was,” she whispered as she tucked the blanket under my shoulder. “That time, Kui, that first time we went up with him, we were sure one of us would die. I had heard the stories from before we came here. Stories of how the mugumo tree would kill anyone who had stolen or murdered, or refused to share their bountiful produce. But that year, we all came back alive. Until the time we went up without him.”
I had found love for my great-grandfather in the way she mimicked his voice. Her big brown eyes glowed against the flame of the pressure lamp. Her cheeks filled up as her lips curved into a smile.
“Is that when he left us?” I asked
She nodded. “And the rains left us too…”
“And the springs dried. And It came to take the small and beautiful. Now we wait for our forefathers to call for us, we wait to hear our punishment,” I concluded, knowing the tale all too well.
“That’s also the year you were born. Five years ago tomorrow.”
I drifted off to sleep with the image of a lush, green valley spotted with grazing cattle and fruits of every kind. I imagined my great-grandfather standing tall in the beautiful wilderness that had been his inheritance and the stories that must have nestled his dimples, the same ones that he had left behind on our faces.
***
Early the next morning, before the first light, we made our way to the old mugumo tree that rose majestically at the centre of Maahinda’s farm, at the highest point of the village where Kiawamagira’s 8-mile road kissed the railway. Its leaves hummed the song of lost causes and its trunk cast a shadow across our path as we walked up the hill. Maahinda, my father, and the three village elders marched ahead, leaving a space where Baba Njoki should have been. Their wives and children followed, and the rest of the village trailed behind.
The branches shook violently against the wind as Maahinda touched his head to the last cut he had made on its bark. One by one, all the elders lay their heads against the foot of the tree and we circled around them.
We waited for the belts around our necks to be pulled taut against our delicate skin. We waited for branches to fall and seal the fate of entire families. We waited for our fathers’ forefathers to wake. We waited for God to speak. We waited, until a rag doll with twelve red stitches, some sewn between its legs, others around its chest and some still on its head, fell on my head.
“The word has been spoken,” Maahinda announced. “Go back to your homes. Kui shall save us all.”
I stood transfixed under the mugumo tree, staring at the rag doll, wondering if I should pick it up and sing to it the songs Mami sang to me. I crouched beside it and gently caressed it. I felt a sharp pinch between my legs when I touched the set of stitches between its legs. Everything went quiet. Until the edge of Mama Njoki’s Women’s Guild wrapper touched my arm and suddenly, I was up in the branches of the mugumo tree, soaking wet. I saw my father, Maahinda, and Baba Njoki sitting by a stream that stemmed from the tree. I tried to scream for them to let me down but, like the rag doll, I had no mouth.
***
“I have no children left, my brothers,” Maahinda began. “No wife, no parents, only you and this land, the pride of our grandfather who has joined our ancestors. It is our time now. Let’s get our land back from the squatters and these women who bear you no men.”
My father’s face lit up. “Heh, imagine the money we can get, Baba Njoki. We won’t need to rely on the rain for food. We can buy it from the peasants!”
Baba Njoki glared at the two men. “These people have done nothing to us, Maahinda. As for wives and children, we are blessed by God and truly, I have no interest in taking any more than I already have.”
“Baba Njoki, everyone knows that Njoki isn’t yours.” Maahinda sneered. “She came with that woman who hasn’t given you a child in all the years you have been married. Now you want them to inherit what was meant to be for our lineage without paying a cent?”
“When I married her, Njoki became my daughter – my flesh and blood.”
“Eh, so you think I cannot make a wife out of her?” My father laughed. “You can’t tell me you don’t see how her hips are filling up and those nyonyos poking through her shirt. If I could even have one day with her, I would save the juices of her youth and sip from them forever. “
“Over my dead body!”
“That can be arranged,” Maahinda retorted. “Baba Njoki, you need to accept that Njoki is not our blood. She is fair game. If you shall not let us take back the land we have shared with the squatters, then at least let your brother have some fun with her.”
“The words of our grandfather are more important than a few extra coins. I shall not be party to this!” Baba Njoki rose from the rock he was sitting on and headed down the hill.
Maahinda turned to my father. “What if I told you that if you strike the mugumo tree with this axe, you can have Njoki after the ceremony tomorrow?”
“Give me the axe,” said father.
When I came back to my body, it had been a day since the ritual. Mama Njoki was between my raised legs. Her face was pale and her eyes but a slit.
I wailed for my mother and pleaded with her to stop, but she did not look up from the tender bit of my flesh that she was sewing. As she made each agonizing stitch, the clouds drew closer. And with each feeble wail I let out, they grew heavier. When she was done, she let out a scream that shook the earth under me and rolled me down the hill, limp.
* * *
They walked in excited steps on the beaten path, careful not to step in the puddles of water. Aimless banter flying from one’s lips to the other’s ears. They filled the silence the birds had left with the laughter and the eagerness of youth. They sat down by the seasonal stream, next to the lone mabati house, their Palito radio squeaking some reggae tune. Muthoni tried to sing along but seemed to be singing a different song altogether. Njambi stood and shook her behind, grabbing her hair in reckless abandon.
I watched them from the hole in the mabati wall. I knew It was coming. I could smell it. The same scent had hung in the air when Mama Njoki was between my legs those many years ago. It was also the same scent in my dreams.
Everything I had seen in my dreams was happening in real life: for days the sun had scorched the plants, then the rains had flooded the road, killing two cows and leaving pools of murky water everywhere. Now, it was time for It to come for the young and vibrant. The ones whose youth spoke to the earth and calmed the storm that threatened to rise. They were the perfect target. At the wrong place, at exactly the right time. They fit the last piece of the puzzle perfectly. I felt the butterflies fluttering in my belly.
“One…”
I heard a growl above the music and laughter, I was sure of it. I subconsciously touched the scar where my left ear had been; I could feel warm fluid ooze out of it. It was close.
“Two…”
Every five years, It came to take a share of the succulent, unadulterated beauty of the village. And each time, I would get twelve stitches. I no longer remember the pain, but the visions that came in those moments remained. Now, I was one scar shy of saving the village, of “Welcoming the new age of development,” as Maahinda said.
“Three…”
We had all come to terms with it. After all, it was a small sacrifice for the bountiful harvests that came right after. We knew when It would come calling and made sure to stay off Its path. Someone had failed to warn these two, or maybe they had chosen to ignore the warning. They were playing peak-a-boo with the devil and the ‘boo’ was not too far off…
I always wanted to be as beautiful as Muthoni and as flexible as Njambi. I imagined myself in Muthoni’s curvy ebony body, her luscious lips on my round brown face, and her leggy form gyrating to the tunes of a famous artiste. But I knew it would never be. I thought to warn them, but I needed to see It. To see that it wasn’t just a dream, something that shook the core of my being in fear. I needed proof.
“Four…”
Its scent hung heavy in the air, putrid like the rotting carcass of a dead dog by the roadside. The butterflies in my belly fluttered with intent, as if they wanted to escape through my throat and witness it for themselves. They choked me. My eyes glistened.
I blinked.
“Five…”
I stood there watching Its shadow come over the girls like a blanket. It was dark, human-like. It moved purposefully above the unsuspecting beauties. Grunting and puffing above the reggae tunes being coughed out by the Palito. Then the screams began and I could no longer hold the butterflies back. I released the cloud of flying colour and grace just as It descended.
In my head, an assault of images from the day after I was chosen descended like boulders.
A woman in a Women’s Guild headwrap ripped out souls from the wombs of women whose husbands had licked her juices. I saw my father dance with the young beauties of the village, drawing their spirits out as they gyrated to the rhythm of the crickets by the stream. He pulped those spirits and drank their youth.
Njoki. Njoki hadtried to escape his snare but his cloud had descended upon her with the same fury I always saw in his eyes.The glee on his face as he buriedNjoki’spulp in the pavement outside Number 28,KijabeStreet, burned like an eclipse in my psyche.
I blinked.
They were gone. The girls, the images, the butterflies. The stream had turned pink. It was beautiful. I stepped out to take in the newly cleansed village, and there my father was.
It.
****
“Mami, let’s get away from here.”
Mami got into bed with me, as she did every night after It had come. “And go where?”
“Let’s go to the city.”
“What would we be doing in Nairobi?”
“Don’t you ever want to see the development that Uncle Maahinda and da-” I sighed, unable to speak his name. Dusk had turned to night since It had come, and rage continued to eat a hole in my gut. I could not eat, no matter how much my mother pleaded with me. I could not believe that a great man like my great-grandfather could have borne the same blood as Maahinda and my father. “I’d like to see what they are on about.”
“Kui, this is the only home I have ever known and you know what happens to people who leave. It’s too big a risk.”
“Mami, remember the day I was chosen?”
She blew out the candle. “How could I forget, Kui?” I heard the tremor in her voice. “Every time after that, you have had to pay the price for our rain.”
“I have had it better than those It has taken.”
The room fell silent. My mother’s body stiffened. Her sobs shook the bed.
“I shall not be here when Mama Njoki comes calling again.” I continued.
Mami fiddled with the leso that she had wrapped around her waist, knocking into me as she did it. I cried out in pain.
“Shh… take this. This will get you to the city.” Mami pulled my hand towards her and pressed a bundle wrapped in a handkerchief into it. “Leave now and wait by the railway. There’s a train that comes by at midnight. It shall get you to the city in an hour.”
“What of you?”
“I will be here waiting for you.” She got out of bed, found the matches on a stool beside it and lit the candle. “I always knew that you would leave, just as I know that you will come back.”
She left my room, unlocked the wooden door to the house, and slipped into the darkness of the room where It slept.
***
It was not difficult to find Kijabe Street. All I had to do was go west along Nairobi River, which reeked of sewerage and despair. I could see why Maahinda was enchanted by the city’s development. Here, glass buildings lined every street almost kissing the sky, roads were paved, and it smelt like affluence. Yellow lamps lit the streets, lulling the street urchins to sleep with their white noise. No dust, no flies or donkeys braying. On Kijabe Street, the last row of houses closest to the river were made of pre-colonial stone.
I stood glued to the pavement outside Number 28. I could feel Njoki’s cries below me.
“You came,” her voice floated in the wind.
“Show yourself.”
“Free me, and I will.”
“How?”
“You know the song that heals the land. Sing it to the land, loud, and I shall be found.”
I could no longer stand to listen to the song that had doomed us all. But somehow, it escaped my lips.
“Na uria nda gaya,
Mundu ona uriko
Ndakanagerie…”
The pavement began to heat up and the wind stood still. The words cut my tongue like razors as they left my lips.
“Gutunyana kana kuuragana
Uhoro ucio ni nda tiriha
Mbere ya ngai wa Kuyu na Umi
Mundu ona uriko
Oka gucaria ha guikara kana irio
No muhaka, mumuhee
Inyui mwi na nyingi
Niguo ruriri rwitu rwarame…”
I could feel Njoki’s spirit reintegrate under my feet as each drop of blood fell from my lips to the ground.
“Oria ugacejia uria ndaiga, niagukua
Ona e cokerera,
Haria hatari utheri,
Gutingetherema.
Ni oragwo,
Ruriri rwake ruthire
Kiawamagira guthere na guture tene na tene!
O oguo niguo ndaiga
Thai thathaiya ngai, thai.”
My feet were burning but I could not move. Njoki tore through the ground, throwing me so far in the air; my head hit the street lamps seven feet above me. I landed right at her feet, beside the hole she had emerged from. Every inch of my body moaned. The rubble cut through my dress and into my flesh. I winced as I touched a wound on my calf. I yearned for Mami’s tumbukiza, the steaming broth with chunks of meat and vegetables that seemed to heal all wounds.
Njoki smiled at me. “I have been waiting for you, Kui. Shall we go home?”
“In a minute.” I whispered.
***
The rain had started to fall in Kiawamagira. People woke up to flowing rivers and streams bubbling. Rain mites flew over the village and danced with the butterflies. Mama Njoki let out a wail that drew thunder and lightning to the village. My father was struck and so was Maahinda.
My mother danced in the rain, trying to catch butterflies.
“Kui, you have made me proud,” she whispered.
Ray Mwihaki, also known as Rachel, is a creative humanoid creature who lives on the outskirts of Nairobi. She spends her time reading children’s books and other books, writing and making crafts, dreaming and cooking. Her work is driven by passion and the quest for a quiet, sane life. Her stories and poetry have been published in small publications, her plays have been staged and her films have been watched by few. She hopes that will change.
