The fear that she will leave sits and festers in the bottom of my stomach, wearing a hole right through me. It wakes me in the night. I sit up, gasping, hand over my mouth so she doesn’t stir beside me. I climb out of bed. I know I mustn’t. I know I’m meant to … Read more
Wherever you go, however much you change, some things will not. There are placeless, immortal, immoral things incapable of growing weary. You can start running away today. They will wait for you at the finish line. When I was six years old, my mother died. It had been raining the whole day. I was … Read more
Being alone may just be the best thing that ever happened to me. I felt like a kid in a playpen with no other noisy brats to bother me. The ball pit? All mine. The slides? No need to worry if there’s some other kid dilly-dallying at the bottom. I could just slide on down, … Read more
Tuesday, February 20, 2035. He thought he heard the sound of sirens. He felt lifeless. Someone seemed to touch his neck, then his left wrist and then started compressing his chest. Another hand forced his mouth open. He felt like he was coughing but wasn’t sure whether he did. He felt tired and sleepy. The … Read more
Skeins of cobwebs hung from the wooden rafters of the mabati shack alongside an assortment of beads and bones on strings. The room had a solitary window that was only partially open and covered with tattered sackcloth. Thick dust motes danced in the pale sunlight that leaked through the numerous holes in the roof. Juma … Read more
It is the 3rd of October, 2017 AD. We are in Nairobi at a place we once called Langata. It is almost midnight and there is a woman lying in her bed; she is crying. It is an ugly kind of crying, loud and pained without restraint or decorum. It is the cry of … Read more
The gurney was the vehicle that brought in the dead. Limp, silent and unresisting; the dead laid covered in blue rumpled sheets. Sometimes their flesh quivered in the careless abandon of death. The men that wheeled the gurneys to the room where the bodies were kept had little to say. In their blue, numbered work … Read more
It was hard to believe that where there now stood only one grey tree stump, a large forest reserve had once flourished. The myriad of cracks only showed evidence of the ground’s unquenched thirst, which lasted for generations. The only thing that did not seem to mind the harsh conditions was the dust, which happily … Read more
It was late at night when she got the call. She wasn’t asleep; no, she’d been hoping, waiting, for it. “It’s me. Can’t really talk, but I’m okay and everything’s fine. Will you come get me? I’ll be waiting by the river at the Adamson Bridge.” The night was cool. The breeze gently ruffled her … Read more
At 24,000 feet, the great expanse of water he had always known as a child looked little more than a toddlers’ wading pool, or a puddle in a brown field that just happened to be exceptionally blue. Regardless, something was terribly wrong. He turned to look up… or was it down? Orientation was still making … Read more