arts kushinda!

Meet Shadows author Novuyo Rosa Tshuma: Live Skype Interview Sunday 17th June 2012

ceris62 — Thu, 31 May 2012 10:07:25 +0000

Your chance to put your questions to Novuyo Rosa Tshuma in a live Skype interview

Virtual Launch of her book Shadows on Sunday 17 June at 1800GMT

Add Skype name ShadowsNovuyoRosaTshuma

Novuyo says “Let’s engage in a book reading and question and answer segment. Now is the time to ask all those burning questions. Pass the word and I look forward to interacting. Thanks.”

Don’t miss!

Shadows by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma is on sale from Friday 1st June: Available worldwide from Amazon, direct from Kushinda (UK only) or ask for it at your local bookstore.

‘A great deal of energy and vigour’ : A young poet experiments with old ways in a new Zimbabwe : Words by Garreth Tembo, featured image by Maina Boniface

ceris62 — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 23:19:50 +0000

We at Kushinda have a threefold criteria for that which we celebrate, in terms of our selection process this can be summed up with the following: we seek the creative, the idiosyncratic, and the culturally aware. Within that scope we are happy to work with writers and artists at all levels, be they young and eager novices or accomplished, professional authors and artists. With that in mind we are very pleased to present a new poetry form, the invention of a young writer from Zimbabwe, which draws inspiration from traditional African praise poetry: Introducing Garreth Tembo and the heptacord, accompanied by a taste of the work of Maina Boniface, a Kenyan artist who also ‘ticks all our boxes’ and whose latest paintings will soon adorn his new arts kushinda! gallery page. Oh no, of course Kushinda doesn’t do boxes, neither do our artists and writers, but you know what we mean.

“I am a pan-African pro-modernity shameless prophet inspired by the pragmatic metamorphosis of my own society. My poetry, themes and form draw from this side of my coin.

I fell in love with the charismatic displays of the Praise Poets before I even knew what alliteration was. They were loud, they were fast and their writing was artistic. ‘Izthakazelo’ poetry serves as a narrative of family history and heritage and contains within it the ‘totem’ of the clan from which the poem’s subject is descended. My family totem, for instance, is the Zebra, and my family name ‘Tembo’ roughly translates as ‘the zebra full of pride, I who am proud and sure’. This form of poetry is long and relies for its effect on exciting the audience with its pace and rhythm. During the 1990s there was a hit song which drew on the praise poetry form but adapted the content to a narrative of the struggle for liberation. Likewise I wanted to adapt those elements of ‘Izthakazelo’ which give it its ‘excitement’ but I wanted something much shorter and more suited to what I want to say about my own experience of today’s Zimbabwe.

The seven-stringed Heptacord is my own contribution to verse; short but descriptive it is an amalgamation of the more conventional Western metre forms – with adjacent or alternating rhymes in the first four lines – and a fast paced conclusion drawn from praise poetry with a lot of alliteration and half rhymes and a great deal of energy and vigour.“

Earth

Here I stand

Ground once my ancestors trod

Myself I mend

Ear to the ground I hear it still thud

Mud in my hands making meanings of months

Those that have passed digging into meanings of chants

Chancing my eyes toward lost culture, beat after beat it commands.

Viper

Timeless epidemic

Arch philanthropist

Champion humanist

Coiled striking sadist

Machine waging war on holy oaths

Host of castles built on blood and oil

Old saintly sinner white fang in blue-red banner cold

Poetry and quoted text © Garreth Tembo 2012 Artwork © Maina Boniface 2012

Fables Out Of Nyanja by Brian Bwesigye is available now from Amazon and all good online and offline bookstores. Kushinda’s next print title, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s Shadows, will be published this summer, we are very excited about that!

Also new on arts kushinda! are Gor Soudan’s characterful and highly idiosyncratic paintings which, much like the scruffy but magnificently eloquent crows he paints (and that we love) talk for themselves here

Please respect all copyrights, whether stated or otherwise, and please resist anti-piracy and censorship laws by acting responsibly and with respect. Please feel free to comment on any posts or pages here, or contact us Follow us on Twitter and Facebook too, we look forward to hearing from you!

Mocking the mocking bird: A poet’s response to the tweeting masses. Words by Frank Odongkara. Photography by Rumanzi Canon

ceris62 — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:46:58 +0000

Frank Odongkara is C.E.O of Artorion Inc. and a student of Computer Engineering at Makerere University. He loves poetry, art, robotics, physics, electronics, rap and rock. He hates time. More of his poetry at ithinkfrank.

Featured photography by Rumanzi Canon who designed the cover artwork for Fables Out Of Nyanja. More from his Sadistic Posers series in the arts kushinda! gallery here

Rumanzi Canon:Sadistic Posers 2012

Mocking a Mocking Bird

The mocking tweet of the bird

Sounds a pitch too loud

Than the croak of the frog

Wrestling up to the tree top

Who knows what she tends to attract

Perhaps a leaf carrying male?

Who knows what she speaks to the jungle

A mockery of the frog’s tune?

Do not be fooled by her whistling

It is only the clinking of precious metals

Do not move to her rescue

She flies above the frog at the stump!

Yesterday I asked the frogs

If the song she sings is one they composed

They gaped at me and croaked to differ

And took leaps of faith to a branch of berry

© Frank Odangkara 2012

Rumanzi Canon:Sadistic Posers 2012

Shadows, a Novella : Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, Southern Africa’s burning new talent, joins Kushinda

ceris62 — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:05:24 +0000

2012 began with a bang for our publishing subsidiary. Now hosted on its own fully-fledged website, www.kushinda.com, Kushinda the Publisher is already exploring new literary skies and finding exceptional new writing talent that emboldens our love for the idiosyncratic, the indigenous and the culturally aware.

As 2012 continues to unfold, our portfolio is thickening by the day. Thus, as the clouds gathered to send off February, we entered into a publishing arrangement with Ms. Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, the twenty-four year old Zimbabwean B.Com student at University of Witwatersrand that has been described as ‘a powerful prose stylist to watch’ .

We will be publishing Novuyo’s novella, “Shadows”, expected to hit the shelves as the 2012 summer sun shines on us. Novuyo in “Shadows” writes in the first person and through a male protagonist’s voice tells a powerful story of love, namelessness, pursuit, abnormalities, art, existence, contradictions and indeed, shadows. Working with Novuyo so far has been an experience of the beauty of art and promises to yield more and more artistic pleasure.

At Kushinda, we are excited to work with such big talents, talents with a capital T as Elinore Morris has described Novuyo before . We consider ourselves privileged to work with Novuyo and we have no apologies for the conceit that comes naturally to those who meet talents as polished as her own. ‘Shadows’ is Novuyo’s first work in book form, published by us – wink wink.

Her several works of short fiction appear in various anthologies and online publications, including A Life In Full and Other Stories: Caine Prize Anthology (New Internationalist Publishers, UK 2010) and Where To Now? Short Stories from Zimbabwe (’amaBooks Publishers, Zimbabwe 2011, Parthian Books, UK 2012). She is a past winner of the Intwasa Short Story Award, for her short story ‘You In Paradise’. In 2010 she attended the Caine Prize Writing Workshop, and the Farafina Trust Writing Workshop.

You can find her musings at www.writerdelic.blogspot.com. We will have her full biography soon on our website, but you can know Novuyo more through interviews in The Mantle, Conversations With Writers, Geosi Reads and Reading 2010 Wealth of Ideas

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

Meanwhile, our title, Fables Out Of Nyanja by Brian Bwesigye (paperback, illustrated), the fictional tales of childhood in rhythmic narrative style, set in the author’s home village in Western Uganda is already available direct from us or from Amazon and other international booksellers. Drop us an email at artskushinda@gmail.com for a personalized purchase.

Otherwise, we need another limit beyond the sky for all the awesomeness we are finding in exquisitely original fiction, poetry, photography and art books. We can’t emphasize enough the beauty there is in the art of writing and the craft of the storyteller. Above even that, the love of Art.

We don’t want to be selfish (winks) : An interview with Maasai Mbili Art Centre and a Thought from the Editor

ceris62 — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:41:10 +0000

An inpromptu online interview with Maasai Mbili Art Centre’s Kevo Stero in Kibera, Kenya, clipped with just a little editing fresh from the web. With art from Maasai Mbili artists and the following thought from your editor : Whose art is it anyway ?

Paintings by Kev Stero

Ceris Dien

tell me more about Maasai Mbili please

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

am not good with explanations

i prefer you asking a question maybe

Ceris Dien

ok.. who runs the centre?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

we run the center

Ceris Dien

the users?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

8 artists, 5 active artists, nobody like really owns the place but we have an office (to try and formalize everything)

it’s more of an art studio

Ceris Dien

by ‘active’ artists you mean professional ?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

i think everyone is working ‘professionally’ but we have some of us with part time stuff, the rest we are fulltime artists

Ceris Dien

and your canvas is the ‘street’ ?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

you could say that

but when we say street we mean the walls, the people, the culture, the emotions … everything that happens in these Kibera surroundings, so when we are not painting out in the streets we are painting them in the studio

Ceris Dien

sounds a very active process

dynamic

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

thanks

Ceris Dien

what drives you to do it ?

it’s not profit ?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

automatic – no profit, but on the other hand …

there’s change

Ceris Dien

that is a strong motivator

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

there’s a big difference in the perspective of the locals today and 5 years ago from the locals

about art

Ceris Dien

what kind of difference?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

and its impact !

Ceris Dien

i see !

it’s like a tool then, or a conduit, for empowerment ?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

that’s right

Ceris Dien

that’s great

i’m impressed !

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

Ceris Dien

what about ‘authority’, the ‘authorities’, do you get any hassle for what you do ?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

i would say they try most of the time not to cross us

you know what happens here is that if you dont trouble them they won’t trouble you

Ceris Dien

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

so we are one of these groups that have a very nice reputation, they dont notice us untill when we are doing something

we try to make our projects stunning to the public and all (including authorities e.t.c) so we always have an equal reaction from everyone

so not always much from them

the other thing is that in Kibera authorities don’t really want to associate with the locals, so they try to keep off

Ceris Dien

does the art you do ever get a platform outside of Kibera ?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

yeah, we do exhibitions and stuff, presentations for public works, at least we try to work with art institutions and n.g.os from outside Kibera

Ceris Dien

does that in turn help alter perceptions?

i mean, the impact of what you do touches people outside Kibera, in a positive way?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

yeah

Ceris Dien

can you give an example of that?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

what we are trying to do is not creating only a way of understanding each other but even using our differences, fusing them, to do so

so we always do stuff that reflects to people in general

we dont want to be selfish

Ceris Dien

that’s a very interesting perspective

‘generous art’

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

yeah

Ceris Dien

may I use this conversation as the basis of a blog feature?

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

Ceris Dien

thank you!

Maasai Mbili Art Centre

thank you too

Words squeezed and bodies teased : Brian Bwesigye ‘Floored’ in Uganda, featured art by Sun Ray of Finland

ceris62 — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 22:24:50 +0000

Introducing Sun Ray of Finland : Digital Porn Mosaics : More from Sun Ray on the Gallery Page Here

Plus ‘Floored‘ by Brian Bwesigye, a young Ugandan writer and human rights activist, squeezed and teased for your undoubted pleasure.

Floored

Wow!

Breathless!

Yes, breathless!

Hmm, Weakness!

Yes, Softness!

Hmm, the strength is left in one part,

You are so sweet,

Your words,

Like the lips on which they roll,

Inviting like a pot of chocolate,

Your eyes,

Romantic as your touch,

Your nipples,

Firm as a tip on the mushroom standing tall out of the ground…

Your art,

Beautiful as a pidgeon …

Ok…

I am so floored!

I am so amazed!

Dying of mental pleasure,

Dying of sweet pain,

Dying to practice,

Dying to do what we can’t put in words,

Dying to watch our bodies talk,

Dying to listen to them…

Indeed, our lives depend on it!

Wow…wow… wow!

How did I squeeze these words out of this body,

How?

My life is with you,

Yes, with you!

©BBwesigye 2011

Self Portrait by Sun Ray

(Japanese Movie Posters Mosaic)

Love in a kind of heaven – ‘The Rainbow Woman’, a short story by Chipo Musikavanhu, featured art by Tsepo Gumbi

ceris62 — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 09:41:52 +0000

We are excited to present Chipo Musikavanhu‘s first published story, The Rainbow Woman, a love story with a twist from Zimbabwe. It is accompanied here by Tsepo Gumbi‘s photo montage ‘Love can be something complex, distorted, and somewhat inviting’

THE RAINBOW WOMAN

When it came to the issue of marriage I never had problems with suitors, they were never in short supply. But I always felt that there was something missing in them and something missing in me. Lust was what I had to be honest. I had had my share of that, where my body said ‘Yes’ and my spirit said ‘No’. My soul always got caught in between. A part of it would say ‘Yes’ to the idea, ‘Yes’ even though the image in my head of what I wanted was not what was in front of me. So my soul always gave me either a ‘No’ or a ‘Yes, even though…’ combination. In those days I did not know that it was my soul. I had never defined myself. I used to just move whichever direction the wind decided to blow and as a result I fell victim to gentleman thieves. It always started the same way, a kind, fun guy whom I later discovered was immature, did not have his priorities right and who always dreamed but never took practical steps towards those dreams. Some suitors even tried to intimidate me by reminding me of my age. How could someone say they love me and then try to intimidate me! There was no way that I could put up with that rubbish.

However, when I met Thomas I felt that I had finally met the one.

We had planned, me and a couple of friends, for that concert for months. There was no doubt in everyone’s mind, fan or otherwise that the venue would be full to the hilt. Tickets were sold out a month before the group was billed to perform. When the big day came we were some of the first to arrive. I can clearly remember everything as if it happened yesterday. The stage was dark, then light started trickling in as their signature drum beat announced the beginning of their performance. Instantly the crowd roared with excitement. Shortly after the lead singer motioned for the crowd to settle down. There was silence for a second. Further silence was thwarted by whistles breaking out from all corners with fans unable to contain their excitement. He played his guitar with immense pleasure, concentration and perfection of a master of his art. Almost immediately he leaped into the air with effervescence sending the crowd into another roar. Song after song my friends and I sang along until we thought our lungs would protest. But we didn’t care, we were in a kind of heaven.

What a great day it was. Day in and day out I had worked for months on end and this was my treat. Being a doctor was tough, especially a junior doctor trying to get my feet firmly grounded. Now that I had fulfilled my vision many days ahead would be full of more play and less work. My surgeries were finally up and running. All I did was monitor the progress and do some jobs here and there. So there I was with my friends enjoying myself and enjoying my singlehood. Not one moment did I look back at my past and feel like I had missed out on my youth. This is a choice I had made – to have an education, a business and then to get married.

There was no pressure from my family for marriage. Some friends said that my family was not worried about my age because I was financially stable. Apparently, others who were still staying with their parents or guardians got a lot of pressure. It was not that they were a burden at home. Their gender had been given duties in advance by their ancestors for cooking and cleaning the house, so they were an asset. Nonetheless poverty stricken homes saw them as greater investments in marriage. Besides the ‘roora payment’ that initially brought in money there is a Shona proverb that says ‘the son-in- law is a fig tree that is abundant in fruit’. In other words, he never runs out of money to give his in-laws.

The funny thing about that day was that I was neither looking for love nor ready for marriage. My mind was expecting only the melody of the instruments and the smooth vocals of the band.

I had not thought that I would meet someone to fall instantly in love with.

The first time that I saw him my heart leaped with joy. I had never felt like that before. It was weird. I felt my soul say ‘Yes!’ for the first time. There was a presence around him as if spiritual beings were summoning me to him. I was about to float towards him. The unique thing about that day of the concert was that for the first time in my life my soul had responded with no doubts in it, first to the music, then to him. My whole being was in agreement : Body, soul and spirit. Peace not only surrounded me, it permeated me too. What some said only happened in movies was right there in my world. I stared with fascination as my future flashed in front of me. Visions of married life, children, great-grandchildren started popping into my head with ease.

It was towards the end of the show. I had gone to get more drinks to try and soothe our throats which were in utter shock from all the shouting they had experienced that night. He was standing in the foyer with a group of friends. I stared a few seconds, fascinated by the pull I felt, shocked by the leap in my soul and tantalized by the breath-taking physique in front of me. Unaware of this stranger rejoicing over his presence he continued chatting away with his bunch. Something in my mind had told me that he was going to stare back. But before I discovered that truth I went to the counter and made my exchange. I turned my back on the cashier. Instantly I began trying strategically to position the drinks firmly in my hands before I made my way back into the auditorium. After successfully completing this task I looked up and was caught by a pair of the most beautiful eyes in the world, eyes like doves as the bride in the Song of Songs put it:

‘His eyes are like doves
Beside springs of water,
Bathed in milk, fitly set.’

That something in my mind had been right and I was, for some reason, not surprised that it had been right. We stood there and stared at each other. I felt the pull between us and I could not disconnect. We stood there and stared until someone walked across, blocking my view and giving me a chance to collect myself. Mechanically I turned and practically sped off into the auditorium. As I approached my friends I wondered how long he had been staring at me. Finding no answer all I could manage was a partly hidden smile influenced by the incredible glow in my being.

Weeks passed and he was always at the back of my mind. I had lost my heart to him without a doubt. But my question was this : Did he love me? How could I even love someone I had never talked to, someone whose habits I had no knowledge of? It was weird, but I knew that I loved him. I wanted to be with him. There was a warmth that I had felt by being close to him that day that I wanted to feel forever.

Fate brought us together again one sunny day. I was sitting in my favourite restaurant and he came to sit next to me.

‘Is this seat taken?’
‘No, make yourself comfortable’ I answered automatically without even looking up to see who I was talking to.

A few seconds later I was about to finish texting my friend who was late when I heard ‘Sorry, have we met before?’

As I looked up I got caught up in those eyes again before I managed a ‘Yes, I think so, at the E.C.K musical concert?’

‘I could never forget such beautiful eyes.’ He continued, making me blush, but I quickly got a hold of the situation.

‘I am sure you have seen plenty of those. Are you sure you remember all of them?’

‘Not as vividly as I remember yours’, he persisted.

We had lunch together on that day. His friend had also stood him up, so an exchange of phone numbers occurred and we instantly hit it off. Three months later we were even talking seriously of setting a date for our wedding. Every moment I spent with him was so enjoyable, so there was no reason to not want to spend the rest of my life with him.

Sadly within a short while of knowing him I fell into a quandary. One moment I was in love and the next moment I was discovering a whole new person who put a rift between us. I loved Thomas but I did not love Tom. An unexpected pattern had surfaced. I could not put a finger to why it was happening. There was a failure to keep promises, infinite one sided phone calls, apologies that sounded sincere but actions that continued to exude thunderous silence. And the big one was my own hard working nature versus his uncontrollable urge to party. I could not go on living a lie. So instead of harbouring these sirens I decided to talk to him about the implications.

It all happened so fast. I walked into his house and the next moment I was in the guest bedroom weeping. I did not even know how I got into the guest bedroom. All I knew at that moment was that I was stunned, speechless and running out of air to breathe. Feelings of helplessness and betrayal expanded overwhelmingly inside me. Vivid visions of their clothes on the floor, her sleeping in his bed, and their embrace tormented me. He knocked several times, wanting to explain, saying it was not what it looked like. He said he was sorry. I was outraged. There was nothing for him to explain as far as I was concerned, I had done everything to be a good girlfriend and now I had complete evidence that my efforts were not being appreciated. All this while he had been taking me for granted. Thomas had been transformed into Tom. I had such high hopes for Thomas but he decided to strip himself into a Tom.

As I sat in that room I thought of how I was going to exit the house. A little voice advised me to jump through the window. However, I reminded myself that I was not a runner but a confronter of issues, so I got up, wiped my tears and opened the door.

She was gone, but he was there, sitting on the other side of the passage cooking up an explanation. He got up as soon as I walked out, looking pitiful and stretching out his hand as he opened his mouth to say something. I quickly gestured for him to keep quiet and said:

“I thought you were different…” He parted his lips as if to say something.
“No, let me finish. It’s sad to come to this point again, this time with someone that I thought was the one. What I felt for you was different but you are not different. You are just an egotistic guy who is immature and who does not have his priorities right. You always say that you are going to do something constructive with your life but you never take practical steps towards it. It is quite obvious that you are settling for this ‘party guy’ label. I cannot be strung along to entertain such disorder. I have to move on. I deserve way much better treatment than this, every woman does!”

So I walked out, head held high, with peace in my being! My mind was made up. I was leaving him. He was not ready for me.

Chipo Musikavanhu is a writer and poet. She holds a B.A in English and Communication and has a passion for helping people. As a devoted Christian, Chipo strongly believes in upholding God’s moral standards. Chipo admires the power that literature possesses in engaging the mind to open up many avenues of thought. It is with this view that Chipo agrees with Samuel Beckett’s statement: “Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear.” Her aspirations are to share her work with a multitude of readers by publishing locally, regionally and internationally in print as well as online. In addition, she strives to enter writing competitions and to attend as many creative writing conferences, workshops, symposiums and book fairs as possible.

Tsepo Gumbi is a poet and artist from Sharpeville, South Africa, whose anthology of poems and artwork, ‘Noise’, (not published by Kushinda) is available to buy from the author. Contact Ceris at artskushinda for further information, I will be pleased to put you in touch.

Our Portraits, Our People : What happens when you give a kid who has nothing a paintbrush …

ceris62 — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:33:35 +0000

Teach a child to paint, then … they see, you see, we see

New work by a group of 11 – 17 year olds in Kampala, Uganda, members of the Imagine Us Here 2011 project Our Portraits, Our People. Jointly designed by Social Enterprise Africa and Kushinda, funded by Bayimba International Festival of Arts and individual supporters, brought to life by the child artists, nurtured by artists John Okot, Ruganzo Bruno, Alex Oboki and others, and coordinated by 15 year old group members Gilbert and Samuel

Shine Baby Shine : New poet Kris Chris on ‘mekin money’ in Uganda – featured art by Osian Efnisien in Wales

ceris62 — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 02:38:08 +0000

23 year old Kris Chris lives in Kampala City, Uganda, where he grew up with an innate creative passion for words and pictures, scribbling his way through childhood with a charred cassava root for a pencil. Osian Efinisien, our first non-African artskushinda artist, designs mini advertising campaigns and posters for usually non-existent clients. Often working in collaboration with a network of fellow artists and contacts, his street art finds it’s way in sticker form to locations in far flung corners of the globe. In 2010 his work was nominated for and appeared in the book of the Artaq International Prix D’Art Urbain.

Mek Money

It’s steamin’ warm inside
Fresh cold outside,
The skies are blue
In the east ‘tis orange
So to say
‘Tis.. a nu goodmorning..
And let’s all..everybody wek up
C’mon up..get yo bodies outta bed
Hey.. let’s roll
And say yo graces..
Time to mek money

’Tis that time of the year when I’m cornered
Time and time a hook comes up
I’m always thinkin’.. it is mind parliament
I’m always debating with my other half self
‘When shall all this end ?’ ’Tis bin far too long
Wanna break out, this shell is too hard
Bin inside maself wanna cut out now
I see people wekin up, rubbin sleep from their eyes
Going to work, they all got things to do
It truly matters, coz they gettin payed at d end
Yet here I am, sittin’ and watchin’, got nothing to do?
Noo.. the system is clogged up noo..
Wait I’m figurin’ it out
So that’s how I’m doing
Time I got out… yeah

It’s steamin’ warm inside
Fresh cold outside,
The skies are blue
In the east ’tis orange
So to say
’Tis.. a nu goodmorning..
And let’s all..everybody wek up
C’mon up..get yo bodies outta bed
Hey.. let’s roll
And say yo graces..
Time to mek money

All this time I bin around
Wanna mek it big is ma dream
I’m good to go if I get that push
I heard d other day some fellow got that
He got a good backin’ but he ain’t done crawling
Just left me wondering if ’tis luck bad or good
I know a hell lot good connections
So which I is to do ? Talk to ’em or watch ’em grow cold ?
School of life is still I attending, lot lessons learnt
Yet toying is my mind still on that old mistek
Time I made some money, real need that paper shine
So which is I to do? Yawn mo’ or tok mo’
Neither is better.. action is better
Hey get off that couch, is that what yo’ fartin on?
Either way get I’mma get sweaty workin’
Hmm sweet paper shine

I’mma do it right
I got quarter.. not a gramme
Do I need it swell
Double it, do that half twice
Ay there we got a shine
Yaa a heaven shine
Paper shine
Shine baby shine
No shame.. ya shine

Kris Chris (with his own paintings in background)

@kushinda.org

‘Holes’ and ‘The Peanuts’ – New Kenyan writing – Featured Art by Ephrem Solomom Tegegn

ceris62 — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 23:30:13 +0000

A new short story from Kingwa Kamencu (see also Muli’s Great Day) tells how times change, for some, in unexpected ways, whilst Douglas Arege’s first published poem ‘Holes’ tells how, for some, things remain depressingly the same.

Featured art : woodcut with paint and collage by Ephrem Solomomon Tegegn, Ethipoia

The Peanuts

“Njugu karanga, njugu karanga, ten bob pekee!”

The blast of noise almost makes me jump out of my seat. I turn to look at the man at my car window trying to sell me roasted peanuts.

He lowers his voice. “Aki ni-promote baba, sijakula tangu jana.”

From his haggard face and the torn grey t-shirt that attempts to cover his skinny frame from the drizzle, I can see that he isn’t lying; he hasn’t eaten in days.

I hand him all the coins in the dashboard and he shoves ten packets of peanuts in my face. I take one and wave him off. He leaves, a big smile on his face.

I place the roll of peanuts on the dashboard wondering how far dad is now. It’s him that I’m waiting for here at the noisy Machakos country bus station. The peanut roll takes me back to an incident when we were young. We had been at the Nyayo National stadium and dad was chasing away a young boy peddling peanuts.

“Get away!” Dad had said, as he got into his grey Mercedes. “We can’t buy food from these boys, they’re dirty!” he told my sister Nzisa who had begun clamoring for the peanuts.

We had passed Uchumi, the big white grocery store, to buy her peanuts snazzily wrapped in an ‘Amigos’ – made in Spain – plastic paper.

A large grey Subaru honks to my left.

“Ay, Mutuku!” A grinning light skinned man with a heavy gold chain round his neck calls out and waves to me as he speeds down the road.

That’s Omosh, our former houseboy. He’s driving his own big car now. How things change. But I am not surprised; Omosh always had the ambition of a black ant carrying a load ten times its size. He would often complain to me, a young child of ten then, of the peanuts dad paid him and swear about how rich he would become one day.

My thoughts shift to Nanjala. She loves peanuts. She cooks them for breakfast sometimes. I got over thinking how odd that was three years ago after we returned from the honeymoon. Apparently they’re a staple with Luhya’s. This hadn’t endeared her to dad any better; he had gone on cussing about how primitive ‘these people’ were, a tirade tailored to hide the fact that he still did not approve of her; a poor secretary from nowhere marrying me, Mutuku his prize son, an architect.

I spy dad clambering out of the matatu that has pulled over in front of me. How things change; dad never used to use public transport. Losing his job fifteen years ago had forced him to sell everything including his prize Mercedes and return to the village. If it was not for mum his life would have been unbearable. Dad was always a bit stubborn. Still, that he is coming to see the baby is something. He had boycotted our house for the past three years. I watch him, his back slightly bowed by age, his worn leather jacket keeping the drizzle off. His black hair has an added speck of grey upon it. I lean over and open the door. He slowly eases himself onto the seat besides me.

“Hello sonny!”

As I pull out he absently reaches for the roll of peanuts, unfurls the black and white newspaper page and, with index finger and thumb, sheds the thin brown skin off one and pops it into his mouth. He gives an approving ‘Mmmm’ and leans back in his seat.

Holes

Holes linger and finger everywhere

Holes in the water pipes, water leaks away

Holes, I pay more for water!

The market shed is hollow, no shelter for the market women

Holes gaping, their wares missing

The rains drip in and their wares rot

The school year ends, the kid’s future is lost

The funds were swindled, the coffers emptied

The teachers holed in making the extra coin

The road is a museum, it has pots

Bones crash as the vehicles crackle, promises broken

Families mourn the hospital bills, holes in our pockets

The hospital is a horror, the Doctor horrifying in his stare

Drugs are out of stock, you can buy from the Pharmacy

The poor, dejected, return home to face

The hole gravy

Kingwa Kamencu is a poet and story writer who has previously published in Kwani? and as a young journalist in Kenya. She is currently a research student at Oxford University, England.

Douglas Arege is an anthropologist, community worker, and human rights advocate with a passion for writing, media, and the arts. He has published articles in all the main Kenyan news media. He lives in the Kisii Highlands, Kenya.

Douglas Arege