Excerpt from "Parents' Day"
Mukoma stayed to see me stabbed by Brutus before he left to fight with the Mhere boys. He had already told me that he just wanted to hear my English, and to see if I had the right body language for it. He was not interested, for instance, in the prize-winning ceremony that would follow the big performance, nor did he care about meeting the teachers to discuss my progress. I don’t think when he left I had finished dying because by the time Mark Anthony was addressing his fellow Romans, half the crowd had left the huge Muunga tree where we were gathered. The teacher who had directed the production signaled Mark Anthony, acted by Chari, to stop, and she walked to me and whispered, “Caesar, your brother.”
I turned to look where Mukoma had been standing and was greeted by the grin of nothingness. Then I saw four men running towards the back of the school, and soon I was chasing them....
[The first paragraph of my story "Parents' Day", which is part of a collection in progress...]
I turned to look where Mukoma had been standing and was greeted by the grin of nothingness. Then I saw four men running towards the back of the school, and soon I was chasing them....
[The first paragraph of my story "Parents' Day", which is part of a collection in progress...]
Comments
Only last week I received copies of books by Brother Ignatius Mabasa and Brother Brian Moyo. Within two days, we had finished them. The books took us back to our days in primary school, that is my wife and me. We enjoyed the different renditions of the trapped leopard and the man written by Moyo and Mabasa. Brother Mabasa has a unique and most likely new story of the man who had lost memory of the identity of his mother tongue. The laugher comes when a wise woman conjures up an ingenious way of helping the man remember his identity. I wish Brother Mabasa had left a copy of his book with you when he visited SoCal.
As for the boy, born after the government had phased out Day by Day English, we simply bragged about how good we had it compared to him. He enjoyed the stories despite the friendly ribbing.
I hope to have a fixated readership of your book in my household, and there is no doubt in my mind that it will come to pass.
Saru sent me Mabasa and Mlalazi's books. I am reading Mlalazi, and have read one story from Mabasa to the kids. They loved it. Mlalazi is entrancing me; delves so well into a rotten Joza.