I don’t know if the Heinneman African Writer Series (AWS) was one of those Chess record label deals where the artists didn’t get paid according to the value of their work to the music appreciating audience but rather according to the skinflint economics of record label owners. I haven’t researched it so I can’t say. I can say I sincerely hope not because I am thankful for it connecting me to so many African writers they’ve become part of my interior landscape.
Long before you came, we agreed to nurse in the hospital on the understanding that we were not to carry any bedpans. We want to be married and become mothers like any other woman in the land. We are surprised that senior members of the staff have sneaked behind us to support you when they know perfectly well that no sane man will agree to marry a woman who carries a bedpan. A special class of people do this job in our society. Your terms are therefore unacceptable, Matron. You can keep your hospital and the sick. And if being a Christian means carrying faeces and urine, you can keep Christianity too – we are returning to our homes.
I don’t know why this occurred to me in the midst of cleaning but it is a fine, fine story. Land of Thunder is full of such stories. Click the book cover to visit Ogot’s Amazon page.
~ by Tichaona Munhamo on April 19, 2011.