Archives

The traffic is lighter than usual today. I’m driving carefully because the rain that was beating hard on my windshield usually camouflaged the real depths of the potholes on the road. My [...]

I was eleven, and I think I was still in the throes of blinding religion because, otherwise, I would never have allowed a thing like that. I was warm and quivering with malaria. I had sticky [...]

When exactly does an eagle realize its wings are the most powerful? It’s hard to tell because no one sees the number of times they have to fly, fall, and try again. We only see them soar and [...]

For three weeks a crowd had gathered at home to celebrate my grandmother’s life. For three weeks the atmosphere was gloomier, tainted with sadness and frustration, and thoughts of never seeing [...]

When Nana Kwame died, I avoided his mother like the plague. In the weeks leading up to the funeral, I mourned him from the safety of my home – some one hundred steps away from the brown gate that [...]

Alex, ‘I saw a grasshopper today’. It’s funny how something so insignificant can trigger the fondest memories. I remember the first time we caught that tricky insect right outside the kitchen. Do [...]

A year. Then she could take no more. Even when I begged. In my fifteen-year-old imagination, I’d already carved out a future for all of us. For better for worse. But she had seen enough. In the [...]

‘Where are you from?’ is a simple enough question to answer but for me, a Zimbabwean woman living in a different country, it can produce 3 different answers namely my current place, my birthplace [...]

The universal narrative about Africa is the prevalence of poverty, conflict, systemic violence, dwindling economies and corruption. Perhaps many other parts of the world find Africa synonymous [...]

Growing up, one of those things I disliked most was moving. Moving to a new house or school meant that I left friends behind or if they did the moving, they left me. It meant that my siblings and [...]