Keys in the River

Rinos Mwanaka

Description

Keys in the River: New and Collected Stories, is a cycle of stories about life, love and spirituality, told as if the reader were sitting and listening to neighbors and friends talking about life. Some stories are tender, even comic; in others, tragedy and outrage lurk. The stories share a common thread, a noble stance in the struggle to find love, freedom, completeness, humanness and satisfaction.

Informations

• Publié par: Mwanaka Media and Publishing
• Date de parution: 26 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781779065186
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

KEYS in the RIVER: KEYS in the RIVER New and Collected Stories New and Collected Stories

- Tendai Rinos Mwanaka -

Tendai Rinos Mwanaka

KEYS IN THE RIVER: * New and Collected Stories

Tendai Rinos Mwanaka

Mwanaka Media and Publishing Pvt Ltd, Chitungwiza Zimbabwe * Creativity, Wisdom and Beauty

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Publisher: Mmap Mwanaka Media and Publishing Pvt Ltd 24 Svosve Road, Zengeza 1 Chitungwiza Zimbabwe [e-mail] https//mwanakamediaandpublishing.weebly.com Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookscollective.com ISBN: 978-0-7974-9551-7 EAN: 9780797495517 © Tendai Rinos Mwanaka 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher DISCLAIMER All views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views ofMmap.

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Acknowledgements Tears Runs Dry-Sunset, And She Said “Yes”, Ruins, Mangoyi- The Cat, Let Her Go, I Am Now Bullet-Proof, The Black Goat, Thus Far; No Further, Hearts Are Victors, Tears Run Dry-Sunrise, or versions of these in this collection have originally been published inKeys in the River; Notes from a Modern Chimurenga, in 2012, released in the United States by Honolulu based, Savant Books and Publications, and the rest of the stories,A Silly Story Hey, In Father Ganyiwa’s Hell, She Is A Witch, Makhebha, The Things That Make Us Human,new stories and have never before are been published anywhere

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Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………vi She Is A Witch……………………………………………………….1 Tears Runs Dry-Sunset……………………………………………...18 The Things That Make Us Human………………………………….34 And She Said “Yes”…………………………………………………51 Ruins………………………………………………………………..58 Thus Far; No Further……………………………………………….86 Mangoyi- The Cat………………………………………………….100 A Silly Story Hey…………………………………………………...106 The Black Goat……………………………………………………121 Let Her Go………………………………………………………...131 In Father Ganyiwa’s Hell…………………………………………..138 I Am Now Bullet-Proof…………………………………………....145 Hearts Are Victors…………………………………………………152 Makhebha………………………………………………………….163 Tears Run Dry-Sunrise…………………………………………….170

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INTRODUCTION

There are, KEYS IN THE RIVER. “Life is one long river a pretty voice sings.” It was after I had read a poem from Cypriot poet,Nora Nadjarian, entitledObdachloser (Off The Coast, Spring 2009), and her use of this expression, KEYS IN THE RIVER in that poem, that I thought I could use it as well as the connecting title to my collection of short stories, then entitledUndying Echoes. What keys are there in the river, and what kind of a river. The river is our road through life. I have this particular road I have stayed in for over 24 years, on and off but mostly on, Svosve Road, in actual fact its street, in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe. When I get outside the gate, I sometimes look up or down the road, and see people walking up and down the road, going wherever they will be going. I have done that for all these years, and I am always fascinated by the life that I see in this street, even now after all those troubles we have been through as a people. The are people still walking in this road, I know there are those who have walked in this road who might be dead, who might be in other worlds, like a long river, that life is. It is this road as a river that I was thinking of as I used this term to define, to encase the stories in this collection, to describe the life of the Zimbabweans, wherever there are now. As I said the river is a path through a life, and so the keys is the totality of a life in this river of life. It might be the bad things, the good

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things, things that makes someone angry, things that make someone laugh, sing, dance etc…, that’s why in this novel there are a combinations of stories that might make one reading it feel a wide range of emotions, that embraces a life, that tackles the Zimbabwean soul and life. There are stories that tackles many of the experiences of life growing up in post independence Zimbabwe, early adult coming-of-age stories, love stories in a world in the shadow of the AIDS pandemic; love connect all these stories, is there any other life defining thing like love to human beings. Spirituality! I decided to deal with that spiritual life that we don’t really know and understand that well, how to communicate with departed spirits, spirits generally looked upon as devilish, also things like demons, N’angas, ghosts.., that’s I have a number of stories that tries to get into that world, to explore it, to layer it open for readers. They are stories I wrote when I was in my early twenties with their sweet sentimentalities and they are a few stories I wrote in my forties grappling with the residues of four decades of living, and these provide balance to the collection. To live is to learn, to live is an act of struggle. But the struggle in this collection unlike the previous oneKeys In The River: Notes from a Modern Chimurenga, 2012, where the bulk of the stories were first published is on the individual level, not as a country. Thus in this collection I avoided stories that are openly political about Zimbabwe. I want to highlight other issues that make us who we are as a people, that are not openly political but still an act of struggle, of living. The biggest import of this novel, then, is how each of us, as human beings, go through all these potentially life-changing situations, regardless of our point of origin, on our journey to finding love, freedom, completeness, happiness, satisfaction and our humanity.

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SHE IS A WITCH he is, she is a...witch. She is a witch! S He doesn’t even know whether that captured who she was, but calling her a witch sufficed for him. He had been trying to figure her out all along. How do you mean? Zura- Zurababel is her full name, asks him. Zura is his new girl. Not really new. He can’t tell her she looked, almost like you, babe. Only light complexioned, lovely- a curvy shaped peach. Tandazo was an artist’s impression of petite, the right things, right places, right measures... He is always drawn to these kinds of girls, and he now feels it’s an obsession. Anything bigger has always looked less attractive to him. Zura is thin, frail, talkative and tempestuous. He has been on and off her for years, never staying any longer than she had invited him. It worked fine with both for some time. At one time he had let her go when Tando, that witch girlfriend of his was around in his life. When you have a witch, she won’t allow another girl near her prey mate, and until you fix yourself out of her brood- nothing else attracts you. It was always instances when he was between girlfriends that he found his way to Zura, but when he was with Tando, Zura stayed away. She was unpredictable, sickly, moody, and illusive. Very argumentative- and her way and only her way alone mattered. He finishes capturing Tandazo to Zura Confident of herself, was she? Zura asks him. Not really. It was mostly because of lack of confidence. A confident person doesn’t always want to have her way.

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That’s really how he felt! Am I a confident person, babe? Zura asks him, trying to point him towards complimenting her, as always. He wants to say,nopes,but it’s too dismissive, even a little hard. He can’t even be wholly truthful with that indictment of her. He feels her illusiveness- that he had felt with Tando, so he couldn’t indict her yet. He wants to know it was different, comes from a different source than that of Tando, so he says. I can always feel some confidence in you, Zura. How much?He hopes she is not going to ask him that. She is not overtly smart. Tando wasn’t smart that way too but she was a prickle little thing. She wouldn’t have let that pass, but Zura lets it pass. She is a bit quiet as she digests this, she has taken it well. When Zura is quiet it means it’s okay. She is happy. Thanks, she says, her face full of light, a dark ivory light for she is a light ashy-clay complexion. She looks like what an African and Indian mixed-blood would look like, only darker. She has the Indians’ structure too; frail, petite, waifish... She says there is Indian blood in her, and another moment she is saying white blood. She is proud of her heritage; especially the father’s side and not really sure of it, too. Her father is from Mozambique, and her mum is from Zambia, but she rarely talks of her mother’s side of the family tree. It is obvious she is a dad’s girl. Tando rather was mum’s girl. She had a factitious relationship with her father whom she blamed for abandoning her and her siblings after he had divorced her mum. Thus she had stayed with her mum as her mum stayed a bit trying to fight for her husband. She didn’t win. She left for her place, leaving Tando with her grandmother, her father’s mother to look after her and her siblings. She often talked about this. It was obvious it still bogged her, made her into the kind of girl she was. Who was she?

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