Brother, We Have Learned to Wait

 [Sunday Times: 11 November, 2012]

Brother Jordan, with surprise you asked

through the letter written by Sister Hussein

why we are always not enthusiastic

but rather that we appear pessimistic

when the subsequent present gods

saintly and mightily make flight

of angelic words, and a bright world?

We have, through hard ways, learned to wait,
for although these new gods might not yet
rant a dark discourse or rave a dim discord,
a full load of same old and lethargic lexis
of fluffing and frothing in this matrix
will surely soon start to strongly stroll,
robustly roll, or brutishly  blow
during the day, in broad day light,

or in the pitch of dark, right at night.
Brother Jordan, their piety might crescendo

this time but we have learned to wait,
as current cherubic accents will diminuendo;

baring open barefaced dictators’ minds
that rise and that ricochet in magnitude;  
despotic minds, seasoning a tyrant attitude
slowly and lowly strolling; rolling and blowing.

Suddenly the promising bright day is night of fright
the day light is rubble; now all you see is trouble.

the gamblers

[Malawi News: 10 November, 2012]

Saturday: 18:00hours

“Have a seat, Mr. Mauro.”

“Thank you, Asilo, I mean Mr. President.”

Asilo, the new president, grinned flirtatiously. “I called for you to give my sincere thanks. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

                                                                                                                    

‘I’m thrilled you realize it,’ thought Mauro. “Oh, don’t mention it Your Excellency.”

“Don’t play the humble. You put up a rigorous campaign in selling me out. When we’d just started, the opinion poll was twenty-one in my favor, and…”

“…forty-one.”

“Whatever, and somehow you turned public opinion around.”

“Our monopolization of the state-machinery and our huge financial muscle truly helped our team. With such an uneven playing field, I knew the opposition stood no chance,” Mauro put in.

“We all know how diligently you put up a detailed fight,” the President ignored Mauro’s modesty, “and I was thinking of appointing you my chief political advisor.”

“I’ll think about it,” stunned, Mauro huffed, trying hard to conceal his disappointment.

“No, I want you to take the job,” the President insisted with an air of finality, disregarding Mauro’s tinge of frustration.

“I’ve to think about it,” Mauro grumbled.   

“Okay, as a matter of fact, yes, you have to,” the President said, checking his wristwatch, “well, thanks again,” he said, showing Mauro the exit. Mauro openly frowned, frustration and madness chewing him. He mechanically got up and trudged out. His bodyguards came to rigid attention. He mumbled acknowledgement.

The reality that he might have made a wrong gamble slapped Mauro hard as painful thoughts of what transpired in the room he was just leaving ran in his mind, starting with how Asilo just produced a handshake when he had arrived. He had anticipated passionate hugs for a job well executed. Even earlier on Mauro was shell-shocked when he was phoned by the President’s secretary to travel and meet the President for the talks. He expected the President to do the traveling to his private residence and hold the talks. After all he was the chairperson, the most senior position in the party. And even more disturbing was that the meeting was just hours after the general election results were announced. Mauro expected the two to hold the talks after the inauguration. In short, Mauro wanted to run the new government behind the scenes. That was his sole ulterior motive behind choosing and bulldozing Asilo as the presidential candidate when he had failed to cling on to power after serving his three seven-year-constitutional terms. But it showed the plan had tumbled, especially with that offer of an ‘insignificant’ position of political advisor. Nevertheless, some voice told him to stop reading too much into things. “Wait after the inauguration.” It reasoned.

Sunday: 05:01hours

“I’m going to need money.”

“No problem.”

“It’ll cost us a huge…”

“…I don’t care how much it costs. Get it done.”

Sunday: 20:02hours

Beatrice, a widow, was more than determined to try her gamble. She drowsily looked at her eleven-year-old daughter sleeping peacefully, and beautifully smiled.

Sunday: 21:03hours

Mauro sat relieved. Fully knowing he could not secretly sponsor some overzealous election losers to seek court injunctions since the results by design were announced on a Saturday when courts were closed, he opted for extermination, the gamble he did not want to fail at all cost, quashing those feelings to wait for things after the inauguration. That was why when Tuntufwe, the assassination chief strategist, had asked for a cool twenty million he had doubled it. He was now pleased that an assassination plan had been devised. ‘I put him there. I’ll remove him.’ He thought, emitting a crooked smile.

Sunday:  22:04hours

The President was woken up by persistent ringing on his private number. After going through inauguration preparations he was deadbeat and the last thing he wanted was a disturbance on his sleep. But with his wife beside him the only other person with that number was Lino, his chief intelligence officer, he could not ignore. He picked it, listened attentively for minutes. He was stunned. When he gambled to overlook Mauro in order to stamp his authority, Asilo did not fancy things could reach assassination attempts on his life. He, however, quashed suggestions by Lino to postpone the inauguration. To do so was to admit cowardice, the very last thing he would do as president.   

Monday: 07:05hours

A sophisticated flower bomb would be presented to the president by a girl at the inauguration. Unexpectedly Tuntufwe got information by informants that there would be no flower presentation. He tensely phoned Mauro.

“What is it?”

“There’s a problem sir,”

“If forty million can’t fix your problem, go hang.”            

“But…”

There was a click. Tuntufwe took the phone away from his ear and looked at it. His boss had already hung up.

Monday: 07:06hours

Amidst tight security Beatrice and her daughter made it into the freedom square and sat close to the inauguration platform and nervously waited.

Monday: 11:07hours                                                                                                              

Asilo had just taken oath; suddenly an eleven-year-old girl hurried forward, a paper in hand. With rumors rife that a girl was to be used to assassinate the president, the president’s security detail gambled to eliminate the suspect before reaching the president. They took her down within steps from Asilo. Chaos followed. Shouting and crying was all over. But the girl and her paper lied harmlessly on the podium. Asilo managed to steal an eye on its contents amidst the pandemonium. He cursed. The paper innocently requested for money.

                                                                                  

The Phone Call

[appeared in the malawi news of 13 october, 2012]

When only a week remained to the wedding of my family friend, Andisen, did preparations move at a record breaking speed, now that the dead seriousness of Andisen really wanting to marry finally settled down in us. When Andisen had announced to the world that he would like to wed Beatrice, his new love catch, in two years time, many of us were wholly skeptical. We laughed our lungs inside out at the ‘joke of the century before us’. We believed ‘it was easier for a camel to go through a needle’s hole than Andisen getting married’. Andisen would surely find an excuse to abandon Beatrice, we all foretold.

Andisen had dumped many girls we had lost count of, sometimes even for flimsy reasons, such that many who knew Andisen and happened to come across Mateso Kazembe’s short story entitled ‘Compromise’ would have thought the piece of art was a replica of Andisen’s love expedition. Andisen was a facsimile, or even more, of the gentleman in the story, who always found one excuse or the other to break girls’ hearts. And moreover Andisen had found the faults sometimes within days or months of dating out. ‘What more with a two-year-period?’ We all doubted.

Nevertheless, it gradually started to settle down in us half way down the line, particularly when even stanch skeptics such as Lino, my father, who once labeled Andisen as ‘a dangerous species to girls in the world of love’, accepted wholeheartedly to be Andisen’s marriage counselor.

And questions started to drizzle down amidst the acceptance of Andisen’s ‘miraculous’ marriage determination. What was it with Beatrice that Andisen’s lax approach towards matrimony be incinerated? We all wondered. Was it her stunning face that glowed with salmon-colored effulgence and her soft and smooth kissable lips that knocked Andisen out? Or was it her sexy brown eyes that were full of kindness, but yet seductive in a special powerful way that did the magic? We pondered on. Was it her full succulent breasts that bobbed up and down seductively and captivatingly in accordance with her engrossing soft inhaling and exhaling? Or was it her killing smile? Or could it be her gripping hips, absorbing bum and riveting legs that finally tethered him to the pole of marriage? But Naomi, the girl my friend Andisen, left for the reason that she was ever-smiling, was equally beautiful. We all reasoned.

And good manners of Beatrice we also countered out. Definitely, that could not be the reason that got Andisen on the leash. Because even Ireen, the girl Andisen unceremoniously kicked out for being bow-legged, was better mannered than Beatrice.

‘Well, everybody has reasons for taking final paths of actions, so is Andisen. Someday we would come to know and understand the reason or reasons for choosing to settle down with Beatrice of all girls’. We finally said.

Now with only two days to go this afternoon I saw Beatrice, my in-law to be, coming towards my shop, one of the rarest things to happen, with an obviously somewhat craft fallen face. I instantly smelt trouble and my heart skipped a beat. My mind was now a field of racing thoughts, and this nagging notion that Andisen had terminated the affair kept hitting my mind, no matter how hard I tried to purge it out or to play it down. I said ‘a God forbid’ silent prayer, as I watched her making final strides towards my place of work, the place where I eked out a living through servicing electrical appliances and other gadgets such as phones.  

But moments later I was totally relieved to hear that Beatrice’s hitch was that her phone was not producing any sound when receiving a call or when playing songs. More than willing to assist her I gladly received the gadget and sooner than later I established that the problem was to do with the speaker. I assuredly told her to wait for only five minutes as I fixed the problem. She later excused herself and left for a Metro shop that was nearby to buy Kamba. ‘Girls’, I said in my heart as I watched her leaving.

I quickly sprang into action, as all good in-laws to be would do, and started to look for another speaker. Beatrice had hardly receded round a corner of a nearby building when her phone indicated there was an in-coming call. I casually peeped at the screen and I was about to call her back.

‘Darling!’ the caller’s identity indicated. ‘Andisen,’ I thought. I instantly quashed the idea to call Beatrice and excitedly picked it up more than eager to tell my friend that Beatrice’s phone had developed a fault and I was the one servicing it. I had just pressed the okay button when breath was momentarily knocked out of me. I audibly prayed that I should be dreaming. But the tangible quizzical looks of people in the shop made me realize I was not. I quickly removed the gadget from my ear like a hot potato burning my skin, and cut the call and checked the number. It only worsened my condition.

The words: ‘darling, meet me at our usual rest-house’, from the other end were not necessarily the ones that sickened me, but the caller. I could not miss the voice, and even the number. The caller was my father!