Ink

                                                        


                  Ink is where I showcase some of my short stories or articles .                                                  

                                                                            

                                                              Write

“When Ideas rot, it’s like a cancerous cell that slowly contaminates the mind’s  thinking process , self-esteem and the whole psyche!”

                                                                                                                                   Anonymous Voice 

Write, write, write, and write.  I pass my bitten fingernails through my hair. It has started locking itself. I close my eyes, take a breath of not-so-fresh air, I have not brushed in a while.

These voices are really starting to fill my head.

“ Salama Rasta”

“ Mpa ijana”

“ Huh? What do you major?”

“Two years?”

“ I am … “

“You make films?”

The images are not letting me go either. 

Pac smiling with his easy and naïve face. He has his blonde dyed hair with a line cutting through half his head.  

I see my reflection smiling, It has aged. It has gained more weight and more facial hair. It has a suit and it fits.

 It is laughing so hard I can see my broken front tooth. Why is it laughing at me?

“You sure fool?” it utters loudly. 

I open my eyes and look at this blank page in my laptop.  It is Saturday, the 20^th October and it’s my 23^rd birthday.

23 like the magic jersey number in basketball. 2+3 is 5, my first novel has been rejected 5 times by the only publisher around here who has ties with penguin. 

I am at my fourth short film. The plan was making the best short film, about depression.

 It is a very interesting and common subject, a shovel for gold diggers. The plan was becoming the wiz-kid  in the industry and taking over.  After all that is why I am called what I am called.

I can feel mom’s heavy breathing from where I am seated in the living room, her allergies again. 

“Ganza, your friends are graduating from the university,” she said last night. I did not fight or argue with her this time.

“All your uncles are coming!”she added.   I had foreseen this day but kept pushing it.

In 2 hours and 30 minutes, I will be facing the whole family about my issue of dropping out from medical school. 

Foolish me, I was re-editing the poem I wrote for her on mother’s day, to make an impression on a date.

The voices are getting louder now; it was somewhere here! I cannot find the pen…

“Fool are you sure?  Sure, you want to drop the obedience mask and walk freely. Are you ready to pay the price of freedom? Kan-Ye handle it?

The decisive moment has come!  You hate the truth, you hate facing people in their eyes, face it! I am a Libra, a weak one, a people-pleaser. In addition, you want to please yourself.”

A small laughter comes in mind, my accuser and I laugh at that pun.

He is right though, I want to please myself and let these ideas out so I can at least think something else.

Like “Phonia” my first novel, it has been rotting in my head ever since I met Sonia. 

"Sonia... "

I want to give the voices and the court that is about to organize the middle finger and take my course; but what if it remains stagnant like this?  I want to add thumbs up at the same time, balance right?

I close my eyes again,

It is so quiet, so still.

I can only hear the harmony of my heartbeat and my brain muscles.

Write, write, write, and write.

                       

                                                          La Punisseuse

Un teint noir et sec, des cheveux un peu défrisées d’un chocolat très poussiéreux. 

Ou bien était-ce de la teinture ? Il est difficile de distinguer car il faisait nuit et je n’avais que les

lumières jaunes de la rue de Sonatubes qui monte vers Kicukiro centre pour référence. Elle

portait une jupe noire, un long bâton à la main qui aurait fait partie d’une raclette auparavant.

Je venais du lycée, avec un gros cartable au dos dans ma chemise blanche et mon gros

pantalon Khaki. On était trois moi et mes camarades de classe.

En clin d’œil, comme s’ils se l’étaient prévenus, les deux lâches ont traversé la route. Le

temps que je ne m’aperçoive, elle était déjà à dix mètres de moi.

Dans un mouvement brusque comme touchée par une charge électrique elle frappa une des

demoiselles aux jolies jambes derrière moi qui se faisaient reluquer en passant. La jeune

demoiselle courut pour sa vie, et les mateurs à l’autre bout de la rue rirent. « Elle a encore

frappé » s’exclama l’un d’eux en regardant la demoiselle comme si elle avait eu ce qu’elle

méritait.

Je m’arrêtai, la folle me regardait. Elle avait arrêtée de pourchasser sa proie et revenait vers

moi. Elle vint avec une démarche décisive, effrayé je serai fort mon cartable et continuai à

marcher. Elle prit aussi mon rythme et marcha à cote de moi, suant dans mon uniforme je fis

comme si de rien n’était. « Salut beau gars » me dit-elle, toujours menacé je la répondis

« Salut ».

Elle diminua son rythme, comme si elle était illuminée elle s’arrêta et me dit « allons dans un

coin ici-bas et Nique moi !» J’étais flatté par l’offre et l’ai considérée pendant une seconde et

de l’autre ne sachant pas si c’était un piège, je la répondu d’une voix presqu’innocent « Ca ne

serait pas convenable ».

J’attendis le coup de grâce qui ne vint jamais, je vis qu’elle avait adhéré à ma réponse, «

c’est vrai, rentre chez toi et laisse-moi punir ces putes jusqu’à ce qu’ils s’habillent

décemment. » 

Elle le dit avec une certaine conviction en elle que je la saluai. Elle pourchassa

une autre fille qui portait une mini culotte, on aurait dit qu’elle exécutait un de ses anciens

bourreaux ou les protégeais de ses démons qui resurgissaient.

Je me demande toujours ce qui ce je serai devenu si j’avais accepté son offre.









                                                  

                                                                 Unsaid truths

3:30 p.m on a Wednesday, the middle of a day in the middle of a week at the second extreme of a month in the fourth quarter of the year 2017.  It is raining, that slow, lazy -unworthy of being called rain-rain that hardly stops. I am early out of work and headed to a bus station , I decided to take a bus as it has been a while.

Before I enter the huge yellow “xonda” bus that is close to being filled, there is this high school girl, with an accurate everything; hair, glasses and uniform. She is standing in the door and behind her an old bus driver.

She makes way for me to enter but I rather not and point behind her at the angry driver.

He says something that I couldn’t hear as my ears were filled with 50 cent’s P.I.M.P from my earphones.  Whatever he said, his hands were pointing at the back of the bus. She replied with words I still couldn’t hear but with her gestures involving breathing and air.

I entered and removed my earphones to get received by the very warm air inside the bus. “Turagyana cyangwa?” threateningly says the driver grabbing my wallet. I let him tap my card on, get my card back and take two steps in the bus. “Nawe egera inyuma nk’abandi” he says.  I started wondering what his deal was.

Eventually the bus took off and she was in it, right next to him. Harassing might be a fair word to say the least for what followed throughout the whole ride, the girl evenly stood him up.

 He was technically old enough to be her grandfather. And by the looks of the situation might have believed he was her moral grandfather. Was she asthmatic? Was she just being a teen? Was he trying to show her respect? Was he intruding? You tell me.

All I know is I admired the guts she had. Because I am sure none of the passenger love being transported or rather squeezed like goods, or Bads in this case-goods are wrapped. Or maybe it is just me!

As I got out of the bus, I met another woman in between 30s and 40s wearing fabric clothes with a losing boxer’s left eye. It was so swollen and black I imagined the classic case of the marital ring, and not the one they wear.

But I had no proof, could have been thugs or an allergy or a bug bite. I did what anyone else does, i kept walking.

Until I walked past another woman, in a not so short not so long kind of skirt –nahmeen! She was looking a little uncomfortable, peeping left to right. As if noticing herself being noticed.

 I looked in front of me and saw two guys, like “yeah, I see” looking at her behind as she passed by them.

It had me thinking a lot about the language that lies between the eyes. The many truths that are not said. How many things are internalized and burn our insides? Is it the lack of “ubupfura,bwa bundi bushenjagira bushira” that made the girl speak up to her elder? What about the other woman, what if she was like her and bitch slapped the guys, me included.

Though enriching, powerful and deep and I do reckon as a people it might have arguably taken us through a lot of shit, but is silence always the wise option?