By Davis Mungatana
Davis Mungatana was born in 1977 in Mombasa. He is from a Bantu tribe called Pokomo on the northern coast of Kenya. He learned English as a second language at Mau Mau Memorial Secondary School, where he wrote for the literary and drama club. This story is a political satire of today’s Africa. The sun is scorching, the hour seems to last forever; maybe a thousand years, but the tired skeleton figure trudges on. She looks young, maybe in her mid-thirties, but has wrinkles carved on her face. Going nowhere in the jungle, not looking back. Sorrow, emptiness, hatred, all painted on her face. Hunger bites her empty stomach, she thinks of the food she had toiled for in the mountains now going to waste. Diseases plucking her followers one by one to everlasting slumber, and the sun glares on. The wind whines, carrying the background sounds of music, the music of death: death by the thunders of fire. Cracking and booming sounds fill the air as the thunder strikes the lives of the innocent: endless red rivers meander in the valleys; rivers of blood, yes, innocent blood. Hoarse cries of anger, anguish, and pain are heard from afar as the devil smiles over his reign. The devil has won: he is now laughing. The storm begins to fade, far in the horizon it vanishes, leaving only the echoes of thunder. No one seems to know how many days it has lasted. The scars vividly seen, the valleys filled with blood. The stench from the rotting corpses in the fields brings memories of hell: she’ll never forget the wounds in the back of her mind, robbing her of the only two things she had – peace and love. This is the end of the trek: few make it. She stops and wonders what to do, staring blankly into the horizon, cursing the devil from the west for creating this storm. She must start again from nothing. Her country is torn to pieces. She, too, is left in ruins, an alien in her own land, a refugee. #Volume 6 Issue 4 a
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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