King Ifey's Blog

The Admixture of Humour and Tears: The Case of Reward Nsirim's Fresh Air and Other Stories It is only on few occasions that I have encountered a book and yearned so badly to meet the writer, stretch my hand forward for a warm handshake and say: "Thank you very much for that book of yours, it is marvelous!" I do remember that the last time I was this excited was when I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun , other times were my first encounter with Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God, Richard Wright's Black Boy , Buchi Emecheta's  Joys of Motherhood and of course Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom (great novels!). My love for these stories are due to their ability to draw water from my eyes (and I should have you know that I am never the crying type). However, this writer is in a different category from the above mentioned writers, Reward Nsirim seeks another kind of tears from my eyes, the type oft' accompanied with laughter! R...

Obato Utuhugabe Must Let My People Go by UBAJI ISIAKA ABUBAKAR EAZY Being a doctor in Bulawayo is obviously not a lucrative job to Doctor Tinashe. Not with everyone falling sick here and there and having no money to pay, one would have to be a robot to refuse treating these people, not when they come to you with their gaunt face wrinkled and dry as old faded clothes and beg to be treated. Mostly, their ailments are not unrelated to hunger and malnourishment and as one treated one man with ulcer, another would come begging for drugs for migraine.

Read the full hilarious story at this new site, www.thisvoice.net

Thank You for The Abacha     The trick to making good Abacha is timing. One has to soak the dried tapioca in hot water for a few seconds, just long enough for it to get some moisture. Anything more and the cassava extracts will suck up a lot of water and turn soggy in the pot. So I lifted the sieve containing the Abacha out of the bowl of hot water and placed it on an empty smaller bowl.      I added two handfuls of crayfish to a sizzling mixture of palm oil, onions and pepper. I stirred it with the wooden laden and watched through the soft fog that arose from the pot as the mixture turned brown and start to foam. I must leave the mixture long enough to cook but not get burnt, so I remove one log of firewood from underneath the pot to reduce the heat. As soon as a strong aroma started to waft up from the pot, I transferred the Abacha from the sieve where...

The Night Reading Session Experience My phone had just stopped ringing for the third time now and it is evident that the caller is Sule. I have refused to even pick the phone from the bed. Do you know why?   It is 12:30am and I was supposed to meet Sule at one of the faculty's classroom for an overnight interactive and reading session but I had long made up my mind never to move anywhere close to the school premises at an hour such as this. Neither shall I answer the phone call, period!   Why should I attend another overnight reading session after what I experienced the last time I left the comfort of my room at an ungodly hour such as this to join Sule in the classroom for reading?   "I do not like reading at nights, why don't we find a quiet place during the day to read?" I have always told Sule this but he adamantly insists on the fact that reading is best suited for nights due to the reduction of noisy activities which encourages easy assimiliati...