Author: Magunga Williams

I apologize that I am such a disappointment, mum. But to be fair, it’s not entirely my fault.

You have been in school for twenty years when you think of it. 3 years in kindergarten, eight in primary school, four in high school, one and a half in a professional course (read CPA, ICDL, CPS) and another four in campus. That is the ideal number of years a kawaida undergraduate should spend in school. That is if you did not rewind any class. Twenty whole years. Listening to someone stand in front of you, day in day out for two whole decades. But even then, you still have not been given the power to read. What you have…

Money cannot buy you happiness. But it will build you a castle in the middle of the wilderness, which should make you happy. Especially if you once owned the Steadman Group, and then sold it. That is what you will be told by George Tafaria Waititu, one lazy afternoon, while sitting on the steps of the amphitheater of the Tafaria Castle Country Lodge. If you do not get distracted by his hairstyle, you will get his point right, and perhaps take his word as faith. He will not exactly use those words because he is a modest gentleman. He does not…

Author’s Note: “I thought it might be a good idea to share something with you that shows what can happen to short stories that never get published. This story (below) was written in 2005 and, just as I felt inclined to submit it, in 2006, I realised that I could synthesise some of the ideas in it, much more eloquently, in a novel I was working on called Afterbirth. For that reason, I never sent it out. In the end that novel changed its name and eventually was published as Tail of the Blue Bird. People who have read the novel will…

“Come out, Soni. This little guy is getting impatient.” She has been standing there for over five minutes. “Just a minute hun. I will be right out.” You can do it. Just do it. She stands in front of her wardrobe mirror. Her mind is racing. She does not seem to pay attention to whoever is looking back at her. The woman with a dirty yellow skin and dark hair that falls freely on her back, some on her shoulders, and a few strings on her chest. The woman is in the sheerest of black negligees, which does not even…

Since we arrived at Tafaria, I had not seen him crack a smile. And for a while I whispered to Bev that Billy Kahora is not human. So as we sat in the keep that afternoon, I had promised Bev that I would make Billy smile. But he did not seem in the mood for laugh. Billy is a serious guy, and we were not in Tafaria on honeymoon. We were there for business. Writing business. I stared at the script he held in his hand. That was a copy of my draft titled Children of a Lesser God. I had…

Note by The Real G: I just had to share this story here. My Father’s Head  was penned by  Okwiri Oduor, and it bagged the Caine Prize for African Writing 2014. That is eleven years after Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s “Weight of Whispers” won it in 2003. Congrats to Okwiri for bringing the prize back home to Kenya,  and also to Billy Kahora whose story “The Gorilla’s Apprentice” was nominated for this same prize, this same year. You all made us very proud. Reminded us what it means to be Kenyan, what it feels like to be Kenyan. Viva Okwiri. Viva…

(An Extraction from the Girl with the Flawless Face and Other Horror Stories) It was Shamim who found the body one hot mid morning; when she was coming from Kilifi beach, dressed in a modern Hijab. She had just passed the mosque, and a few yards, inside a well, she found the body. It was not yet clear why she thought of looking into an old abandoned well, or how she divagated from her way to the well; or how further she spotted the body, which was submerged halfway into the dark waters of the well, but either way she…

I found something remotely sardonic about Tony; the way he spoke about his father’s demise like it was one of those things. There was no smoke in his voice, he did not choke on his words. He spoke with unflagging vitality- and for a moment there I did not know whether to feel sad, angry or jealous. Every Friday, a group of young turks hold court at PAWA Hub for an event put together by a regiment of poets and artist dabbed Fatuma’s Voice. It is the kind of show where people meet to simply talk, listen to performances and…

Available on theMagunga Bookstore I was running late for this poetry shindig that I had helped put together. I had told them to start without me, but I was on the way. Somewhere in between KenCom and Latema Road; in between street children following you with hollow, hungry eyes, some clutching onto your hand demanding attention, others money; in between the high pitched touts grabbing my hand to board a vehicle whose destination I didn’t care for and their impatient drivers haggling for parking space; in between the sly conmen shuffling cards begging me to give him Ksh. 200 so…

This post was written on 4th of May 2014 at approximately 10.30 am. That is the morning after BAKE Awards 2014; but due to technical glitches on the website, I had to put it on ice till today. Enjoy.  **** I have lived among Indians for the past three years. Indians are jolly good fellows, once you understand how shaking of the head would mean no and yes at the same time, in different parts of a single sentence. But you see for me, it was not so much of a culture shock because my primary school was M.M Shah…

I found this Miracle story very late. It  won the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing. Apparently, its from the forthcoming novel The Proximity of Distance. Read it, and when you are done, you will agree with me that not all Caine Prize stories are the NGO type; portraying only disease and poverty, painting Africa as The Dark Continent. There are funny stories in Africa. Ladies and Gentlemen, here is © Tope Folarin *** OUR HEADS MOVE simultaneously, and we smile at the tall, svelte man who strides purposefully down the aisle to the pulpit. Once there, he raises both of his…