BOOK REVIEW

Reviewed by SHERIDAN GRISWOLD
Correspondent | Friday April 25, 2008 00:00

Dreams, Miracles and Jazz: New Adventures in African Writing is a welcome, new collection of 27 short stories by the editors and 25 other writers who range across Africa. They come from nine nations in Anglophone Africa. They range from the Gambia and Sierra Leone to Kenya and south through Zimbabwe to the tip of southern Africa. Six of the writers are from Nigeria and another six from Uganda. Zimbabwe writers have provided four of the stories and Kenyan three. There are two each by authors from South Africa and Sierra Leone (but one of these is set in Ghana). And one short story each from the Gambia, Madagascar and Ghana. Of the 27 authors 16 still live in Africa while the other 11 have become part of the Diaspora.

Helon Habila and Kadija Sesay first met in Washington DC in 2002. They started working on this collection of short stories then. Their objective was to assemble a collection of new writing (not published before) by authors who loved the short story form and had not yet published a novel. Many included in this collection have since gone on to publish outstanding novels. Most of the writers have won awards, including the Caine prize for short story writing that began in 2000. It is awarded annually to an African writer in English and is currently worth 10,000 and a month at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

In 2007, Ugandan Monica Arac de Nyeko won for 'Jambula Tree' from African Love Stories (Mmegi, April 13, 2007). De Nyeko's story in this collection is 'Back Home' about a bus ride from Kampala to Gulu and then home to Kitgum in Acholi District, an area ravaged by the War Resister's Army. This is a homecoming that ends in tragedy.

The three stories that lend themselves to the title of this collection are: A Pocket Full of Dreams, by Jackee Budesta Batanda of Uganda; The Miracle Worker by Sefi Atta of Nigeria and Dancing to the Jazz Goblin and his Rhythm by Brian Chikwava of Zimbabwe.

Taaka has dreamed of going to London to see her mother who has been away for 15 years. She is now on her fourth passport, to cover up past failed visa applications. The story starts at four a.m. as she sets out in a taxi to the British High Commission, only to arrive and there already is a long queue of people waiting. She has everything with her, 'Passport, one passport photocopy, completed visa application form three months' valid bank statement, letter of invitation from my mother, letter from employer, land title, marriage certificate, British Airways flight itinerary'. She makes friends on whatever queue she waits. Will she be 'Knocking on Heaven's door' with her pocket full of dreams? Batanda's story is well crafted.

It is Bisi, Makinde's new wife, who works a miracle in the slums of Lagos that may rescue him from a situation created by another miracle - a vision of the Virgin Mary in the dirty windscreen of a wreck abandoned on his corner lot in Lagos where he eked out a living repairing cars. Bisi is a petty trader who gladly gives more than 10 percent to the Abundant Life Tabernacle. Her generosity irks Makinde. When the crowds gather to witness the miracle in the windscreen of the old Peugeot 405, they bring his business to a standstill. Newspaper reports bring the tax collector down on him, because he has started charging an entrance fee of one naira to each penitent. When a storm washes away the vision he is left only with the taxman. To meet payments he seeks out Rasaki who promises to multiply his savings tenfold. When his saviour vanishes, it is Bisi who has her prayers answered. Sefi Atta is a new voice Africa needs to embrace (Mmegi, 22 June 2007).

Jabu lives in Harare, is addicted to Malawi Gold and the city's music and women.  At the Terreskane Beer Garden or TK he makes friends with Tafi the Jazz Goblin. Tafi is the frontman, lead guitarist and singer in The Jazz Goblin & His Rhythm. Jabu wants to join the band and play his Sax, but it is the consequences of membership that he does not anticipate. Can he liberate himself from the dependence that has evolved ...perhaps on Independence Day, 18 April 2001? For some reason Brian Chikwava is left off the list of authors at the end of the book. He is a musician and writer from Bulawayo, who now lives and writes in England - he won the Caine Prize in 2004 for his story Seventh Street Alchemy.

'The Palm Wine Guitar' by Segun Afolabi is a gentle flowing tale set in Lagos about a young call girl, Agnes, and an old palm wine guitar player, Kayode. He and Salbatore wait to perform a gig at the Covent Garden, a 'club where they played music as the young ones danced. Sometimes it was Latin American, sometimes Congolese or hi-life - the music he loved as a young man'. Kayode's beat is thrown off when Agnes arrives at the club with another man. Pumla Dineo Gqola's In the Clarity of a Third Class Compartment captures the sensation of riding the train from Simonstown to Central Station, notorious for its robberies, rapes and violence. On her way from Wynberg to Observatory a young woman with her non-Xhosa speaking boyfriend, observes the other passengers and then the events roll when a small gang of rascals tries to take over the compartment. She tries to read what people are thinking: 'You can tell from their faces that the older women are already dreaming about the Epsom-salted water in which they are going to soak their weary feet before they ask their elder daughters to make them a nice cup of rooibos tea. The last thing they need is to be standing in a police station arguing about some stupid boys who got themselves beaten up for 'being rubbish''. Will her friend understand anything of what happened during that train ride?

In a Ugandan tale set in Kampala And Still Hope Survives, Glaydah Namukasa explores that nexus left by multiple tragedies in people's lives. Wonder Gucho examines the 'prodigal lover' in Zimbabwe and how love can survive its twists and turns when people are separated for two years by the distance from Masvingo to Harare. One of the best stories is End of Skill a complicated tale by Mamle Kabu that teases out different perceptions of textile art by African American women and Kweku or  'Jimmy' and Nana, Kente weavers from Adanwomanse. This is a mature tale by a woman who bears watching.

The editors have each included one of their stories. Habila's The Interview is a short tease set in Lagos on what happens to a young woman from Jos when the key to the flat in a rowdy part of Ikeja Island she has been loaned breaks off in the lock and he is away for 48 hours. She is more resilient than I'd expect and endures many travesties in her effort to find her way out of her predicament. Sesay's tale, set in Accra, considers the tribulations of Mercy who has been away from West Africa for a dozen years, but on her arrival is traced by the man she left behind. 'She had only herself to blame. She had left it too long, and despite the fact that 'nothing much had changed', the banter and dialogue that she had expected to come easy to her with her love of country and continent, did not feel the way she had expected'.

This is an excellent collection of short stories, one well worth reading and adding to your bookshelf.
sheridangriswold@yahoo.com