The Word Cloud

This is a series of 6 books each telling the story of a different ancient Queen of Africa through three young girls Wuraola, Azeezah and Nneka (each representing the three main tribes of Nigeria). Girls aged 3-11yrs can enjoy the stories and buy the dolls. You can find out more about them on the website www.queensofafrica.com and the books are available on Amazon.

They will be printed in hardback for the Nigerian market and paperback for the rest of the world.

I wrote these stories as an Elance project about 3 years ago when I was just starting out as a writer and only managed to get credit for them (along with the illustrator - LittlePinkPebble from Singapore) due to the client being rather tardy with the payments. It was originally a ghost written project.

The research for each story was fascinating and it was quite a challenge to rewrite the rather bloodthirsty and let's face it, sexual promiscuity of these powerful Queens in such a way as to inspire young girls of today!

The concept of the stories and of the Queens of Africa project is to create awareness of the history of Africa and it's strong women to encourage girls of today to be educated and aspire to become the leaders of tomorrow.
To this end a second series of books is planned based on NLP (my area of expertise) and the first of these is already out 'Queens of Africa learn confidence'.

All these books are to be launched on Children's Day in Nigeria on May 27th

Nkosi Sikeleli Africa

Watching the opening ceremony for the South Africa World Cup, I was startled to see faces I recognised. The camera kept selecting (as cameras will) sweet and smiling girls in the crowd. And I knew them! Yes I knew them, and yet I’d never met them.

 

How? Because I had taught so many sweet and smiling girls in Zimbabwe. The same openness. The same innocence. Zimbabwe in the late 1980’s was an earthly paradise, so far as my family was concerned. We arrived in 1986 – me, Chrissy and our two children – and so we soon we got to know four schools.

 

An example of their innocence. As an end of term treat, Chrissy took in a video of Indiana Jones for her girls (at Evelyn High School) which they watched through their cardigans, peeping through gaps in the material and shrieking in terror at Indy’s latest fix.

 

An example of their openness. Some boys from a neighbouring school were visiting ours (Montrose Girls High School) – so Portia Maseko and her pals came up to me. “Mr Fenge, we know you love us, so will you please introduce us to those boys?”

 

I wrote a song once: ‘Love Is Just Another Name For Africa’. I’d play it for you now but I lack MP3 equipment. No, hang on, I’d play something else. I’d play my choirs singing ‘Nkosi Sikeleli Africa’ (God Bless Africa).

 

I had 120 highs, standing one side of the hall, singing above the melody – and 120 lows, standing the other side, singing below it. The rest of the school, about 600, stood in the middle and sang the melody, so we ended up with three-part harmony – and it was real hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck stuff. That’s what I’d put on my profile, but, as I say, the equipment is lacking. (Only got it on cassette tape.)

 

Anyway, the point of the blog is this: the earthly paradise of Zimbabwe is no more. I thought that I – we – were training up the future of a beautiful country. But that was twenty or more years ago and, given the life expectancy in Zimbabwe (especially Matabeleland where we taught) many of our girls will probably be dead.

 

So, as I looked at the earthly paradise of South Africa, with all those sweet and smiling faces – whom I so nearly recognise – I just hope they don’t get another Mugabe. They’ve had a Mandela and that’s got them off to a fantastic start (fantastic, because such people are almost the stuff of fantasy). But there are a lot of Mugabes in the world, and only mature democracies can hope to shift them.

 

So Nkosi Sikeleli Africa. God bless them. They might need a bit of help from above.

 

 

We employ three night watchmen to guard our home here, on a shift basis, two working together at any one time. They are not the most burly of men and we do not pretend to think that they will be able to fight off any armed robbers, should our home be targeted. But we chose them for their integrity and because they have families to provide for.

Getting the right sort of security guard has been a learning curve. At first, we went to the local security service and paid an extortionate amount of money to have a different watchman every night. The service guaranteed that a guard would always be available, although it was never possible to build up any sort of relationship with them due to the transience of their posting. We soon realised that these mobile guards often spent more time casing the homes they were supposed to be protecting, and invariably it is these security guards who are involved in any robberies.

We then decided to employ three of them directly, and picked the youngest, tallest, fittest, strongest young men that had worked for us through the service. We figured that by paying them ourselves, they would receive a better salary, be more committed to protecting our home, and we could cut our costs too. All went well, and we built up a friendly rapport with the guards, until two of them stole from us at a Christmas party we held for them and our other staff.

We realised that these young guys were not bothered about risking their job for a chance opportunity to steal. They had no families to provide for, and just wanted to get what they could.

Instead, we asked our day guard, who is incredibly hard working and honest, to personally recommend some friends who were in need of work, were honest and trustworthy, and who had young families to support.

The men he recommended were not big or strong, but they needed a steady income and were reliable. We now had a good team of three watchmen, who looked out for each other and us. Each of them has a whistle and a wooden baton, so that they can alert each other and us to any unwanted intruders. We then have a system in place where we call up a network of friends who will come to our assistance, if needed. Sadly, armed robberies are becoming more and more common in the city here, and we are one of the few expatriates who have not yet been targeted.

Three weeks ago, however, one of our guards asked for a few days leave to attend his brother’s funeral in the south of the country. We gladly obliged, and the other night guards covered for him. But a few days stretched into a week, and then two weeks, and no one was able to contact our guard. He had moved out of his house a while ago, and no one knew where he was now staying. He didn’t answer his mobile phone, and his wife and children were not around. He seemed to have just disappeared. This was so unusual, as the guards had a good system in place to let each other know about problems, illness etc. The only logical conclusion seemed to be that he was in hospital somewhere or dead. We had noticed that he had lost weight recently, and wondered about his health. In Malawi, the average life expectancy is 37, due to the high prevalence of HIV and Aids.

After two weeks, we took on another guard temporarily, until we heard from our missing watchman. Pay Day came and went, and still no news. I was sure that someone would have come to pick up his outstanding wages, but we heard nothing. Then, out of the blue, yesterday morning I received a phone call, from a friend of his. It seemed our guard had attended the funeral, and had then inherited the dead man’s chiefdom. He was now acting chief in a traditional authority deep in the heart of the hot south. When we relayed the news to our other staff, they simply nodded. Apparently, he had been talking about becoming a chief, but no one had taken him seriously, despite all the charms he had acquired recently, from the witch doctors to protect him.

One story he had told them was how there was a hut in his chiefdom where a snake lived. It had once belonged to a prophet who was now dead, and the snake was believed to be the prophet’s spirit. Young girls would be brought one at a time, to live in the hut, as a wife to the snake, until they were bitten and killed. I asked my cook, a Christian, if she would hand over her daughter to live with a deadly snake. To my surprise, she said that if her daughter had been chosen, then she would, as the girl would be protected.

Now, it appears that our night watchman is ruling this area, and no doubt will be responsible for picking those young girls. Having lived in this country for almost seven years, on and off, I still do not understand what makes its people tick. 

Promotions not from north

South, east, or west,

It comes from above

The Lord knows best.

Gods got all the plans

In his mighty hands,

And what if he wants it

To work through a black man.

No one thought they’d ever see

An afro-American elected to be,

A man of colour on capital hill

The first black president, Oh what a thrill.

Ancestral spirit of freedom fighters

Raging since captivity,

Way down the ages to this time

No real sense of liberty.

But now on this dawn

Of the first black president

American and commander-in-chief,

A gentle breeze fills up the air

Which feels like sweet relief.

The injured slave expires

Exhaled and breathed no more,

When he saw the future brighten

Upon a distant shore.

Pioneers, prophets and progenitors

Have prophesied from afar,

Tired and worn from the struggle

They predicted a rising star.

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed

On the 1^st of January 1863,

That all slaves should be freed

Within the confederacy,

“Those who deny freedom to others “he said;

Deserve it not for themselves,

So emancipation was issued

Slavery dusted from the shelves.

A racist actor named John Wilkes Booth

Disagreed with what he said,

And one good Friday in a theatre

He shot Lincoln in the back of his head.

Martin saw the prophecy in a dream

And practiced what he preached,

He too was laid out on the ground

Murdered for righteous speech.

Paul Bogle, Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley

These heroes are gone before,

But their inspiration helped us

To push open this iron door.

The roll call of freedom fighters

Is a never ending page,

Just looking back in my history

Makes me feel enraged.

During the presidential elections

I heard some people say,

“we don’t want a black president

So we’re voting for McCain today,

What can Obama do for our country they say

Will he choose the right team?

And how can a man of colour

Understand the American dream.

Black people have been stamped on

Pushed out, enslaved and spat upon,

The welcome doormat colonialists walked on.

From poisonous serpents we’ve been bitten

By fangs filled with Racist remarks

She sat down in the bus that day

The brave woman Rosa Parks.

The whole world feels a ripple

When America suffers a quake,

And this tidal wave election

Caused cynical minds to break.

And so the earth will change for good

For better or for worst,

The American people have spoken

A new era, chapter and verse.
 

Nothing is easy

But only time will tell,

Pray for the new black president

That he’ll serve the people well.

Many snares will try to hinder

And some folks won’t understand,

But almighty God who put him there

Will shield him with his hands.