From the war drums of Sierra Leone comes an award winning “Memory of Love”

Animatta Forna's first book

Aminatta Forna was born in Glasgow and raised in West Africa or to be precise in Sierra Leone, a country whose pathetic history provided the needed inspiration on which Aminatta depended to publish her award winning book “The memory of love.”

The Memory of love won the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize 2011 in the category of the Best Book.

The judges praised The Memory of Love for its risk taking, elegance and breadth.

“It is a poignant story about friendship, betrayal, obsession and second chances and an immensely powerful portrayal of human resilience.” The judges said in praise of the book.

 “The Memory of Love delicately delves into the courageous lives of those haunted by the indelible effects of Sierra Leone’s past and yet amid that loss gives us a sense of hope and optimism for their future.”

Yet that is not just the only Award Winning book that has been written by the triumphant writer from Sierra Leone. Her first book, The Devil that Danced on the Water, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2003.

the picture of Animmatta Forna

Her novel Ancestor Stones was winner of the 2008 Hurston Wright Legacy Award, the Literaturpreis in Germany, was nominated for the International IMPAC Award and selected by the Washington Post as one of the most important books of 2006. In 2007 Vanity Fair named Aminatta as one of Africa’s most promising new writers.  

Aminatta who leaves in London with her husband has written for magazines and newspapers, radio and television, and presented television documentaries on Africa’s history and art.

The other winner in the competition was Craig Cliff in the category of the Best First Book: A Man Melting

Craig Cliff, a government worker, was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand in 1983. Cliff is a graduate of Victoria University’s MA in creative writing and his short stories and poetry have been published in New Zealand and Australia. His short story 'Another Language' won the novice section ofthe 2007 BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards.

In Another Language Cliff explores a young narrator’s connection to his Serbian grandfather, his friendship with a Maori boy and the act of stuttering.

His first published collection of short stories, A Man Melting, gathers together his prize-winning and published short stories, as well as some new works. These 18 stories examine all of the big questions of life - birth, infancy, adolescence, violence, parenthood and death.

The judges chose this highly entertaining and thought provoking collection of short stories for their ambition, creativity and craftsmanship.

“Confidently blending ideas that frequently weave outlandish concepts with everyday incidents, the prose is skillfully peppered with social observations that define the world we live in.” The judges extolled the collection.

“The eighteen short stories are truly insightful and amplify many of the absurdities around us, reflecting our own expectations, fears and paranoia on the big questions in life.”

“This book is of the moment, and is rightly at home on a global platform. Cliff is a talent to watch and set to take the literary world by storm.”

The characters in these stories look for ways to reconnect with people and the world around them whilst Cliff examines complex issues such as alienation and belonging.

The winners of the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize were announced in Sydney in an exciting climax to this year's final programme on 21^st May 2011.

For the last 25 years the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize has played a key role in unearthing new international literary names, bringing compelling stories of human experience to a wider audience.

As highly acclaimed international authors Aminatta Forna and Craig Cliff will follow in the footsteps of some of the biggest names in modern fiction in winning the Prize, including Louis De Bernieres, Andrea Levy, Ian McEwan, and Zadie Smith. 

For the fifth consecutive year the Macquarie Group Foundation, one of Australia’s leading philanthropic foundations, is helping to advance one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world. With Macquarie’s support the prize has grown to reach more people around the world, encouraging wider reading across a range of Commonwealth cultures and rewarding the rising talent that other prizes often overlook.


Related stories on the Commonwealth Writers Prize


Sierra Leone Story wins Commonwealth Writers Prize

Is the Commonwealth Writers Prize biased?

A night of words, heartbeat and neon lights with the Lantern Meet of Poets

It will be a night of "Words, Heartbeats and Neon Lights" when the the Lantern Meet of Poets hold their fifth Grand Recital on Friday June 10th and Saturday June 11th 2011.

The Lantern Meet of Poets one of Uganda's leading group of poets will treat attendees of the recital to over three hours of poetic verses that are written by various writers that belong to the group. The recitals will run from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at the National Theatre.

Tickets will go for 10 thousand shillings for adults while the students will be required to part with only 5 thousand shillings to attend the show.

The Lantern Meet of Poets started around 2007 when a group of students from Makerere University that were passinonate about poetry decided to come together and form a group that would meet and critic one another's poem.

Lantern Meet of Poets later managed to convince the managemenet of the National Theatre to allow them have bi weekly meetings at the National Theatre for criticing one another's poem on Sunday afternoons from 3:00pm to 6:00pm which culture, they have maintained up to date.

Members always take their pieces to the meetings. The pieces are required to be typed and without the poet's name.

So when poets take their poems to the meeet, the moderator of the meet who is chosen randomly for a particular meet collects all the written pieces. The pieces are then redistributed randomly amongst the memmbers which rules out, to a great extent, the possibility of redistributing to poets their own poems.

Afterwards each and every one that gets a poem will then read the poem and give his or her opinion on the subject matter, style, languange and punctuation of the given poem before other members come in to critic the poem.

Upon satisfactory criticing of the poem, the moderator asks the poet of the piece to come out and give a word or two about the piece. After that, the moderator writes the name of the poet on the piece which is then kept in the archives of the group.

Over the years the Lantern Meet of Poets that was founded by members like Guy Mambo, Edgar Kangere, Jason Ntaro, Kagayi Peter and Ojakol Omerio among others has been growing in number spreading its wings further to harness more talent in the writing of poetry.
The group has been central to the narturing of the writing talent as some writers in the group have gone on to scoop various writing awards in the country and can comfortably attribute their growth as writers to the Lantern Meet of Poets.

The group that boasts of over 50 members most of whom are university students is in the process of publishing its first anthology.

Read more about the Lantern Meet of Poets and their previous recitals

Lantern Meet of Poets a Harbinger of High Culture

Student poetry brings National Theatre to Life

Let the poet come out

Lantern Meet something or other

Map showing location of the Uganda National Theatre

View National Theatre in a larger map

The clash of wishes

If you read newspapers and if all all newspapers around the world are similar to the Ugandan newspapers like the New Vision, then I am sure you have come across articles that have headlines like "Ten things women wish men knew" or "Ten things men wish women knew."

Such articles will then go on to list a barrage of hypothetical wishes of men or women. It is just amazing that women claim that they have never understood how the men function and so do men. But then you keep hearing people getting married, men and women, and you will keep wondering how all this happens despite the purpoted differences between the two sexes.

That is why fools like I have seized reading such articles because they just seem like a bunch of fantasies, by either of the sexes that will never be really satisfied. What matters to me most is to get that daughter of Eve that will really undesrtand my bufoonish stunts and my adamic antics. Similarly I will also try to appreciate her attributes that are supposedly due to the fact that she is a descendant of our grandma Eve. Then, I will place that ring on her finger such that we can seal of this deal or memorundum of undertanding. We shall then leave happily there after and with no need of reading such silly newspaper articles.

This looks like mere fantasy. Right? Yes it is indeed fantasy because there is nothing as sweet to a fool like I as the idea of writing fantasies. There is a way they teleport me from this problematic world and take me to that perfect world where every thing is perfect including the idea of falling in love. The only problem is that that world only exists in my mind and nowhere else on this planet.

By Tiberindwa Zakaria

And so what is love?

It may sound like it is childish for a WHOLE 22- year old man to be wondering what the hell the meaning of love is on this planet. But then I would like to beg that before we cast the first stone, let us first examine our selves and find out whether we really understand this madness called love.

Now I know many of you in a bid to understand what love is, have been reading all kinds of articles in newspapers and books sijuyi romantic novels and many more. Yet things never seem to work out when you actually try to love according the rules and regulations in those books. Some of you even go as far as watching and listening to some programs on television and radio just because you want to discover the so called mystery in love or the so called true love but you never click the trick.

And that is why there is every reason for you to stop reading all those other silly things and listen to what I am going to tell you now. To begin with love is not something akin to a commandment or well established principle that is based on some rules and regulations. What works today may never work tomorrow. What works for Tom may not work for Dick and Harry. That is why those books can never give you definite answers.. and neither can those programs on televisions or those seminars you attend in a bid to understand what love is.

All that you do when you do all those things in a bid to understand the complexities of love is trying too hard to understand a simple four lettered word. What I mean is that you are scratching your head too much to understand L-O-V-E which should be a pretty an easy thing to do.

So the conclusion of the matter is that just stop trying so hard. In fact there is no reason why you should. Simply go out there with an open mind, ready to be hurt and make mistakes and let the experience of it teach you how to do it. Obviously at one point you may need to fall back to the books and articles in newspapers to pick a few ideas here and there but even then those ideas should not be taken as rules and regulations. I would rather you took them as guidelines. If you can only do this then there is no doubt that sooner than later you will be the one writing those articles telling people, how the hell they should love their loved ones on this planet. Trust me on this blog we shall have space for you.

By Tiberindwa Zakaria

To be or not to be a gentleman

Sometimes I pity daughters of men that dream of meeting gentlemen on this planet. To be sincere there are not so many gentlemen on this planet. Or at least to be specific on this continent that belongs to African sons of men. Obviously some of these ladies more so campus chics will watch some of those actors sijuyi a certain Salvardo or Antonio pulling a chair for a one Barbarita in soaps and then expect African men like I to do such silly things.

For heaven's sake those soaps are acted and ultimately not anywhere near to reality. In reality, some of these ladies will meet silly young but African men like I that do not give a damn about being "gentlemen"

I mean, how can a young man like I that was brought up believing to be superior by default bend as low as pulling chairs for ladies in the name of being a gentleman! I that was bred in a village; where all I could do was sit in manner akin to the proverbial village chief swinging my legs like I owned the world, whistling away and picking my nose when I felt like...I simply cannot. Yet, I can assure you that at one point I shall have some of these young ladies swinging their skirts around my soul and desperately yearning for my hand in marriage.

I know that even when I refuse to take up the exaggerated beliefs of some of these young women for instance those that claim mbu eating with our naked hands is not a classy venture, I shall still have some of them running after my soul.

I am told even some of the extremists among them expect us to use forks and knives as weapons of food destruction when munching things. Kati Honestly, I have never thought of any other method of mercilessly munching a thing like a chicken thigh other than that method that requires the use of my naked hands.

Then, I hear of things like chopsticks. With those ones. I do not think some of us will even ever learn how to use them.

Naye, that is not to say that we cannot pretend to be gentlemen. Obviously as soon as we realize that the only way of netting some of these damsels in this world is by acting to be gentlemen, we shall surely act as perfect gentlemen like some of those actors that they watch on Television. Yet as soon as we net these ladies we shall go back to our old ways after all old habits die hard. Wamma isn't that so all the African men out there that were never born to be gentlemen? And if you feel me and my Jazz simply say aye.

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By Tiberindwa Zakaria

When they are single, Christian and heading to hell

"My name is Brother Zakaria Tiberindwa a.k.a Musumba Zaake...My status...umm...deeply hooked to a cantankerously gorgeous babe." Obviously such a powerful intro will be followed by a heavily chorused exclamation of "Ehh Maama!" and loud musings of "Oba who is that ka lucky babe?" from the multitudes that do not know about that thug of a woman that stole my heart.

But then the problem is when it comes to their turn to introduce themselves. You will find brothers that will claim to be "in love with Jesus Christ" and sisters that are "engaged to our lord Jesus Christ." For heaven's sake, we too are "in love with Jesus Christ" but also "deeply hooked to gorgeous daughters of men.” There is a way some of these single brothers and sisters want us to think that they are nearer to God than we are.

We all know that when Jesus comes back he is coming back for his pure and undefiled church. I am quite certain that that will include brothers that are hooked up. He has no plans to take to heaven only single brothers that barely know what the hell they want on this planet; or single sisters that are fantasizing about “engagements” with our lord. 

May be, we would excuse these sisters for dreaming of being engaged to Christ if they were Muslims because at least then we would know that Prophet Issa or the Jesus we know will come at the end of time to get married to one of them since he died a single man like some of them. We would excuse them given that in the world of Muslims it is believed that Prophet Issa will come back to get married.

Yet after giving such fake and silly intros at events, they will then begin accusing and counter accusing one another: sisters clamoring sijuyi "Brothers are SLOW" and brothers grumbling mbu “the sisters are RELUCTANT."

Kati Brothers and Sisters, here is the conclusion of the matter. In this world of unmarried Christians there are two things involved. You are either in a relationship or you are single. If you are in a relationship it is okay but if you are single there are two things involved. You are either single and contended or single and searching/available for the case of our sisters. 

If you are single and contented it is okay but if you are single and searching/available there are two things involved. You either say it openly or you keep fooling us around. If you say it openly it is okay but if you keep fooling us around there are two things involved. You will either become frustrated and shut up when you realize that it is not us that you are fooling but yourself or you will become frustrated and begin blaming the sisters or brothers for your predicament. If you become frustrated and shut up it is okay but if you become frustrated and begin blaming the brothers or sisters for your predicament, there is only one thing involved. You will most likely end up in hell.

By Tiberindwa Zakaria