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Crying in the rain by Lamin S. Darboe

Rice harvesting was at its peak, and all the women were busy trying to get their rice from the fields. I was already nine months old in my mother’s stomach. Then on one Thursday afternoon, just before sunset, as narrated by my grandmother, my mother gave birth to me. “I heard a groan under the baobab tree that stood at the foot of the rice fields. I rushed there to find out what was happening, and not to my surprise, I was welcomed by the crying of a beautiful baby.” my grandmother Jankey said....

Why not Black? - a poem by Cherno Omar Barry

Why not Black? By Cherno Omar Barry Slippery eel joins the world it’s like Youth emerging smiling Crying for the pleasurable pains of the earth An argument she has just begun That which is between Good and Evil Good reigns On years of culture and rupture Blooms her to a smashing rosebud Epoch of joy and youthful age Savouring the juices Full of happiness In pearls of laughter Years mount fast the ladder of age New stage develops Men, both the old and...

The Lady of the River by Cherno Omar Barry

For several weeks now, Brima Touray has been acting very strangely. He is often absent minded when his clients come to make an order and when they attract his attention, he seems to awaken from a reverie. Brima’s wife, Salimata is very worried. She has been hearing what people have been saying about her husband and it worries her so much. How can some people insinuate that her husband is possessed by witches? Or is he slowly going mad? However much she denies these allegations she still...

Adventures of Samba in America #4

By Amran Gaye For the first time in his life the weather has taken on character. It is like a person with moods - and what moods. He knew a girl once, whose behavior was unpredictable and often cold. One moment she would be smiling and talking happily - then of a sudden she would withdraw behind a cloud of gloom, frigid and impenetrable. They had gone to school together and she had had no friends, gaining a reputation on the playground as being too much like a toubab, too withdrawn...

The Adventures of Samba in America #3

In the Senegalese shop there was music playing from the back, a male baritone layered over the strumming of a Kora, unhurried in its delivery. It was in Wolof, and the voice sounded familiar. "Who is that?", he asked the shopkeeper. An old man dressed in a chaaya - how long he had gone without seeing a chaaya - and short kaftan, sitting on a stool with one leg lifted onto it. In the manner of the old man's sitting he saw a familiarity with the World, a comfortableness within it that he...

Katchikali: by Dr Lenrie Peters

Katchikali What magic spells held the first men, wandering in darkness heads bowed, to draw breath, refuge from toil and say This is our home Katchikali and the crocodiles of another world under your waters tame as pumpkins Katchikali Katchikali, Katchikali The women weight-drowned towards the farms bend their knees and say a prayer Katchikali Lovers under a fertile moon pray for their children Katchikali And the crocodiles, watchful older...

The King and the Guewel: A Ramadan Fairytale #2

The next day the King, hungry once more and in a foul mood, looked about him for someone to take it out on. He remembered the mbahal he had eaten the previous night, and how good it had been. Remembering it now made his stomach growl, and made him even angrier. It was all that guewel's fault, talking to him about food and getting ideas into his head. He ordered a member of his guard to bring Alpha before him. "Rise, guewel!", the King roared at him as he bowed low before him, "and give me...

The Adventures of Samba in America #2

By Amran Gaye (Baltimore, USA) One day as a child he had gone out to hunt rabbits with his friends, in the forest. They had a dog they kept, feeding it the leftover scraps from their makeshift barbecues, and it ran at their side, barking excitedly. He could not see himself in the memory, but he could see the faces of the others, excited, a blue pair of shorts, a dirty, discolored shirt torn at the side so the armpit showed as the arm was lifted in the motion of running, a red cap. Some of them...

The Adventures of Samba in America #1

By Amran Gaye (Baltimore, USA) Strangest of all he finds the way people smile at you on the street: this tight, quick, little smile that at once said hello and goodbye, as if friendliness were a thing to be given to strangers only in tiny doses. Smiles that seemed to say "I have never met you before and I do not know you but I am doing this because it is my duty to be friendly to strangers, but I beg you to do likewise and give me a tight little smile back and walk past - let us not turn this...

The King and the Guewel: A Ramadan Fairytale #1

By Amran Gaye (Baltimore, USA) Once upon a time, before Gambia was Gambia, there stood surrounding the river which is now called the river Gambia a large Kingdom. It is said by the guewel, the carriers of our oral history, that this Kingdom was so wondrous in its treasures, its King so wise and just, that men came from all over the world to behold its treasures and learn from him. It is said that the people of the Kingdom were happy under his rule, and commerce flourished as it never had...