POIGNANT

he volcanic eruption taking place in his trouser disappeared almost as quickly as it came. It was as though the heavens had sent a heavy rain to put out the fire burning in his trouser, but it was no rain. His mother’s voice brought everything to a standstill. He had been after this girl for more than six months but she had kept turning him down. It was his persistence that brought him to this stage, the stage where he was about to reap what his patience had brought him. Of all the time in the world mama had to come looking for him, why did it have to be now? Couldn’t she have waited for at least another ten minutes or if ten minutes was too much to ask why not five

The foundation of a house does not rest on the ground but upon the shoulders of a woman.’ He paused as he searched their eyes, he knew he had their attention, he could see it in their eyes, beside his soft yet penetrating voice, his impeccable accent always worked magic for him. ' Do you know who said that? He ask. Anyone? No? Very well, my father didn’t say it, I know he didn’t, if he had, I would have known.’ He chuckled as his audience smiled. ' Yes, my father didn’t, he was a brilliant man but like most men his age, women were ehm, ehm,' as he searched for the right word to use, a lady shouted ' weaker vessels' from the audienc

the things most people took for granted, things like: "struggle against apartheid’ what Mandela stands for' how apartheid regime eventually collapse' how the first animal in space was Rhesus, a monkey; how the popular hymn ' Amazing Grace’ was composed by a repentant slave trader named John Newton based on his near death experience in Calabar; how Ethiopia and Liberia were the only countries that were not colonised in Africa, how aliens are referred to as EBES, extraterrestrial biological entities, how no one could travel through or over the Bermuda Tr

 At home Dennis lived a double life too, he would ' double faced ’ as it was called. He would leave home under the pretext of visiting classmates to attend parties.

"No, oh, no, I’m sorry. Curiosity got the better of me, it had been a vacant room, and seeing it open, I just wanted to, you know. Our new neighbor?” “Oh yeaaa, but not me, my friend. She’s the one moving in.”