3 must-read stories from 2015 Writivism Prize

Last month, Pemi Aguda, a Nigerian was announced the 2015 Writivism Short Story Prize winner at a ceremony in Kampala, Uganda, for her story ‘Caterer, caterer.’ Before then, she was shortlisted along with two other Nigerians, Nnedinma Jane Kalu for ‘Social Studies,’ and Adeola Opeyemi for ‘Being a Man.’ Aguda’s ‘Caterer, caterer’ From the beginning […]

Last month, Pemi Aguda, a Nigerian was announced the 2015 Writivism Short Story Prize winner at a ceremony in Kampala, Uganda, for her story ‘Caterer, caterer.’ Before then, she was shortlisted along with two other Nigerians, Nnedinma Jane Kalu for ‘Social Studies,’ and Adeola Opeyemi for ‘Being a Man.’
Aguda’s ‘Caterer, caterer’
From the beginning of this story, I found myself caught in the web of the narrator’s words. I followed the major character on her trip to the church everyone seemed to talk about. She is a caterer and is on her way to cook for the people celebrating the laying of the foundation stone of the church. I pictured her struggling to regain balance each time the ‘Keke Marwa’ she is in enters a pot-hole. She is obviously an expert cook since she is the choice for the occasion. Certainly, there will be a lot of money involved. Of course, that is why she is excited about the opportunity, her mind already on the double rent it can pay and maybe more.
There must be something about this church that people talk about. The pastor’s name is Pascal and she has heard he performs many miracles. Her husband Biyi, who has lost his legs, does not trust the church, but she does not pay him any heed, after all it is the money she is after and not about to become a member. I am eager, just like she is to get to the church and see what the foundation looks like and the kind of individuals that are there. And perhaps, Pastor Pascal himself, even though it appears it is not that easy to see him.
But the moment she arrives at the gate I hold my breath: The man in suit who ushers her in appears too cautious for my liking and the heavily made-up woman that treats her like a ‘nobody,’ then the bony girl that is asked to help her prepare the meal. Just as she is about to get to work, she beholds a sight that makes her feel faint, run and vomit. She is confused, worse, scared beyond herself. She just witnessed bodies of human beings offloaded from a truck like bags of cement.
The lady with heavy make-up scolds her and tells her casually to be calm. Calm? Those are dead human beings she just saw. She soon realises that she has to be calm, nevertheless. That lack of calmness was what made Iya Sadiq, her rival who handed her the job, run away. But she said she was travelling. Caterer finds herself being consoled by the bony girl that refused to speak earlier.
Suddenly, the girl seems to find her voice. Where does she draw the guts to work in such a place where bodies of human beings are cooked along with food for the congregation and some shoved in the foundation? This may be why the girl has no flesh on her. Now caterer knows she is not so fortunate after-all. Even Iya Sadiq has been ‘taken care of, she is told.’ She watches the girl scrape a dead woman like roasted meat. She bends to the task too.
As I end this story, I am still shocked at the surprising turn of events. Suspense is this writer’s strength as she leaves every other conclusion to her reader.  
Opeyemi’s ‘Being a Man’
It is not every day that one reads a story bound to Nigeria’s present such as this. This is why I admire this writer’s courage. He writes as if he is the 10-year-old narrator who fantasises about death. This is not because he wants to die himself, but for his desire to be a spectator and the one to be given attention by many for losing a beloved one. Then his wish becomes reality, but not as he envisaged. Everywhere is quiet and there is hardly the activity he had noticed at other mourning houses.
Perhaps this is because of the nature of Isa, his step-brother’s death. Was it a bomb blast? The writer does not reveal, so his death is shrouded in mystery. But it has to be since Isa’s body is not wrapped and prepared for burial like others. The body could not be identified. Obviously, many had lost loved ones too. Maybe this is why there is so much quiet. 
So the boy sulks and when he tries to go to the women, where his mother can pamper him, his father, Maigida restrains him angrily and tells him to be a man, and so does his uncle, Mohammadu. This does not go down well with the boy. Being called “a girl” by them makes him him feel shame and anger. There seems to be a quiet resolve to prove them wrong as he sits back among the men and watches proceedings around him.
His father does not cry, has never cried, even when he lost a beloved. The boy remembers this and it becomes his roadmap to being a man. He will have the opportunity to prove himself, but in the most bizarre manner that leaves one afraid for his future.
The burial is long gone and he is hiding in the forest with his mother and baby sister soon after Boko Haram insurgents attack their village in Borno State. This quickly clashes with recent headlines and stories from the North-east that floods the Nigerian media today.
There is fear in the air as the people go into hiding. Suddenly, the problem becomes the boy’s sister who cries and may give their position away. A man suggests she should be killed, and then another and the boy’s mother’s friend joins in. This shocks his mother and shows the price many may be paying to stay alive in the war-ravaged Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa States. 
So the girl is taken from her mother’s arms forcefully and killed, after all, ‘there will be more dead if Boko Haram pounce on us,’ the people resolve. The woman goes ashen and as though possessed by a strange spirit with insight, tells her son to run in a particular direction. He hesitates, she emphasises, and he sees the look in her eyes and obeys. The boy finds himself in the midst of the insurgents. Did his mother foresee this?
The writer leaves his reader in the dark. She probably did, because they receive fire from the same men led by one the boy calls a giant. Everyone dies, including his mother and the killers interrogate him and call him a child when they hear his age. He is given a knife to kill an older boy who is whimpering among them. He wails, the older boy too, and with trembling hands the boy brings down the knife into the older boy’s neck. The boy vomits as he watches his victim’s head severed.
“Get up! You are now a man,” the giant says.
The boy slowly understands. Perhaps this is what it means to be a man. He seeks his mother with his eyes in the pile of dead people and wished she saw his rise to manhood. He thinks about his father too, all in that moment. The terrorists have given him validation, the first ever. As he moves away with them, like many other boys that have been captured by Boko Haram time after time in the North-east, he is a warning to parents and guardians to impart virtues and confidence in their children, early enough, just in case what they lack becomes another’s weapon.  
Kalu’s ‘Social Studies’
This piece exposes the challenges of a broken home. Just like the other two stories, it is in the first person narrative and starts with a little girl’s connection with the portrait of a father she never knew. Secretly, she draws him in her drawing book and stares at her work at night, like a bid to engrave him in her mind until he becomes real and pops out of the sheets. He must be someone her mother or brother will not be happy she drew. But her obsession with the man she never knew continues into classes in school. Like most children, she must know how important a father is from what she learns at school and the mention of the name ‘father’ by her mates.
Her effort seems to say ‘if I keep drawing him he will come back to us.’ Thoughts like this distract her in class, but she has an understanding Mathematics teacher, Mrs. Emafido, who encourages her even when she fails to respond to what appears to be a simple question.
When her brother sees one of her sketches while helping her with homework, her secret becomes open. Her mother whips her and later pets her. She is even more confused. This little girl compares herself with her light-skinned brother and feels inferior and ugly. She wonders why she is dark and her mother and brother are fair and good looking. Again she is confused.
Aunty Caro visits and says things about their father that make the girl begin to ask questions. So her father had ran away? Aunty Caro called him a coward, so all men are cowards? When a play mate insults her father, her brother laughs and says “who cares? My father is a coward.”
But her mother tells her, her father ‘was’ not a coward. Confusion again – is and was, which is it?
One day her mother brings a strange man into the house, every weekend. Their father’s portrait disappears from the wall, they hear strange noises at night and the day came when this man their mother calls’ ‘your daddy’ comes into the children’s bedroom and rapes the girl. She is afraid to tell at home and instead succumbs to reveal in school where her Maths teacher pays keen attention to her pupils. Then Mrs. Amafido and another teacher visit home, and their mother rants angrily. They leave and she is flogged for spilling ‘a family affair’ in public.
The girls’ pain represents that of many girls who hide behind such suffering. Fortunately, her mother overcomes denial and sends her boyfriend packing. The man the children call ‘Bellyman’ leaves for good and her mother calls her ‘pretty girl’ with what the girl knows is sincerity for the first time, and encourages her to draw again. “You’ve got talent,” she says and the girl melts with pleasure. She feels beautiful and now believes she has talent and probably not just an obsession for daddy.
When she goes to school and the Social Studies teacher explains what nuclear family is, she does not draw her father this time, but her mother on the back of her textbook.