More short stories

Put a shark in your tank and see how far you can really go! Sweet Bhanu
3 Aug 07

The Japanese have a great liking for fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So, to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring back the fish. The longer it took them to bring back the fish, the staler they grew.

The fish were not fresh and the Japanese did not like the taste. To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen fish. And they did not like the taste of frozen fish. The frozen fish brought a lower price. So, fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little hashing around, the fish stopped moving. They were tired and dull, but alive.

Unfortunately, the Japanese could still taste the difference. Because the fish did not move for days, they lost their fresh-fish taste. The Japanese preferred the lively taste of fresh fish, not sluggish fish. The fishing industry faced an impending crisis! But today, it has got over that crisis and has emerged as one of the most important trades in that country! How did Japanese fishing companies solve this problem? How do they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan?

To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies still put the fish in the tanks. But now they add a small shark to each tank. The shark eats a few fish, but most of the fish arrive in a very lively state. The fish are challenged and hence are constantly on the move. And they survive and arrive in a healthy state!They command a higher price and are most sought-after. The challenge they face keeps them fresh!

THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY Sunkan

The next day he rang up and my grandfather picked up the phone, when Mr. Agarwal came online, my grandfather called me and said he wanted to speak, I just showed him the sign I was not interested, and grandpa my great pal came to my rescue, asked him what is it and that he would pass on the message to me.

Mr.Agarwal said he wanted to take me to the movie THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY which was a very wonderful one, then grandpa said but we cannot send her alone you see, she can go if he allowed her to be escorted and he agreed readily, then he asked grandpa how many tickets and grandpa without flinching said fifteen. Even then he brought and all in the family went with me sitting in one end and Agarwal in the other end, the entire family enjoyed with chips and popcorn, I could not even remember what movie it was and how the plot went on. Today to think of it could only make me happy I had grandpop who immediately solved the issue which none else could.

What An African Woman Thinks My grandfather is 576 years old

Kamau was making outrageous claims about his grandfather.

“My grandfather is 576 years old” he claimed, chest puffed, shoulders raised, eyes aglow.

Kiarie laughed. What nonsense. Didn’t anyone ever tell him that no one lived to be that old? People die when they are one hundred. He had it on good authority.

“Big fat ugly liar.”

There he went again. And then he added, smirk on his lips, glint in his eye:

“You pagan. Don’t you read your Bible? Haven’t you read about Enoch and Methula?”

“Methuselah,” Mum corrected, absentmindedly, “What about him?”

“How old was he when he died?” Kiarie asked, as she stood vigil over their dinner at the stove.

“I don’t know. I remember he was old. I send you to school to learn to read and now you want me to read for you? There’s a Bible on the shelf isn’t there? So then what are you waiting for, a bell?”

Her only concession was to add, as an afterthought: “It’s in Genesis. Check in Genesis.”

Tucked into a cosy corner behind the sofa late the next night, Kiarie, to his shock, read: Enoch lived 365 years and Methuselah lived 969 years! Adam lived to be 900 years old and some other people besides-Kenan died when he was 910, and Jared died when he was 962.

He was good-humoured enough, in defeat.

“How old is your father?” is what he now wanted to know.

Kamau mistook his curiosity for nosiness unwarranted and unwelcome,

“What business of yours is that?”

But as long as they were talking about his grandfather he added:

“Do you know that he was born white?”

“White?”

“Yes, white, as in a white man.”

Kiarie was unconvinced -“And then what happened?”- but cautious in his response.

(Once you’ve tasted bitter medicine, you’re not anxious to get sick again.)

“And then he stayed in Africa so long that his skin turned black.”

“Oh.”

“So you see,” Kamau concluded, agloat, “We’re not really Africans after all, we’re wazungu!”

Which was his way of telling Kiarie that he was superior to, better than, him.

Mum laughed until there were tears in her eyes and she had to clutch her belly because her tummy hurt.

R

Friday February 02nd 2007 fleeing the jurisdiction

The interpreter

They had grown up together in Pujehun, Ibrahim comparatively well off. He would send food to the other boy’s family when there was anything to spare. Later, as Ibrahim got his first job working for a local NGO, he would bend the rules to provide extra food aid cards for his playmate’s parents. The encroaching war, however, saw allegiances divided. The power of gun and uniform lured many who felt vulnerable. And so, out of some hidden resentment or rivalry, or for some reason less reducible, Ibrahim’s family was targeted by the one they had sought to help. His house burned and father killed, Ibrahim fled, escaping the murderous attentions of his former friend only narrowly.

Years later, the rebel has evaded indictment by the Special Court due to his usefulness as a witness implicating more senior figures, shortly to include Charles Taylor. For these services, he walks free on the streets of Freetown; his numerous bloody transgressions conveniently overlooked. The Prosecution has supplied him with a comfortable home, and a generous allowance. He cannot, however, go home to Pujehun, where the memory of his atrocities will linger for some time to come. Set adrift, then, in a country where place and community are central to identity, he recently came - drawn by familiarity - to the modest lodgings secured by Ibrahim’s pay as an interpreter at the same Court where he testifies in closed session.

The African obligation to provide hospitality must be strong indeed, as Ibrahim took him into his home, where they sat in silence. The crimes committed, and unhappiness visited, one on the other were set aside for the civility of sharing a meal. Relating this to me, Ibrahim commented, with the most disgust I ever saw him summon, that next time, he would not bother to cook.

Ibrahim has now learned that he has been selected among very few Sierra Leonean interpreters to travel to The Hague for the trial of Charles Taylor. In the cold of distant Holland, I wonder if he will be once again reunited with his childhood companion.

trial of Foday Sankoh fleeing the jurisdiction

The judge sat in silence for a full five minutes, his wordless rage expressed only through flailing gestures of dismissal, directed at his infamous courtroom guest. Stroking his unkempt and greying beard, there was nothing to outwardly mark the man who had gone from corporal in the Sierra Leone Army (and part-time wedding photographer) to commander in chief of a revolutionary movement vying with stiff competition for the title of the bloodiest in West Africa. If, aside from the training he recieved at Gaddafi’s notorious “House of Blood” in Benghazi, charisma played a part in his rise, there was none of it on show now.

Perhaps he knew, sitting quietly in the dock, that thugs in his employ had, some months previous, attacked the judge’s house at night, forcing him to flee over a high wall. The judge was still nursing a limp from the fall, in which he had broken his leg. Given Sierra Leone’s meagre medical resources, the bone would probably never be properly set and the man with the gavel would likely carry for the rest of his life an all too apparent reminder of the violence and fear that the RUF had brought.

Finally able to sputter a few words through his fury, the judge announced that the trial would take seven days. After which, he added, before a packed gallery of eager BBC and CNN hacks, Foday Sankoh would be sentenced to death. Sweat trickled down his face from beneath the absurd horsehair wig he wore, another unproductive and counterintuitive legacy of British administration. Waveringly, the accused raised his hand, and the journalists readied pens and dictaphones for an utterance that might well make the history books. Instead, Sankoh asked for permission to go to the toilet. Apoplectic, the judge ordered that he be removed before he defecated all over the courtroom.

Swept up by the mandate of the newly constituted Special Court, Sankoh never faced sentence in the domestic jurisdiction. Awaiting transfer to his suite in the UN-guarded detention blocks, he was held at Pademba Road Prison, a crumbling colonial monolith now teeming with four times its intended population. Apart from the prisoners, many of them having spent years without charge for some minor offence committed against a government official, there is a parallel community of insects swarming in the untended filth. Reputedly placed below even this on the evolutionary scale, is the man set to guard Sankoh. He is known for the pleasure he takes in torturing inmates.

Following his entry into the custody of the Special Court, it was apparent Sankoh’s health was failing. Before he could reach trial, in a great loss for the annals of international criminal law and - more importantly - for the Sierra Leoneans who had waited long to see him face justice, he died, reportedly of complications from a stroke. The Chief Prosecutor who had been readying the case against him remarked that his passing had granted him “a peaceful end that he denied to so many others.” I was not there to witness these events; this story was related to me by one who was.

fleeing the jurisdiction