A RETURN TO THE LAND

….what government needs to do for people to produce food

To prove that government is not paying lip service to poverty eradication, and that indeed, these noble objectives are designed less for populist politics but genuine desire to attain self-sufficiency in food production, development policies and programmes must be networked. Batswana are traditionally and culturally, subsistence farmers and have livelihoods that are intrinsically linked to the tilling of the soil and the growing of crops. The Pula slogan of ubiquitous blessings, embracing peace wishes, rain, abundance, money, conflict resolution and so on, are about growth and making a living out of the soil.

Botswana, the semi-arid southern African country, has a citizenry that can hold perennial and animated conversations on rain and rain-fed crop farming, livestock and drinking water. The passion for rain has not been exhausted by mutating social characteristics of new generations and urban development. To the common Motswana (Botswana citizen) all roads must lead to the farming areas, where every season, it is the responsible attribute to plough and plant, so that in the later months towards winter, the nation harvests and feasts on its produce.

Thousands of Batswana have lost money trying to invest in borehole drilling, crop and stock farming largely because water is the quintessence of their passion for development- farming. When harvest comes and the rainfall season reaches the dry plains of this peaceful land, all major forms of food production related activities ground to a halt. Even though the winter seasons are not so severe as to prevent farming and lucrative growth of crops, without rain (which generally comes only in the last two months and first two months of each year), there can be no farming. Few have yielding boreholes.

Despite this potential might of the people to produce food for themselves, and in spite of pronouncements of development programmes intended to encourage food production, the government has not networked such programmes to the passions of the people. Huge amounts of taxpayers resources are channeled towards projects that have little sustenance impact on the farming habits and patterns of this proud nation.

One of the glaring tragedies of the inconsistencies of development programmes, is the lack of infrastructure activities related to farming communities; government policy basically prohibits extension of electricity power supply to farms; there is no government scheme that assists in the drilling of boreholes despite evidence of sufficient underground waters to water vast areas of land; despite a huge food import bill the government faces each year, little is done to harvest the crops of subsistence farmers whom in most cases even lack the capacity to harvest all that they have planted. Unprocessed food goes to waste. This is the food that could be feeding the poor instead of handouts of food hampers given through government purchases from the few rich farmers or imported food stuff.

This population of just over two million people in a land surface the size of the territory of France can attain windfall harvests every year or even throughout the year if:

-          Government extended resources such as electricity supply to farmers in order to encourage residence in the farms and various farming activities that are enhanced by the use of electricity driven equipment;

-          Storage facilities reminiscent of the colonial era and the pre-colonial tribal era where subsistence farmers were assisted to harvest and store food for leaner years. In today’s advanced governance and affordability, government could purchase the harvest directly from subsistence farmers. This is the food for the hampers later- not imported food or food bought for the further enrichment of the rich.

-          Where possible, domestic water supply provided by water utilities should be extended to farming communities to encourage residence, which in turn encourages ploughing (farming). Increased rural or farm residential activity would create employment, provide permanent and regular sources of food, reduce urban congestion with its burdens on the infrastructure- not to mention societal ills such as crime.

-          Campaigns of ‘a return to the land’ nature should be launched in order to encourage the above.

-          The expensive and least productive part-time farming (more of a hobby currently) would lessen and greater farming activities would thrive.

This is my contribution to food production; I am in it. I am in the position to know the pain and the joy.

Andrew Sesinyi

Bullies Do Cry Too

….When last were you bullied? Bullying is not just physical; there can be emotional bullying, verbal bullying, psychological bullying, and social bullying. The “bully” in this poem is in the category of all of the aforesaid….the remedy given is ‘makgonatsotlhe’- 'one-size-fits all'.

[Poem written in 2010]

[Picture by the author]

The unruly bully raced brazenly into my world

Hitherto my esteem was strong in deed and in word

But his onerous feature defaced the wholesome picture

His pulls and pushes equalled wreck and ruin to my fixture

I dreaded streets that I once treaded steadily and gaily

I hid where I was needed and emotionally bled daily

I socially shrunk and sank deeply into the abyss of fear

I relied on lies and tied myself to bonds I couldn’t tear

When the unruly bully showed up or spoke up I dried up

Even his absence smelled strongly and my reticence piled up

Soon I realised I had idealised a dwarf in the body of a giant

To cast off the spellbinding power the bully had to be gaunt

I delved deeper into my innermost and dug out my self esteem

Entranced with adrenaline I restructured my mind to self-redeem

I droned myself into trusting my capacity to reverse my status

To retrieve self-esteem and restore my dignity to previous quotas

Admitting that bullies bully because they are betrayed by base qualities

I found in me limitless reserves of resolution and resources of abilities

When next the bully dared me to stare I stared into the feeble face

And pronounced to his eyes that my fear had dissipated without trace

The bully to my shock buried his face in his huge hands and cried

My empathy could not have been at naught even if I had tried

I discerned the fragility that betrayed me to be the façade of his power

That strength of character can match the solidity of the tallest tower.

By Andrew Sesinyi.

YOU CANNOT FIGHT MEDIA AND WIN- IT’S LIKE FIGHTING GHOSTS

….the journalist in me speaks

I repeat: No political leader can fight media and win!

It has never happened and never will.

One of the most visible signs of leadership failure is manifested when a leader attempts to divert public opinion from poor performance by waging a campaign of haunting the press, hounding journalists, intimidating individual media practitioners and creating a pervasive atmosphere of fear of persecution among media houses.

Confident leaders are tolerant performers who uphold the popular saying:

“Your value does not decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth”.

In the world today, we are increasingly seeing leaders who decimate their political fortunes and mutilate their otherwise admirable persona by resorting to intolerant over-reactions to media reports. At times, a non-story builds into an inexplicable national whoop-de-do because a government whoops up the hullabaloo by taking drastic measures in an effort to punish. What happens is that such non-stories which would have earned the dismissal and contempt of the public become immensely topical with everyone wondering why there was such a brouhaha.

The public, when not interfered with, when left to the wonderful chemistry of freedom of expression and an atmosphere of tolerance, become ruthless judges and critics of media; not to mention the public’s consumer capacity to spontaneously isolate or banish an offending/disrespectful journalist from their repertoire. Media houses live in perpetual fear of triggering this public spontaneity to punish them, but when governments come in, the offending articles and the journalists behind them enjoy public empathy. The best advice to government is: as much as possible, please try not attempt to manage press freedom and media practice. When the public observes some semblance of management of news and media reports intended for the general public, the public’s natural gate-keeping capacity is turned into either full scale hostility to leadership or derision and distrust.

Media cannot hold leadership in disrespect or derision and still win consensual public approval. Unfortunately, politicians tend to treat the public as a homogeneous entity. The public is called public because of its generality, its communal essence, its free-to-all accessibility and its diverse constitution. When leadership attempts to interfere with media on behalf of the public, more often than not a government stirs hostility and mistrust. The public is best left to debate the merits and demerits of a non-criminal story line from a moral perspective, and in its spontaneity the public has been known to deliver a hard verdict of ‘guilty’ on offending journalists. Under such circumstances, the media, who are business entities lose the clientele amazingly fast and with dire effects on circulation, listenership and of course, revenue.

BUT that works out neatly only when there is no undue interference by the Goliath hand of governance.

To diminish the sting of criticism by media, a wronged but strategic government will, in the main:

-         -  issue a statement of fact to correct the errors in an article

-          - maintain utterances of its firm stand and commitment to freedom of expression and

-         - express the inalienable rights of individuals and organisation therein mentioned, to seek recourse to the courts for justice on grounds of slander and or libel.

That automatically depicts a government as much of a victim of the discomforts of democracy and freedom of expression, as everyone else; it depicts a government’s reluctance to use too much might to spite an instrument of freedom of expression; it draws public sympathy and empathy- in the process, a government wins over the respect and trust of the public.

If, however, a government has delusions of grandeur and wants to depict itself as Goliath, it will resort to a war path immediately. The consequences are generally disappointing to the general public because hard-handedness can never be an admirable trait in a leadership cadre that is already armed to the teeth by a plethora of laws guaranteed in the constitution.

Powers that are lawfully afforded governments exist to guard against abuse and offence but need not be used to the utmost all the time.

The most powerful instrument in defusing a public spat with media is to use media to discredit the medium that appears in the wrong. The platitude of making a mountain out of a molehill is as astute today as when it was first coined centuries ago.

Governments must walk tall mainly to be seen delivering services, than issuing retribution!

That’s the case for media and freedom of expression.

Andrew Sesinyi

*******   *******   *******

MY THOUGHTS ON COUNTRY DEVELOPMENT

…managing a family is a benchmark for running a country

Triggered by lack of resources as a key reason given for lack of project implementation, I hold the strong conviction that leadership can be rendered ineffective by its inability to recognise the benchmark proximity of managing a family unit- with that of running a country. In fact, recognition by leaders, that a family is a microcosm of a country, would assist them to avoid rigid textbook manuals of how to run a country and thus permit pragmatism, realism, innovation and astute decision making.

Family units have no option but to maintain the fold amidst acute financial and other material constraints. A family has no choice but to feed its young and helpless; a family has no option but to meet its largely unanticipated health situations of all sort; for a family, there is no option but to pay school fees, pay utility bills, meet mortgage obligations and other installments. To exist, a family unit recognises that resource constraints cannot be an option over its continued existence, development and investing in a better tomorrow. That’s the family unit: the microcosm of a country. It goes without saying, therefore, that effective leaders would benefit a lot from using family units as benchmarks for the greater development landscape of a country….and that a country is just a bloated family unit.

If countries wait to have sufficient resources to carry out development projects, invest for posterity and improve the welfare of citizenry, little to nothing can be developed. When a family unit needs transport as in the acquisition of a vehicle, it exploits existing avenues for purchasing one based on the family’s income and expenditure spread sheet. Few have purchased such critically essential transport by making full cash payment. It takes planning, managed risk and assertive decisions for the family to acquire such a necessity. Family units live in homes for which they pay for most or all their lives because there is no option to the provision of shelter. Offspring are afforded the necessary educational opportunities through payment of school fees regardless of the imbalances in the income and expenditure equation; most families have successfully managed their balance of payments and developed themselves without upsetting the equilibrium, into bankruptcy.

Governments must see themselves as heads of this magnified family unit called country. Most countries have substantial resources acquired through exploitation of natural resources, taxes and other forms of revenue generation. Almost all countries have their budgetary considerations and balance of payments schedules to which they want to accord the imperative equilibrium. It would, however, be misleading and short-sighted for any government to be intimidated by the equally imperative demands for infrastructural development, health provision to citizenry, maintenance of projects, provision of essential services and sustenance of public service structures on the basis of resource constraints. The basic tenet of running a country is to make life a priority, and the aforesaid imperatives are life giving and life sustaining. It is a perilous indiscretion and a personified example of impotent leadership for a government to give priority to accumulation of revenue rather than the balancing of the savings and needs of its people. The former is tantamount to abdication of responsibility; the latter is life; reality.

Just as much as a family would be driven to debt and abject poverty if it did not pay its helpers, postponed purchase of a house as a home or skipped mortgage payments, deferred payment of bills and schools fees etc, a government that prioritizes a bulging purse over investment in the development of a country, is postponing the inevitable that will return with crippling effect. In developing a country, like in running family, what is not done today at current cost- albeit in the midst of resource constraints- will be done tomorrow at greater cost when even the accumulated savings would basically have lost the value existing at the time of postponement. It is abdication of responsibility and even negligence on the part of governments to postpone the must-do while thinking they are accumulating savings because development priorities increase faster and disproportionately than whatever interest may accrue in savings. 

It is only an astute saving if it can be used tomorrow at tomorrow’s prices.

Deferred investment action in development, is also a dangerous enticement for maladministration, misappropriation, theft and other forms of corruption because the façade of abundance tempts illegal diversion of resources for personal development; just as a parent who made savings from non-payment of essentials would be tempted to have a false sense of abundance and most likely spend the savings on non-essentials, governments may be prone to similar creations of negative debt.

Debt is good if it is balanced with regular payments until the owed property is fully owned; it must not be feared to the extent of halting self-development. Debt must be respected and serviced proportionately; that is the view of a family unit graduate and beneficiary.

In the case of Botswana, my conclusion is that every single road or other public projects that were postponed, every single infrastructural development project that was deferred, every payment of imperative productivity payments, and all undeveloped development plans were a transfer of negative burdens and imbalances for the future generations. What was supposed to be done then will be done later, at greater cost; whatever savings were made, will later be expended at a diminished value.

This is my personal opinion...I am not sorry to have opinions.

Andrew Sesinyi

*******                                *******                                ********

The literary work produced here under, is an extract from a 200 page manuscript being written by Andrew Onalenna Sesinyi as a sequel to my published novel, "Love On The Rocks", (Macmillan,1981). It is a sneak preview to what readers will  enjoy when the work is published in due course. It is the author's way of saying: "I'm working on it, as promised"

The title of the book- a sequel to its predecessor- is: "LOVE ON THE ROCKS TOO".

Enjoy, but kindly note that this work is not to be shared, copied or re-used in any manner whatsoever since that would constitute a serious breach of copyright/International Property Rights laws.

Chapter 1

Pule woke up to the choking heat of the dense summer night. Keeping his eyes closed, Pule stretched his arm to his side, where his wife Moradi was sleeping peacefully, seemingly unmindful of the heat. With the temperature hovering around 41 degrees Celsius, Pule felt as if their modest dwelling had been turned into a furnace. The stillness of the silent night was broken intermittently by distant sounds of traffic and dog barks. Occasionally, a cock crow, reminiscent of nights in the rural areas would supplement the sounds of the dying night. There was a reason behind the abrupt disruption of Pule’s sleep and an explanation for the pitch darkness that cloaked the night. There was yet again on this night, as it had been throughout the week, an electricity power supply cut resulting in a countrywide blackout. Pule had over the years developed reduced resistance to the sweltering heat of his country and to offset the discomfort he slept with a large electric fan on. The smooth purr of the cooling appliance rarely failed to lull Pule into a deep, restful sleep but when there was an electricity power disruption, the whirling electrical appliance would drone angrily to a halt, cutting the cool breeze and would be quickly displaced by a dearth of fresh air coupled with an almost tangible sense of soaring temperatures.

Pule was careful not to wake up his sleeping wife as out of force of habit he turned to look at the familiar ruddy face of the clock on the television stand at the foot of the bed. The electric clock was off. Pule sighed unhappily with growing discontent and indignation at the rapid deterioration of living standards in his country, the land that was hitherto regarded as a quietly efficient, fast developing, middle-income country- a far cry from the years when Botswana was classified as one of the least developed countries in the world. Knowing that his wife was a good sleeper who could only be roused from sleep by significantly loud sounds or movement, Pule once again became victim to force of habit when he reached for the television remote controller and pressed. He could hardly suppress a grunted swear word when he remembered that the television would be off, naturally. Although he usually slept well, Pule had an aversion for heat especially at night and he realised with growing irritability that moisture of perspiration was beginning to form under his armpits, on the forehead and behind the knees. With a heavy sigh, Pule rose as quietly as his elevated temperament could permit, careful that Moradi was not disturbed, and walked into their en suite bathroom. He would usually wet a towel to wipe sweat off his body before lying on the bed with the dripping towel covering his chest to reduce the heat, but Pule’s disrupted sleep was to go on an extended sabbatical when upon turning the tap he realised with dismay that there was no water coming out. A combination of lengthy electricity power cuts and water supply disruptions had been the order of the day for two years now, driving the nation into depression and despondency.

Unable to control his temper any further, Pule swore under his breath and lost his bearings trying to return to the bed in the dark. His leg struck the wooden stool in front of the dressing table and the pain made him cry out, more out of frustration than pain. He recalled irritably that his wife persistently reminded him to push back the stool into its place under the dressing table but since it was usually his favourite chair when chatting to Moradi in the bedroom, he would pull the stool out but forget to return it to its position. This was not the time to prove how right his wife was on many issues that generally caused him considerable discomforts. In his futile attempts to create as little noise as possible, Pule hastily moved to his side of the bed but the dry long towel that he was holding fell to his legs, tripping his movements. Pule fell and sprawled to the ground, and in his desperate attempts to hold on to something pulled the cloth on the dressing table on which Moradi’s makeup world rested. Bottles, tins and other items crashed to the tiled floor with a cacophony highlighted by the silence of the night.

“Honey? Pule? Are you okay?” Moradi asked sitting up on the bed, a little alarmed by the noise and the dark outline of his husband lying beside the bed.

“I’m fine, “Pule replied. ‘The power just went off.”

“And you’re trying to fix it honey?” asked Moradi with a hint of suppressed laughter in her voice.

“Of course not,” Pule replied. “I wanted a wet towel. The darned water is not there either.”

An irate Pule rose from the ground and moved to his side of the bed where he threw all decorum to the wind and crashed onto the bed making the lighter Moradi bounce a little as she reached for a cellular phone on her side. She switched the flash light on and shone the light on her distressed husband. Moradi’s suppressed laughter could not be contained any longer as Pule raised his hands to block the penetrating sharpness of the light on his face.

“Honey, this power shedding affects everyone and you don’t hear people breaking up their houses just because they have no light,” Moradi said, now laughing out loudly. “If you lie still, you won’t feel the heat that much. You worsen the heat by fighting it. Look at you! You’re like an enraged bull.”

Pule grabbed the light from his wife and with gentle vengeance shone it on her face. Moradi squealed with mirth, burying her head in her husband’s chest as she playfully tickled him to wrestle the cellular phone out of his hands.

“Rati,” Pule called, using his pet name for his wife, a shortened form of her name which in itself was short for ‘loved one.’ “You’re making me sweat even more. You can’t be playing at 1am. Give me that phone.”

He made no effort though to get back the phone from Moradi, as she slipped out of the bed and using the light walked barefoot to the kitchen. She returned with a litre of water, took the towel from the floor and went into the bathroom. When she returned, she had soaked the towel, making sure that unlike in Pule’s workmanship it was not dripping. She wrapped the towel around his chest and kissing him lightly on the cheek, said:

“Now can you sleep? We both have to go to work in the morning and you will wake up the children with this riot.”

Pule tried to pull his wife onto him but she restrained him with a firm hand laughing.

“No” she said. “You’re not going to get us all wet. Soak alone. Now, let’s sleep.”

Pule, now wide awake, knew that it would be a while before he can successfully fight off the heat to catch a nap before the alarm set to wake them up at 5 am churned its message.

“If at least I could watch tv,” said Pule morosely.

“You’re weird honey,” replied Moradi teasing. “Who wakes up to watch TV in the middle of the night?”

“I do,” Pule replied, stubbornly. “I told you. I wake up at 1am to use the bathroom but most importantly to make sure that I know I’ve been asleep. And I take delight in the thought that it’s not time yet to wake up and I’ve four more hours to sleep.”

“And the TV assures you of that?” Moradi teased further, knowing the response.

“Yes. TV shows me the awake world which isn’t asleep, making me feel special, privileged, lucky to be asleep. Plus, when I watch news at 1am I know the world is safe out there whilst asleep. It makes sense.”

“Yes honey, it makes sense alright,” replied Moradi. “But whilst you measure your sleep and monitor the world out loudly, some of us are disturbed.”

“Oh come on love,” replied Pule. “An earthquake wouldn’t wake you up.”

“Good,” replied Moradi. “We’re not earthquake country, so don’t cause any. Let’s sleep.”

Moradi switched off the cellular phone light and the room was once again plunged into darkened silence. It was not long before he heard the gentle snores of his wife and he envied her for her tenacity to withstand discomfort.

Benign evil stalking his heart, Pule deliberately turned and tossed boisterously until his wife woke up.

“I can’t sleep Rati.,” he whined, when her poised dark figure confronted her in the dark..

“What happened to your shooting of bad people that makes you sleep?” asked the awakened Moradi.

”They now shoot back and it keeps me a lot more awake”, replied Pule in a childlike demeanor.

 Moradi surprised herself with a spontaneous giggle at her husband’s illogical schemes to fight periodic insomnia. “What do you expect? You shoot you’re likely to get shot.”

“Their bullets are not supposed to hit me,” Pule continued with his imaginary game. “Usually, I become invisible and I can shoot them all down easily until there’s no more. Then I sleep.”

“What’s wrong with them, don’t they see your gun, or it becomes a ghost too?” Moradi humored her husband.

“It’s a next century laser gun honey,” replied Pule adopting the tone of a simpleton. “You can’t see it. I can jump from buildings without falling, fly and land anywhere without being seen. That’s how it used to be. When there’s no power like this, it’s too dark and I fall. Then the bad guys shoot me.”

“Pule honey,” replied Moradi. “I’m sure you’ll write a best seller one day but right now I’d like to sleep and so should you. There’s no electricity because of load shedding and you know it. So get used to a little discomfort.”

“A little discomfort,” Pule snorted. “They’re supposed to be inventing new wonderful things, not making up new vocabulary for incompetence. I need my aircon, or at least the fan. I pay for this electricity. It’s not on loan to me. You don’t see us load shedding their bills.”

“You’re right darling,” said Moradi, switching on her cellphone light again to look at her disconsolate husband. “Poor baby. Your face looks moist with sweat. It’s because you don’t lie still or try to ignore the heat. I’m affected the same way but I still sleep.”

“I’m older than you,” replied Pule.

Moradi sat up on the bed and shone the light even closer to Pule’s face before saying:

“You’re only 5 years older than me, you idiot. And that makes you 35 years old. Too early even for male menopause. How long have you been awake?”

“Two hours 45 minutes,” Pule replied promptly.

“You actually time these power cuts?” Moradi asked with mild concern. “Don’t you think you’re going over board? The entire country is affected by these power cuts, so why should you be the worst victim?”

“They said two to four hours,” replied Pule with obstinacy. “The power never comes back in two hours and most times it’s five hours. So, they lie. They’re official liars.”

“It’s people like you who suffer strokes whilst others sleep peacefully”, Moradi said. “There are two million people in this country who are affected and you choose to suffer the worst. Look if you want to spend hours endangering your health with worries and sleepless nights, join politics and be one of the official liars.”

“May be I should,” Pule replied, turning away from the sharp light and facing the wall on his side of the bed.

Moradi switched off the light and snuggled even closer to her husband, putting her tender arms around him, before replying.

“If you do, you’d have sentenced us all to abject poverty, or a life of theft and corruption. Look around. Do any of the politicians look happy? Is anyone of them clean? You’re educated, talented and good at what you’re doing, so the last thing you want to do is running around the country with a loud speaker and an audience of starving children, old people and their goats.”

Pule laughed, grinning into the darkness, for that moment tolerant of the sweltering that came with the increased heat from his wife’s proximity. It was not an uncomfortable feeling.

“Rati, you’re ever so derisive about politics. If we don’t join politics, the leadership will keep circulating among the school dropouts currently leading us. We’ve got to get involved.”

“Pule, are you serious? You sound serious about this and we never quite discussed it,” said Moradi.

“Honey, I’ve raised it before but you’re always dismissive when I raise it,” Pule defended himself.

“Derisive or dismissive?” Moradi asked more in an attempt to confuse Pule into changing the subject, than seeking a clarification.

“Both,” replied Pule without hesitation.

“And we will not be talking about it at this hour, darling,” Moradi said firmly. “We’ve enough problems of our own. Remember your three children? They’re sleeping peacefully right now, not knowing that their father is stealthily scheming to join voices crying in the wilderness.”

It was at that time that the hissing sound of a reactivating air conditioner announced the return of the electricity supply. Pule reached for the remote controller and switched on the cooling appliance whilst Moradi switched on the side light. Moving quietly with the grace of a cat, Moradi walked bare foot to the children’s rooms which were adjacent to theirs. Motsetsana and Tshetsana slept together in one room, and the toddler, Baruti in his own room. The soft lights of the children’s bedrooms were on and Moradi saw that they were sleeping peacefully.  As a health precaution, and a cost saving measure, she preferred that the children did not sleep with the air conditioning on but the oppressive heat demanded otherwise. She switched on the cooling appliances, adjusting the settings to ensure that the air circulated without direct impact on the children. She enjoyed the moments when she watched her little boy and the two girls sound asleep, without a care in the world, oblivious to the vicissitudes of life. It was during those savored moments that Moradi felt her maternal instincts sprouting in her with the effervescing power.

She walked soundlessly to the girls room first, and kissed each of them on the cheek before moving to the boy’s room and doing the same. The three year old boy seemed to sense his mother because he made a whimpering sound as if fighting to awake from the deep sleep. Moradi smiled to herself and walked back to her bedroom, where her husband had switched on the television and was watching world news .on his favorite BBC channel. In that regard, she was a long suffering spouse and had come to terms with the idiosyncrasies of her husband, which she attributed to the infantile behavior of men in general. Her mother Mmamoradi, had endured the midnight snacking habits of her father Mr Baruti until the older woman developed the secondary results of the habit and treated herself to her cookies delicacies at that odd hour. Moradi had so far resisted adopting any bad habits to match her husband’s inexplicable antics with the night.

After visiting the adjacent bathroom, Moradi marched authoritatively towards her husband, grabbed the remote controller and switched off the television. When Pule opened his mouth to protest, Moradi kissed him gently, switched off the light and purred into his ear:

“I want my husband to now make love, not war.”

Pule melted and surrendered to marital bliss.

(The manuscript development is now at an advanced stage and readers will next meet Pule and Moradi when it is published)

Andrew Onalenna Sesinyi [All copyright laws apply]

AS BOTSWANA TURNED 50 YEARS

You were barren yet bountiful Botswana when I bid for you

I baited you and dated you with all your doubts due

I took you to the floor flourishing in the open dance

Betrothed we wedded and gave each other the chance

Fifty years later our dance remains faultless

Yet its flourish declines to be doubtless.

For as in dance I move you to the floor

In doubt you dance me to the door.

You wish that I would praise your beauty and cherished charms

You feel my bait since the first date is now decked in dutiful alms

The dance we share is like motions broken by staccato passages

The bands of bonds we banded and bounded to lack messages

For you think I am lacking in feeling

Because my waltz now lacks sterling

The truth though lives that I love you

Slow speed is from the pace of loving you

Fathom the changes you’ve undergone and the loads on board

Picture the sequences of the dance and the moves you hoard

Then you will see me as the old stranger in the new environ

Whose lexicon is of fifty years and his attire a worn out gown

My graces are less resplendent where you retain elegance

Because your country dance mismatches my relevance

By Andrew Sesinyi