The Enemy Within
The Enemy Within Submitted by Timidi Digha. Based on a true story; all names have been changed but the story is told using the words of the victim (with little omissions for protection purposes and with her permission). My name is Adah, I live in Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria. I am eight years old and in primary four. I was molested by my uncle. My uncle, Uncle Andrew, is my father’s... Read More
Saraba Issue 11 – Publishing Note
Collage of Sexuality Sometimes sex is a word, sometimes it’s not. Often it’s a question, an exchange, a protest, a dialogue. Often it’s a state of complexness. Sex is both body and soul, presented in visual and textual terms. In this issue, where we have succeeded in collecting mostly sex-themed writings, outlooks range from the vulgar to the pious, from the introspective... Read More
Between Einstein and Me: Thoughts of Music
Albert Einstein, for the uninitiated, is arguably the greatest scientist who ever lived. His theory of relativity (both special and general) turned the scientific world in the twentieth century on its head and has since changed the rules by which science operates, spawning all sorts of new fields. It is however also a well known fact that Einstein, like me, was a lover of music.... Read More
My Music Timeline
2004: I was never conscious of music until this time. Speakers always howled. Technology hadn’t balanced the noise speakers produce with the distinctness of the sounds. To play music then, you had to imbibe the culture of showoff that came with it. People rolled their curtains and placed their sound system at the windowsill. It was the season when foreign hip-hop music was the... Read More
Dodo at The Cousins (Online Only)
The food is always tastier on the other side. One of the highlights of my childhood were the regular visits to the Ibadan cousins. The three kids and our parents would pile into the car and head for Ibadan – sometimes a day trip, or sometimes a long weekend. We would always stop somewhere on the way to buy bananas, oranges, or whatever fruit was in season plus cokes and... Read More
Dodo & A Notebook
In all my memories of childhood, two things stand out: dodo and a notebook. I loved to write. And fried plantain was my favourite food. A combination of both, on any day, was paradise. We did not have dodo everyday _ my mother (like all responsible adults) believed in balanced meals _ and I did not get to write stories everyday (there was school and afterschool lessons, and friends... Read More
The Literature of Food
Emmanuel Iduma in conversation with Dr. Chima Anyadike, foremost literary enthusiast, literary critic and Professor of English Literature at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, on food and everything in-between Iduma: In considering food in relation to literature, one simple fact that strikes me is that everyone eats – it is human to eat. Then, of course, it has been variously... Read More
Through Fresh Eyes, America
Austin continued to smell like baked cattle dung, perhaps something ranch-borne, six days or so after I landed in Texas, this past August. Or maybe I am simply describing the scent of the Rodeway Inn, a sad-coloured one storey motel with dark uninviting stairways where I spent my first four days, after twenty one hours of flying and long exasperating stops in Dubai and New York. Culture... Read More
The Pleasure of Swallowing
In the heart of the gastronomical art of the people south of the Sahara is the delight of swallowing. Around mounds of hot dough made out of yam, or rice, or potatoes, or corn, or even millet, bowls of soup lay spread on a mat in the middle of a salivating family. Dinner time is more than just the conversation that lubricates the passing of each ball of dough through the oesophagus... Read More
Creativity of The Stomach
Chancing upon one of those infrequent semi-religious epiphanies of self-improvements – which sometimes so arrests our imaginations as the singular high road to maximizing our capacities or living out our fullest potentialities – I decided to fast. I was fasting off food. The distinction is necessary as I fast off all kinds of things; video games, novels, facebook, and what not.... Read More
