The Battle

I arrived here just before the rains... apparently only hours before 'em.
Now they're here, and here to stay. Wetandcoldandwetandcoldand...

Life is going to be fun here. Already I've just emerged from a bout with a strange fever (malaria I guess), that kept me tossing and turning, nauseous and nightmarish, for more than 48 hours. I must have brought it from Lagos. The way I didn't bring garri, or peppers, or suya. Thankfully I came prepared, son of a father for whom luggage is not luggage without a medicine-box.

You should have seen the nightmares I had. Nightmarathon. Add to that the endless droning of BBC World News, with their endless repititions of programmes, and you get a new definition of nausea. I swear, if I have to watch another edition of Leading Questions featuring Paul Skinner (Chairman of Rio Tinto) again, I'll just throw up (something not even the malaria made me do). In the last 48 hours I must have seen it like 5 or 6 times. Uggh!

I started a short story on Wednesday, my first new short story in months (if not years). I finished draft 1 of it tonight. 4,500 words. Tentatively titled EX. Am i pleased with me? I don't know. Been so long, I sold out doing magazine and newspaper articles in Lagos.

More good things. The Library of the Nordic Africa Institute here's a heaven of african delights. Spent this evening also curled up on a chair there, devouring short stories by Ken Saro Wiwa, Chinua Achebe, Abdulrazaq Gurnah, Ben Okri, etc etc

Life is a nice mix of the nice and not-nice.