Work in Progress and other Stories
The Caine Prize for African Writing 2009
Jacana Media, 2009
Five entries on the shortlist of the Caine Prize, awarded every year to a short story by an African writer published in English, and 11 more written at the Caine Prize writer’s workshop held near Accra, Ghana, make up this collection.
Work in Progress, which gives its title to the collection, by last year’s Caine Prize winner, Henrietta Rose-Innes, is one of two South African contributions. Here the civilized veneer of a famous author peels away when a young aspiring writer visits his home for a one-on-one critique of her work.
The abuse of power, ranging from corrupt dealings to horrific war crimes, is a common theme, as ordinary people struggle to survive through exploitation, war and poverty. People at home dream of salvation through being spirited away overseas to America, or England. Those in exile discover betrayal, prejudice and loneliness.
While some of it’s harrowing, there’s also humour – the laugh of triumph as a taxi driver outwits a crooked cop in Ghanaian Alba K Sumprim’s No Windscreen Wipers; a less comfortable smile in Nigerian EC Osondu’s Waiting, as a child living the desperate daily dash for survival in a refugee camp describes how he and his friends acquired their nicknames from the free T-shirts they were given: “Sexy’s T-shirt has the inscription Tell Me I’m Sexy. Paris’s T-shirt says See Paris And Die. When she is coming towards me I close my eyes because I don‘t want to die… Take Lousy, for instance; his T-shirt says My Dad Went To Yellowstone And Got Me This Lousy T-shirt.”
And the gritty, dark humour in Sierra Leonean Mohamed Gibril Sesay’s Half-man and the Curse of the Ancient Buttocks – “armed men who amputated limbs called cutting off wrists ‘long sleeves’ and cutting off elbows ‘short sleeves’. They met this woman and asked: ‘What do you want, short sleeves or long sleeves?’ the woman replied: ‘Well, you are the designers, you should know the sleeves that fit me well.’
“Or like the man rebels met hiding in a cemetery. ‘What are you doing there?’ the renegades asked. ‘Don’t you remember me?’ the man replied. ‘I was amongst the people you killed last year.’ A rebel called Kill-man-no-blood… looked at the man and said: ‘Well you better hurry off from this place because our colleagues who kill people again and again are on their way.’”
During any given week you will find an analysis piece in some newspaper, somewhere, urging the world not to slot Africa into the stereotype of being rife with corruption and prone to war and violence. Either the African writers of this collection don’t read those newspapers, or they’re not very obedient.
SmilingSouth 
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