mulo haven

Thirty-seven years of munching down bread and ugali yet I cannot even get myself a wife. It is a burdensome task right now since the future is bleak and I don't even have a girlfriend to make into a wife. I know… shameful right? You know what the most painful part is? I have not felt the touch of a woman in a long long time . It hurts. It hurts even more that this is not by choice and I am forced to shove this reality down my gut every single day – I simply lack the social capital to gallop from hole to hole…or any capital for that matter. My name is Chronic Konelia. Yes, I was named after a bout that almost wiped out my village, The Chronic Diarrhoea. The name sounded sophisticated to my father, a hospital janitor at the time. He never bothered to find out what it meant. Be that as it may, I have grown to like my name. I even shortened it to Koni. I bet it sounds corny that way. I hate myself; my parents hate me; my siblings and community hate me as well. Or maybe hate i...

Long long ago, in a place called Oramun, was a people so lovely, so determined. So beautiful were their villages that songs were written about them. A mighty river nourished its lands and the majestic peaks protected its children. Its natural opulence was well-known, even as far east as Lansia. Now it so happened that the Chief was expecting his first son in the season of dread. Of course, there were murmurs and hushes of the danger that awaited the heir. Why did he have to come now? What did it mean to be born in the season of dread? Did Chief dare the gods? The gods and the women of fortune were on his side though for in that season, so bountiful was the harvest, that the granaries could hold them not. Such a shame the fog was already reborn and they could no longer trade with the wanderers from Lansia. It is time. “Great Chief, the heir is finally impatient,” a woman beckons.  She is the sister of the chief’s wife. Now frantic, Chief drops his staff and runs toward the...