Nocturnal Body Gymnastics

By Denis M Chenjerai

This is the story of Karina, a woman who has run away from her husband and daughter, in the rural Tamb village, for a new life in the town. The economic meltdown has caused the redundancy of her husband, but there is also a great deal of corruption combined with general lawlessness in her new home in Fort City, and the victims of this are always the poor people. Karina meets her old friend, Lexus, who helps her to join the vending business, and she finds the power and benefit of true friendly love as she meets other vendors, Beebow and Lussa, who both stand by her side. This togetherness is a blessing in comforting Karina's troubled heart.

Karina's husband, Jaki, has been left to fend for himself and their dejected daughter, Keso, in the rural Tamb village, but resorts to excessive drinking as a way of comforting his predicament. The lone daughter grows up without motherly care, love and guidance, and lives a pathetic life on her own.

The book highlights on the nature of marriages people have, the types of weddings people undertake, and exposes the behaviour of righteous and fake pastors. There is also an overview of genuine and fake politicians. Decisions made by politicians determine the way their people live. Pastors and politicians can either uplift the standard of people's lives or bring them down to their knees. There is an acidic attack on bad politicians as the root cause of the suffering of many people in other continents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jan 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781803138138

Denis M Chenjerai

Denis Mathews is a Zimbabwean born black African writer. He graduated from Morgenster Teachers College in 1987, and his teaching experience triggered the birth of this book. He has had many articles published in the Zimbabwean media. He now lives in the United Kingdom.

Book preview

9781803138138.jpg

Copyright © 2022 Denis Mathews Chenjerai

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Matador

Unit E2 Airfield Business Park,

Harrison Road, Market Harborough,

Leicestershire. LE16 7UL

Tel: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

Twitter: @matadorbooks

ISBN 978 1803138 138

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

I dedicate my love and homage to the following outstanding

African English language literature legends:

Chinua Achebe of Nigeria

[THINGS FALL APART]

Ngugi wa Thiong’o of Kenya

[A GRAIN OF WHEAT]

Ayi Kwei Armah of Ghana

[THE BEAUTYFUL ONES ARE NOT YET BORN]

Okot p’Bitek of Uganda

[SONG OF LAWINO AND SONG OF OCOL]

*

My heartfelt reverence also goes to my family for their

unwavering support and consolidation, namely:

Prince, Princess, Everngelister, Alice Miriam and Gabriel Delroy.

No man is an island. One man cannot kill a thousand.

Contents

Chapter 1

The Two Bodies Got Engulfed And Locked In Plenty Of Nocturnal Body Gymnastics

Tears of dismal dismay and hopelessness, trickled endlessly down her collapsed and pale hungry cheeks.

They were oozing like two small streams of crystal-clear water, down a cliff, in a quiet wilderness pregnant with nature’s wonder of flora and fauna.

The tears were dripping and creeping from her swollen soar round red eyes, with eyelids outlined by a whitish eye discharge.

That reflected untold and catastrophic human suffering, within her broken heart and soul.

It was an agony of harsh hunger and starvation, that was tormenting the young girl,whose life was in the balance.

That sordid state of affair was compounded, by the setting in of a variety of untreated ailments, that became magnetic to her.

Her chapped lips were trembling and blood stained.

The thick lips cracked from long hours of chewing the air pie and windy pudding.

All that dire situation sprouted from food malnutrition and parental neglect, that had become part and parcel of her daily life.

That ripened into a total life of immeasurable misery, for the desperate girl in need of food relief.

There was hardly no one to turn to for assistance, in this great time of food scarcity.

That was true hell on earth for her, as both parents had turned their backs on her social welfare plight.

She hardly had anywhere she could call a decent shelter, to rejoice in sanitary solace.

A pathetic life of worthlessness like rotten sulphur smelling eggs, embroidered her wellbeing and welfare.

Rotten eggs are to be binned, just as filthy and heavily soiled baby napkins are disposed.

*

Keso lived a cursed and abominable life to remember.

Hunger and starvation remained her kick in the teeth.

Enduring the ongoing pain of neglect like a leprosy sufferer, deemed her life as cheap as purchasing ice blocks in Northern Alaska.

Sadness was her loyal friend, as gladness had flown swiftly away from her like a brown sparrow.

Keso’s emaciated and skinny cheeks never rested on a fluffy silk smooth pillow.

Her collapsed cheeks never felt the feathery of a modern pillow.

She always rested her skeletal head on her bony arms, with protruding sharp elbow bones.

That unfortunate girl would eventually succumb to a deep snoring sleep, which ran short of life’s full vibrancy.

The dusty air and biting ants did not deter her from sleeping at all.

That had become the rhythm of her sleeping song all year round.

Keso sounded like a pregnant pig in her frightening dreams.

Cow dung dust from the smelly floor blocked her nostrils all the time.

Claustrophobia haunted her every night, as a lone sleeper in the round ramshackle hut.

The fear of being single in the scruffy mud hut, worsened her predicament of solitude, like a caged and quarantined sick gorilla in an animal sanctuary.

Her entire living environment was inhumane and a total disgrace to mankind.

It was disgusting like forensic experts, exhuming decomposing corpses covered by wriggling whitish worms.

*

Keso’s negligent father did not care about her social welfare anymore, putting the love of his daughter at the back of his mind.

He was supposed to be the shoulder she would lean on, but all the grapes had turned extremely sour for the isolated girl.

That put Keso’s living conditions in a quagmire, leaving her hopes for a bright future hanging by the thread.

Her careless father minded well about his alcohol abuse, as a squirrel would love macadamia and hazelnuts.

Jaki had developed a spontaneous daily drinking habit in his village and beyond.

That unstoppable drinking routine made him the village idiot, and unfavourable talk of the community.

The local people labelled him a man of no progressive agenda, like a dwarf Japanese maple, that spends all its lifetime in a tree vase in a balcony.

The drunkard had transformed himself into a man of a deep sweat and tobacco smell.

The blackened teeth were decaying from no brushing and lack of dental knowledge.

His pockets with holes, had no money to buy the cheapest substandard toothpaste and toothbrush.

His feet cracked in the winter mud and chilly cold, but it was impossible to sew them with a needle and thread, or use super glue to close them.

Jaki’s feet were never seen wearing even torn stockings or decent shoes.

The nasty body was always covered in tattered and torn clothes, like a destitute living among the woods.

There was no time and endeavour for him to forage for his daughter’s life basic things.

Perennial poverty denied him any bargaining power for food and clothes in his neighbourhood.

Jaki treated his disillusioned daughter like a puppet on a string.

She seemed valueless like a banknote, that had survived the aggressive spinning of a washing machine.

Keso was always tormented by riding on her emotional rollercoaster.

*

All the local loose women shunned his love advances towards them.

No money and no love were what the women yelled at him in defiance.

Men with nothing to offer in life should die and rot in the sun, like accident run over foxes.

The drunkard seemed a lightning struck dog in comparison to other local men, leaving the dog to decay by the roadside.

Only greedy vultures and jungle flies, take a feast at the disgusting rotting animal carcases.

Nothing is for nothing in this present world of material value.

Buying on credit is cursed and exchanging silver and gold for goods is a sign of wealth.

Something is to be offered in return