BLOSSOMS OF THE SAVANNAH

CHAPTER 1: Relocation

Taiyo stood in the shadows by the window, her back to the room. From her vantage position on the third floor of the building where their flat was located, she had a bird's view of the sprawling town. The rising sun shone on the rooftops, giving them a yellowish tinge. Across the roads that criss-crossed the town, diminutive figures of men and women hurried briskly to their places of work. Uniformed school children, ruck sacks on their backs, jostled boisterously as they alighted from one marathon and boarded another. Beneath her, down at the courtyard, she could see her father moving and fussing.He was organising and directing with obvious shortness of temper, the loading of two men ten-ton lorries. He was gesticulating violently, apparently reprimanding loaders for being slow and inept in carrying out the tasks before them.

Taiyo knew her father well. He was not a man who cared to have his well-laid work-plans delayed or disrupted. She had noticed that he had become even more belligerent ever since the family learnt that he was retrenched and they were now being forced to vacate the house and relocate to the rural town he had left many years back. Although the distance would not allow her to hear what he was telling the loaders, Taiyo felt a mild but quite genuine twinge of sympathy for the poor fellows down there, for she knew the sting of her Father's tongue.

It reminded her of her own recent battle with him when he denied her permission to travel to Mombasa with other young men and women who had been selected by an F.M Radio Station to attend an extravaganza. She had stubbornly put up a spirited struggle but the battle was so predictably and utterly lost. That had left a wound in her heart that was still too raw to probe. Her rage, she had realised, was still seething within her. The simple faith and certainly of child hood upon which her life until then had been found, failed her. Also, her trust in her father would give her whatever she requested for had been badly shaken........
Continued