Ekari Writes

Happy Easter from The Inside! A lot of firsts in the world including the first Easter in most of our lifetimes where the whole world will be spending it indoors. Rather than get massive FOMO about not being able to go anywhere, I would like to spend the time practicing my descriptions as I have done in previous posts .  This time I will be describing the view from Zomba mountain, the key tourist feature of the former capital of Malawi. Zomba has protected forestry, which gives it a feel that's closer to nature than the other towns in Malawi. The trees are allowed to grow to massive breadth and height, giving a feel that humans are very much visitors in a natural world.  When you get to the top of the mountain, there is quite a sight to behold. A View from the Top of the World The first thing you notice is how the landscape suddenly unfurls like the most high-definition live Google map image you have ever seen. Emperor's View is the very seat of the world - ...

A couple of weeks ago, I did an exercise to practice my description writing skills in a post called  Practice Writing Descriptions for Fiction . In that post, I described a beach at Nkhata Bay, and today  I will be describing an urban setting in this post, specifically the city of Blantyre from an aerial perspective... From Splash Restaurant at Amaryllis Hotel   Seated on the brightly coloured cozy deck furniture, there is a sense of serenity, like you're floating above the city. There's at least a 200 degree view of the heart of the banking district, all the multiple storied buildings are in this span of land. You can see how the city is in a wide bowl, whose edges are the mountains and hills on the horizon. They sit like silent guardians surrounding the citizens. Grey clouds roll over lazily, refusing to commit to either raining or not. The balcony itself has a pool which wraps itself around the corner of the building. If you take a dip in the pool, it would f...

The rolling hills of the African Rift Valley Whenever I travel around Malawi I see these breathtaking landscapes which spark my imagination. The rainy season is my favourite time, since I adore the natural blues and greens - you see plenty of those when you're travelling as far up as the northern region.  I took the opportunity to work on the areas of my fiction writing I have always wanted to improve: descriptions. I get excited writing plots, characters, and action, but what suffers in the end is my settings and descriptions that immerse readers into the place the character is located. So why not use real settings for practice? So here goes: Nkhata Bay, Northern Region ~~~ Nkhata Bay had its own energy; unlike Mzuzu, Lilongwe, or Blantyre, something about the northern lakeside town gave the feeling of a holiday frozen in time. Although the season was not quite right for a holiday, with overcast skies that oscillated between pouring rains and breaks of b...

Meet Jember, the Ethiopian Superhero I had the privilege of chatting with an African comic book creator who is breaking out in a big way. Using the power of Kickstarter , he is raising funds to produce and distribute his brand new comic book from scratch. Since the popular Black Panther  movie, the doors have been opened for African superheroes (which have existed for years) to garner more global attention than ever before.  The strategic release of this creator's project duringUS Black History Month cannot be overlooked... The young man's name is  Beserat Debebe , and we discussed his brainchild;  Jember . Read more to find out more about the Ethiopian Superhero, and how you can be a part of bringing this exciting project to fruition. UPDATE: The Kickstarter fund surpassed its funding goals in just 4 hours! You can still contribute for the remaining days until the 4th of March for their stretch goal to do an epic comic book tour across Africa ... ...

Image Credit: Property of Disney - but aren't we all? I grew up in what I now consider a unique period, as I was really a member of one of the last generation to have no internet, and our options for recreation after school were "limited" to radio, CDs, the outdoors, and books. Between my twin sister and I, I was by far the introvert. So while we could play pretend together for hours (don't ask about the Blanket Fort, that's another post on its own), and listen to CDs on repeat until we knew all the wrong lyrics by heart, when it came to playing outdoors, I'd be more of the "Hmmm, how dirty is that though" inclination. So at times, when my sister decided she wanted to roam about to discover new trees to climb in the back yard, and wouldn't let the fact that I thought it was a terrible idea hold her back, I shrugged and retreated to the glorious, dry, clean indoors for my own adventures. With 5 bookshelves w e were never short of so...

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this awesome trailer for a free  (for now)  short story  must be worth many times it's weight in font: Support Malawi's Muthi Nhlema by downloading his exciting science fiction e-book, TA O'REVA, about the return of Nelson Mandela to a future South Africa destroyed by xenophobia. You don't have to go through Whatsapp, just go straight to this link https://freeditorial.com/en/books/ta-o-reva and click where you see PDF to start the download. He has 4 days left from the time of this post to win the competition. The more downloads the better, so spread the word!