Ekari Writes

Having a passion for reading means inevitably you get to a stage where the number of books you own overtake your ability to read them all. I decided for my next read to pick up something old instead of hunting for something new. I dusted off Lioness Rampant, which has followed me since I was a teenager, from Lilongwe to Johannesburg, where it stayed in a box of other books 3 more years after I left for Blantyre before I had them sent to me. It was secondhand to start with and is still in decent condition. Lioness Rampant is a fantasy adventure written in (1988), and it centres around a female knight who also happened to have magical abilities. It is the 4th in a series, which took some getting used to since I didn't have the first 3 books and there were a few blanks to fill in. However, the book did a good job of keeping the new reader informed about plot-relevant details, using call-backs and memories. The first in the series was about her becoming a knight while pretendin...

CDC Map of Coronavirus spread It's almost hard to remember what on earth we talked about before coronavirus took over literally everything... emails from website hosts are even informing customers what they are doing as a response. So as a blogger with an audience, I suppose I have to make a statement of sorts. Crazy times, huh? Alright, not as poignant as you'd expect a from a writer, but we're all off our game a little, aren't we? As I write, I am fortunate enough to look outside my window and see that my community hasn't drastically changed... yet. There are precautionary measures and regular monitoring of ports of entry. Though testing has been done, there hasn't been any have have tested positive. Regardless, I can't help but to think of the scifi stories I have read and watched, where one gets to see the future through some story McGuffin or other, and decide if they will act to change that future or not. Though Malawi is currently in a pol...

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...

History is not everyone’s favourite subject, and certainly has been given a reputation through years of international media as being boring - a long droning list of dates and facts. If the reality truly reflects this, perhaps an alternative teaching method would be to turn history lessons into theatre performances. That is exactly what YDC Theatre did when they brought to life the story of Malawian historical figure John Chilembwe, in a play titled  Operation Mandala: 1915 . The play is written and directed by Fumbani Innot Phiri Jr ( Chimmy the Chambo Has 3 Wishes, YDC Theatre's Macbeth ), whose invisible touch is responsible for the cohesive strength of the production.  The first impression when watching the play is observing the level of teamwork and synchronicity amongst the cast. The timing of the dialogue was perfect, alternating between group chants and solo monologues in a seamless, harmonic manner. Though the main character of John Chilembwe was natura...