SHED THE LIGHT

There are stories that have no meanings but still told. A good story teller is s/he who listens to many stories and tells them. When they’re passionate about what they hear or see.Good story tellers tell stories with sense of humour. They draws out the best to make listeners listen attentively, folding their arms because they want to predict how the story will ends, they will laugh because the story teller knows how to crack it.Well, for you to be one or to be a good story, there is no short cut. You must listen to all sort of stories. You must read if you’re a formal fella. Good story tellers make dozen mistakes when channeling stories until they perfect it. A single year of commitment worth two years of anticipated writing expo.This is how I also see it. I believe we can be good story tellers. We can tell stories that people will always relate. Make readers become art lovers. Better story tellers to change life if necessary, etc. So here goes my short story. If you like it, mark it and then give me my results, I will not be afraid to look at them. I will one day teach my children so that they don’t develop the tendency of not trying because they will fail.So here it goes.Whenever I board a taxi to my hustle each morning, I always look at this lonely traffic light. I sometime feel it’s a she. A one she who, if it was decades ago, during our mom’s era, many suitors would have swam into her father’s kraal for her hand in marriage.Again, there is always traffic police standing in the middle of the road with a whistle or near “her”. To me, I see him like a young brother to the her and he is there to make sure that everyone respects him. Condone him because the sister is a source of light. He will protect her from bullies until a right man comes home, meekly and then ask the father.I love this undermined traffic light. I feel like going near her and give her a warm hug. So, if this were my primary school days, I would have written to her a story and or a letter. A letter to my primary crush (this traffic light), assuring her all the things in the world. That my love, no matter how young it might seems to be by that time, will never change or wear out.Not a position or a colour to fade. And by that time, because we’re both young, wild and free from the torments of the world, she will feel privileged to have another clueless boy like me.But now, at my age, which girl would ever risk to listen to such stories boring stories? When men dream of cars without working, and Wi-Fi passwords, most girls think of what to wear tomorrow before going to bed. I’m ever mumble when I think of it this way because I know change must come. For better or worse, change must come. We must grow grey hairs. We must one day have wrinkles on our faces. Our eyes must go deep into their sockets. And then death comes in.And then another generation comes to carry placards on the streets of Juba, rebuking the then regime for inserting all the traffic lights and bumps on all roads around Juba, for not releasing the financial budget in June, for inadequate power supply. All shall come to pass, no matter what it takes. It’s change. Before you mark my story, please donate a book to Deng Afrika’s library.