Wednesday Author Spotlight~ Ola Nubi

It’s hump day! And you know what that means. Another spotlight of a fabulous author.

Ola Nubi lives and works in London and has an MA in Creative writing and Imaginative Practice in 2009. In 2008 her short story The Pink House, won first prize in the National words of colour competition and another short story of hers The Go- slow Journey, won the first prize in the fiction category for Wasafiri’s New writing prize 2009. Some of her short stories feature on the African writing.com website, StoryTime and naijastories.com. She also has short stories in the Naijastories and African Roar recent anthologies.

Enjoy an excerpt from one of her short stories below

A Mothers Dilemma

Patience banged the phoned down and clicked her tongue in disgust.

A curse on all of their houses…

Didn’t they have anything better to do but ask questions about her children? Let everyone go and sort their own family’s lives before they started sharpening their teeth on her children.

Nonsense. Was it her fault that her eldest daughter was still single at 37; a time at which she her mother, Patience Folasade Adejumo had finished childbearing? Was it because she hadn’t trained her how to be a good wife and mother? Was it because she lacked home training, wasn’t beautiful or educated or had breeding? Was it because she the Mother had not prayed or fasted or wept enough for God to remove this cup of suffering and shame away from her?

No – this must be because God was testing her as he tested Job to see if she could hold on. No one understands the suffering of a mother when it came to things like this. They thought she would buckle under the strain but no; she Patience Folasade Adejumo was not the child of her father for nothing. She was a strong woman and she would survive.

Her enemies would not rejoice over her in this world. Yes – even the ones in her husband’s family. In the presence of her enemies she would spread her table and laugh and dance on their heads on that glorious day of her eldest daughter’s nuptials. It will be so Oh God.

Please let it be soon.

This shame is too much.

But she would rejoice. She would show them.

She tied her wrapper and did a little dance of praise before her God and shook her head.

They were not serious. It was her enemies’ children that would not marry and have children. It was her enemies that would not become grandmothers in this world. It was her enemies that people would look at in pity on the street.

Let them laugh now. He who laughs last sha…..

She picked up the phone. “Peter get the car and come and take me to Church. I want to be home before Oga gets back from work. I need to pray.”

As she waited for her driver to come she thought of her husband of almost forty years. Gideon was a good man but she seemed not to take this matter seriously. It was not his fault. What is that saying again? A good child is for the father but a bad child is for the mother. Not that Lola was a bad child. No God forbid. She was a good daughter but this long-standing problem of singleness was earmarking her, the Mother out for ridicule and pity in the family.

Her first and only daughter was approaching forty without a husband or child to call her own and her two boys were happily content to live the lives of merry bachelors. A Father can talk about Gods time because he was the Father. She was the Mother and it was Her Problem.

Ola is currently working on a collection of short stories and has a romance novel due for publication with Ankara Press in Abuja; which is an imprint of Cassava Republic She also writes inspirational romance and poetry.