ayo deforge

 Some mornings, I wake up feeling blue. Sometimes, I don't know why because the night before, I had gone to bed feeling light-hearted. Sometimes, I wonder if it is my hormones. Sometimes, I wonder if it is normal to feel melancholy.  This morning is a perfect example. I went to bed feeling cheerful at 2 am but woke up cheerless at 6 am. While looking through friends status on WhatsApp, I discovered a tweet by Paulo Coelho. I admire his quotes most of the time, but this one left me feeling sadder than I had woken up. I disagree with what he has written. The problem with his tweet is that he said 'all' and not 'certain'. He first tweeted the quote in 2014 and then he repeated it in 2016. I would have loved to have a conversation with him. I would love to tell him that when one is struggling with loss and grief, for example, it has nothing to do with 'living to please others'. The stress, anxiety and depression that overwhelm me now and then are caused every ti

 Back in May 2020, during the first global lockdown due to the Covid-19 crisis, AFREDA proposed The Pen Pal Project on their Twitter account. The aim was to 'promote human connection in a time of isolation'. My writer friend Angel suggested participating and so we did. © AFREADA I wrote a letter to a stranger. On June 1st, 2020, AFREADA exchanged the letters. I received one from my pen pal, a 28-year-old woman from Tanzania. Rehema received my letter as well. Three months later, we moved from email exchanges to WhatsApp messages.  Today, over a year later, Rehema and I are still friends, despite our busy schedules. I cherish our friendship and hope we will be friends for a very long time.

 I've always enjoyed reading AFREADA's Friday newsletters, so when they asked for contributions from their readers, I thought to myself, 'Why Not?'.  I didn't immediately get an idea of what I should write about, so it slipped my mind for a while. One night, after dinner, I came across the email and decided to give it a shot. A few minutes later, I had scribbled down 350 words. I read through it quickly and submitted it before I could change my mind. It felt too personal because I had shared a part of a private letter I was writing to my daughter, Deborah. Sometimes, when I feel overwhelmed  with grief, the only thing I want to do is to put my feelings into words. Sometimes, I hold back because I feel like I am 'flogging' my loss. Sometimes, to be free, I set the words free. Because I didn't get any confirmation email from AFREADA, I had thought that the submission had failed until I received an email from Nancy Adimora, the founding editor. My intro had

  After Litro Magazine published my 300-word flash fiction back in July, everyone I know who read it  asked me to turn it into a novel. I have been toying with the idea and although I do not have a story plot yet I am looking forward to taking up the challenge someday soon.  I wrote the story in one sitting back in 2017. It's about a woman whose brother died at the 2016 Nice attack and who contemplated a lethal pact she made with her brothers some 27 years back. I had initially written the story for a writing competition that was later cancelled.  For a long time, I didn't want to send it out to magazines as I didn't want to sadden my husband. My father-in-law and his girlfriend, Sylvie, were amongst the 86 people who died during the attack when a terrorist drove a 19-tonne truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. You can read my short story here .