Lolwe Magazine

Le soleil n’avait pas encore séché la rosée sur les toits de tôle ondulée de Yopougon Maroc qu’Abou était déjà pris au piège. L’air était épais des odeurs mêlées du réveil du quartier : le puissant relent des ordures du caniveau à ciel ouvert, le riche et engageant parfum de la banane plantain braisée d’un vendeur de rue, et le floral entêtant du parfum de sa propriétaire, Maman Zè.

Jide Salawu Sea Stories I have no stomach to keep sea stories. Ten thousand boys are crossing the black Atlantic without life jackets. In Thiaroye-sur-Mer, hundreds are wading through the butane eye of the Mediterranean, flailing in the brine.

Richard Stanley Philius À tous ceux qui, un jour, ont connu la peur Cette sombre nuit torrentielle où il pleut à grosses gouttes, on dirait que la pluie bat de plein fouet la capitale. Les familles, barricadées derrière leurs murs et leurs barrières, attendent. Elles attendent quoi ? Personne ne sait. Mais tout le monde est en attente de quelque chose. Attendre la mort est devenu une habitude religieuse à Port-au-Prince. Et si elle ne se présente pas, on la nargue et on remercie le ciel.

Emmanuel Sanusi Our Histories Do Not Make Us Who We Are Fractured bones buried under the silt of dust, Our names, long forgotten by mouths That named us, mouths filled with light, Heavy with glory, heavens foresooth, we’re brave. Thou art a burst of miracles, Fire in the marrow of the morning sun, Thee is given the best of our warmth Thee shall not forget us, even when we have forgotten ourselves.

CHARACTERSFolarin – Philosophy lecturer in his late fortiesSunday – Mid twenties undergraduate SETTINGA cramped university office SCENE The curtains all stay down, and the fluorescent flickers occasionally. Just above the curtain is a dusty wall clock tickling faintly, a faded asbestos ceiling, and a rolling ceiling fan. Dr. Folarin sits reading a file. There’s a long wooden table in front of him with scattered papers and files on top of it.

We speed downhill past the wild thorns, pass the vestingbar, go beyond the witbreuksweg into the woods, past the thick bushets and olive groves that constantly seek out each other, grow together. An unreplied ‘I love you’ floats in the air, gets caught in the mouth of the next sayer. “I love you!” she shouts. I would say this to my neighbour but he doesn’t know who I am. He is big and beautiful and set like a wrestler, his stomach is pudgier.

Scenes are the smallest dramatic units in a narrative, yet remain the most fundamental. In this hands-on workshop, we will examine what makes a compelling scene: a clear event, its structure, function, and pulse, while critically analyzing excerpts from the work of acclaimed writers including ‘Pemi Aguda, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Anthony Doerr, and Victoria Lancelotta.

AbdulSamad Jimoh Theorem of the Spring For Habeebah Amoo time wears the rhythms of my feet, & my footfalls thirst for breath & bleed, i count the silences & the whispers, i swallow the rivulet in my throat, i voice the ledger of my oddities into ash & blank, when the air negotiates us into a deal — event / undirected / observed, only the whirl & the whiff make the name, when our threads grow limbs, jutting out like a rescue mission soldiering a supple bridge, dangling between shore & tide,...

Gathondu Mwangi Saba Saba in the suburbs For the Kenyan youth injured and killed in the protests of 2024-25. There were morning glories forget-me-nots, yesterday today tomorrows, leaves, branches everywhere, hues and shadows Blank as sunlight. Up ahead a young man in a tan hoodie lay still on the street. Cracks on the macadam Spread like capillaries around him. We stopped talking about our not talking saw his breast catch in the gap between breaths. Blackjacks on his chin, his brow.

In this collection of memorabilia photographs, I captured a long-standing Hausa tradition of dying clothes. This art, with the popular title of ‘Rini’, has for over a decade invaded the whole of northern Nigeria as a business and creative art. Rini is a historic Hausa indigo-dying art of Northern Nigeria, characterised by deep blue hues created through the use of fermented indigo plant dyes.