These stories explore childhood, adolescence and adulthood experiences. A leopard visits the village, and a boy wakes to 'hairy company' and prays for a better death. The arrival of a newcomer, in Muzungu's Pupu, exposes filial rivalry that upsets family balance. Greeting relatives, about two children sent to deliver fish to a relative, explores childhood fears in the children's encounter with Bokilo, the mortuary attendant, lepers, and ghosts. In Charming Namukati, Siambi and Tabuley improvise shortcuts to maturity, so as to charm new girls in the village. Themes of family and manhood as a performance are furthered in The Birthmark. Namacheke asks her son, "What has love got to do with marriage?" And Maya in Maya the Man abandons his wife Anyango, intending to prove that he's still a man but the outcome is just as dramatic as it turns out for Ouma, when he gambles with a girlfriend of his deceased friend On the Last day.
Patrick Mangeni wa'Ndeda, currently completing a PhD (Applied Theatre) at Griffith University, Australia - where he also teaches courses in Scriptwriting - is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre (Makerere University, Uganda) and a Community Theatre facilitator. He was a poet in residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany in 1996, Chairperson of the Uganda Writer's Association and a Guest Poet for the 2003 Queensland (Australia) Poetry Festival. His plays, Operation Mulungusi & The Prince won the National Book Trust of Uganda Award (NABOTU) in 2000 and were nominated for the Uganda Literature Prize 2001. He has written a children's novel, The Great Temptation. A poet and performance critic, he is completing a collection: The Second Coming and Other Poems.
