{"id":6154,"date":"2023-01-16T13:27:44","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T13:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6154"},"modified":"2023-01-16T13:27:47","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T13:27:47","slug":"egoli-by-t-l-huchu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6154","title":{"rendered":"<strong><em>Egoli<\/em><\/strong> by T. L. Huchu"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Egoli<\/em><\/strong> by T. L. Huchu (<em>African-futurism<\/em>, 2020) is an autobiographical piece about an old Shona<sup>1<\/sup> woman which is told in an almost stream-of-consciousness second person:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>You remember [Grandfather Panganayi] was proud of that house, the only one in the compound with a real bed and fancy furniture, whose red floor smelled of Cobra and whose whitewashed walls looked stunning in the sunlight compared to the muddy colours of the surrounding huts, just as he was proud of the wireless he\u2019d purchased in Fort Victoria when he was sent there for his training. Through his wireless radio with shiny knobs that no one but he was allowed to touch, the marvels of the world beyond your village reached you via shortwave from the BBC World Service, and because you didn\u2019t speak English, few of you did, the boys that went to school, not you girls, Grandfather Panganayi had to translate the words into Shona for you to hear. In one of those news reports, it was only one of many but this one you still remember because it struck you, they said an American\u2014you do not remember his name\u2014had been fired into the sky in his chitundumuseremusere and landed on the moon.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the first of many cultural and technological changes that we see her live through, and in the rest of the piece we see her get married, have children (who later go to work in the egoli, gold mines, of South Africa), and eventually get a mobile phone\u2014something that opens up the world to her (she learns English through online comics, and receives weather reports and farming advice that help her make the most out of her crops).<br>The story (spoiler) finally morphs from a contemporary piece to an SFnal one when she looks up at the southern night sky and sees a steadily moving dot of light\u2014a spaceship taking her grandson to mine the asteroid belt.<br>An absorbing story of generational social and technological change, told from an African viewpoint.<br>*** (Good). 3,450 words. <a href=\"https:\/\/brittlepaper.com\/2020\/10\/egoli-africanfuturism-anthology\/\">Story link<\/a>.<br><br>1. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shona_people\">Wikipedia<\/a> most Shona people live in Zimbabwe.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Egoli by T. L. Huchu (African-futurism, 2020) is an autobiographical piece about an old Shona1 woman which is told in an almost stream-of-consciousness second person: You remember [Grandfather Panganayi] was proud of that house, the only one in the compound with a real bed and fancy furniture, whose red floor smelled of Cobra and whose [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1416],"tags":[296,24,1412,549,1414,1415,12,1411,1413],"class_list":["post-6154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-t-l-huchu","tag-296","tag-3-2","tag-african-futurism","tag-asteroid-mining","tag-cultural-change","tag-second-person","tag-short-story","tag-t-l-huchu","tag-technological-change"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6154"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6162,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6154\/revisions\/6162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}