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Charles Mungoshi. Walking Still Harare, Zimb. Baobab (African Books Collective, distr.). 1997. 167 pages. $8.50/ 4.95. ISBN 0-908311-99-0.
The collection Walking Still consists of nine stories, many of which, the author remarks, "were published in Horizon magazine in a different and shorter form." The protagonists of several of the stories are children. In the long selection "Did You Have to Go That Far?" the narrator is a young boy whose friend, Pemba, committed suicide. Charles Mungoshi leads the reader step by step through all the "actions" of two schoolboys, left to themselves and to the street, whose parents did not have time to look after them. Unlike the narrator, who had a good father, Pemba's dad was a drunkard, and almost evenevening he and his mother were severely beaten. On one such night, and following a misunderstanding with his friend, Pemba decides to cut short his troubles.
In "Homecoming" a parentless boy, in the...