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CHIEF John West

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2022

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5 Stories

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FATHER XAVIER; AM UNCONVENTIONAL TEACHER

Weekly Contest #198

Father Xavier: An Unconventional Teacher by John West Kids can be very cruel. Woe to the teacher, fresh to the class, who shows signs of weakness. As soon as he steps into the classroom, 30 pairs of eyes will be picking him apart. (This story is about a boys’ school). If the new teacher is tall and confident and speaks with an assured voice, he is likely to pass initial scrutiny. But if he lacks these qualities, he will have work to do. Any fault detected will be used by the class as an object of ridicule if it turns out the poor unsuspec...

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JOYS OF TRAVEL

Weekly Contest #171

JOYS OF TRAVEL It sounds daft, but I had been planning this trip for a long time. Lagos to London, I had done by plane countless times; just once, I thought, let me try it by land. On the map, it does not look that difficult. What I was fixated on was to drive from Lagos across the River Niger to Sokoto and then into Niger Republic and Mali and then through Timbuktu to Tangiers. This would be the most difficult part of the trip. I reckoned the whole trip back to London would not take more than a month. This was in the days when border cross...

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Down in The Desert

Weekly Contest #132

I was on the edge of the desert in Northern Nigeria, when my car broke down. It was midday, and the sun was beating down at its hottest. This was pre-Boko Haram country where people now get slaughtered for doing nothing. The fan belt had snapped and was still circling around as if to show me, as I lifted the hood. I knew I was in trouble. I had not seen a human being since leaving Kano two hours ago and, looking about me, I saw nothing but sand. Seeing the sand was new to me. We don't have sand back in London which I had left a month ago. I...

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CHIMP FEET

Weekly Contest #130

CHIMP FEET Sanders Theater at Harvard University in Boston is the venue for the Annual IG Nobel prize awards. These awards recognize important work done by various folk throughout the world in bringing the results of their improbable research to universal notice. In 2006, for example, one such prize was awarded to a researcher in the Netherlands whose work revealed that the female mosquito Anopheles Gambia was as much attracted to Limburger cheese as she was to smelly feet. Not to be outdone, more recently it seems, according to the Ameri...

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TEA

The Nigerian Chief who bought our house in London in 1974 was a prolific tea drinker. In fact he was making tea the day I visited him 10 years after he had purchased the property. Although he had been an avid trade unionist during his student days in England, meeting politicians like Fenner Brockway, when it came to tea he was very conservative. For instance, every day had to start with a cup of tea. It had to have in it milk and 2 lumps of sugar. In Nigeria, the houseboy prepared it. In England, he was happy to brew himself, proudly, as he ...

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