It could be that Phillip\u2019s happiness lied in his power to make Chikumbutso Peter Ndaferankhande\u2019s life happy and serene; he might have wished to see the burden of ignorance in the young Ndaferankhande laid down forever.<\/p>\n
What Phillip did not know, when he took this year\u2019s Malawi Writers Union (Mawu)\/FMB Short Story Awards winner to the library is that he [Ndaferankhande] would live to cherish that experience.<\/p>\n
In fact, he has even beaten expectations, winning the Mawu\/FMB Short Story Awards twice\u2014 in 2008 and this year. This means the short story writer\u2019s heart has become so free to pour itself out in the wise charity that is creative writing.<\/p>\n
Ndaferankhande\u2019s \u2018For tomorrow\u2019 short story won this year\u2019s top award on Saturday. This may not mean the short story sailed with a fair wind straight into judges\u2019 favour. In total, 97 writers submitted short stories on themes ranging from Cashgate, plight of the girl child, among others.<\/p>\n
But it was Ndaferankhande who was to walk away with K250, 000. Ndaferankhande braved competition from Mathew Chione, whose short story, \u2018What is in a man?\u2019,was voted second-best.<\/p>\n
Robert Chirambo\u2019s \u2018I have killed you\u2019 was on third. The two received K125, 000 and K80, 000, respectively.<\/p>\n
Genesis <\/strong><\/p>\n Ndaferankhande might be a renowned journalist, short story writer and whatever he does in life, but his love for the letters can be attributed to one moment in the 1980s, a moment he cherishes to date.<\/p>\n And that moment is, \u201cWay back in the late 80s when I was seven years old my cousin brother Phillip took me to the National Library [Service] (NLS) in Lilongwe where I chanced into a book Dala ndi chiwala <\/em>by James Ng\u2019ombe. This spurred the reading urge in me.\u201d<\/p>\n Surprisingly, Phillip himself\u2014 who took the horse to the source of literature, the NLB\u2014 and Ndaferankhande\u2019s family members are not into creative writing. He says he is the only one who is into creative writing.<\/p>\n However, the fruits of the chance encounter with Ng\u2019ombe\u2019s book did not bear fruit until 1995, for this is the time Ndaferankhande decided to taste the waters.<\/p>\n \u201cMy first published story was in Chichewa [and it was] titled Mphoto ya uchimo <\/em>published on October 27 1995 when I was roughly 13 [years]. [It was published]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It could be that Phillip\u2019s happiness lied in his power to make Chikumbutso Peter Ndaferankhande\u2019s life happy and serene; he might have wished to see the burden of ignorance in the young Ndaferankhande laid down forever. What Phillip did not know, when he took this year\u2019s Malawi Writers Union (Mawu)\/FMB Short Story Awards winner to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37551,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37547\/revisions\/37551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}