The news - vibrating with Hillary and Trump, Orlando, Jo Cox, Brexit, Labour & Tory party meltdown, England's ignominious Euro 16 Icelandic defeat ... But of dreadful floods in Ghana, death & destruction along Cape Coast? Vibration was there none....
Often I bemoan the misery-focussed stories reported on from our continent, but at this moment in our local Western turmoil, not even this African misery impinges.
As human beings all our learning is from stories. From Anancy to Algorithms, we make stories to enlighten ourselves, to communicate ideas, to send out warnings, to raise our spirits.
The story of the policeman at London Gay Pride flanked by fellow officers on duty proposing to his boyfriend watching the parade or the story of drunken English football fans throwing coins at refugee children, proposing they engage in disgusting sexual acts for more coins - stories shape opinion, shape climate, shape behaviour..
What stories of the continent do we long for, to shape an international consciousness of who we Africans in our infinite variety are?
In the enlightening submissions to the 2016 Caine Prize , shine all the joys, terrors, complexities, absurdities and nuances of any life acutely observed.
I cannot tell you how exhilarating it has been for me as a judge, to have become lost and found in Africa through the stories as presented in these submissions, nor how powerfully they illuminate and shape new perspectives on the richness of who we are, have been and can be as members of the African continent and her diaspora.
A thrillingly moving literary journey of wit, surprise and skill, and one I am honoured to be a part of this year, as it sings to the world new songs of Africa!
Written by Caine Prize 2016 Judge Adjoa Andoh. To find out more about the 2016 judges click here.