A home harbours secrets. Father has cancer. He is dying. Not a word.
Mother tells me to take care of my little brother.
In the early 1960s, a young girl and her brother move to their grandparents’ flourmill in Dodoma in newly-independent Tanzania. Her grandfather bellows his love for East Africa, where he and other Indian merchants have thrived. But the ground is shifting. President Nyerere is calling for the widespread nationalization of property. The hum of the mill has quieted. The young girl prays at the jamatkhana (Give me back my father) and spends evenings at the cinema watching cowboy films—grief and grievances, if only momentarily, disappear.
Hush, not a word.
Years later, the girl and her family immigrate to Calgary, Alberta and she begins a love affair with the prairies.
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Yasmin Ladha was born in Mwanza, Tanzania around 1958 and immigrated to Canada in 1978. She completed a B.A. and an M.A. (1993) in English at the University of Calgary. Her thesis, Circum the Gesture, is a collection of eleven creative writing pieces in multiple genres that play with the notion of immigrant woman as a nomad. When Women Dancing on Rooftops, her second book of short stories, was published in 1997, Ladha was living in Chonbuk, Korea. She has taught English in the liberal studies program at the Alberta College of Art and Design but now lives in Muscat, Oman. Her story “Coca-Cola and Cowboys” was awarded first prize in a CBC Radio short story competition in 2005.
http://www.ryerson.ca/library/events/asian_heritage/ladha.html
Ismailimail 
Hello Yasmin:
I was interested by your short life profile and your hard earned career while in Canada…but especially by your origins, …Mwanza .. and especially about the ‘humming’ Flourmill in Dodoma, where I live now. I know it !!..
My name is Shaher Abdulmajid Geyash. Married, with 4 children: 2 boys & 2 girls. All in Australia.
Studied in Mpwapwa Middle School (1959-1962), then at Singida Agakhan School (1963) and at Dodoma Secondary School (1964-1968). Trained at The Dar es Salaam Teachers College (1969-1970) and was selected to teach at Shinyanga High School (1970-1972). Resigned and travelled overseas. Landed in Yemen in 1977, worked for Yemen Airways, resigned, travelled to Dubai (1977), Bahrain, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi (1978).
Employed by Abu Dhabi Marine Oil Drilling Company -ADMA-OPCO….and served for a good 30 years. Now retired – but in good health and am establishing some industry in my hometown – Dodoma.
With my young past … 1960’s memoirs of this town of Dodoma, where a good number of Indians happily thrived and what I have returned to find – I am heart-broken. I simply would follow your path – to write a book. But this book should be read by the decendants of the Indians who were forced to leave Tanzania due to the nationalization policy of Nyerere. Wherever they are ! The UK or Canada. As we communicate and if you can help to air over my views to friends – the Ex Tanzania Indian friends – I’d be delighted. I want to re establish contacts with my schoolmates -many of them now in the UK and Canada. I want to contribute with a value.
Kindly send me your email address, so I can attach my contribution to all people I love to communicate with.
Thank you,
Truly, Shaher.
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