COUNTING VOTES & OTHER STORIES

COUNTING Votes and Other Stories is a collection that lingers in the spaces where ordinary lives brush against extraordinary shadows—where grief lingers on a river’s edge, where fear climbs into the back seat of a late-night drive, where ballots promise hope but deliver betrayal.
These stories move from villages torn apart by war to cities overwhelmed by rain, traffic, and corruption. A boy in Kandahar learns that a simple smile can be more powerful than guns and bombs. A daughter scattering her mother’s ashes is haunted by a voice she thought she had lost forever. A Lagos driver takes one last ride through storm and fear, only to realize that courage itself is being tested. A vote cast in hope becomes a weapon in the hands of those in power. Each story explores what it means to endure when survival requires compromise, when dignity teeters on the edge of despair, and when even silence can carry weight.
Raw, intimate, and resonant, Counting Votes and Other Stories reflects the quiet battles we all face, revealing not only the cracks in our world but also the delicate, luminous threads that keep us human.
This collection is not only about conflict, but also about the fragile strength that emerges from it. It asks how we keep going when the world conspires to break us—and what hope might look like in the darkest of nights.