ABSTRACT
The prosaics of survival and the children's implication in the milieu are captured in Darling's account of the events following the children's discovery of a woman's dead body dangling from a tree during one of their collective defecation sessions. The recent explosion of humanitarianism in the age of neoliberalism privileges childhood innocence and dependence; this, in turn, contributes to a sentimental rather than ethico-political orientation toward the suffering of distant people. There is a similar interplay of camp-time, family time, children's time and war-time in Waiting. In Osondu's Waiting in particular, the prosaics of waiting and suffering are enjoined with redemptive practices that tie the children's lives to multiple worlds within and outside the camp. The textual and extra-textual forms of waiting that mediate the children's suffering and their relationship to war and humanitarian imaginaries are captured in Zaki's description of his relationship to the local nun Sister Nora.
