It’s All Over Now: Kubali Matokeo? No. Time to START Living, if #WeAreOne.

A lot has changed since the late hours of Saturday morning. Life has needlessly gone to waste. Our inept governance and disaster response reactions have once again come to the fore. Even worse, our inhuman opportunism in moments of human pain further sullied a bloody backdrop.

15 years ago today, we were heading towards 50 days from our first involuntary encounter with Al Qaeda. 212 were dead, and countless lives scarred by a disaster I was too young to fully comprehend. 

The only thought on my mind, on August 7^th 1998, was my 11^th birthday the following day. Would they cook chapatti at my grandma’s – where I was heading, seated in the passenger seat of a matatu, as news of the bomb blast broke on the dashboard dead ahead of me – or ugali?

4 months ago, Storymoja Africa asked me to imagine the world with them. Gladly, I did. Imagination is the stuff of dreams, you see, and boy do I love to dream. What I care for more than dreams, however, is to see these dreams come true. I wait patiently to make them be. 

What happened on Saturday, while I had imagined it before, is no dream. It is a nightmare, the easiest kind of reality that comes from imagination. It was, however, no surprise to me. 

Last month, days before the August 7 memorial, I happened to be at Memorial Park. The park sits at what would be our Ground Zero – the site of the ‘98 terror attack. Let us now recap what we learnt then, and how we have applied it since. I’ll save you the trouble with one statement:

A lot has not changed since the late hours of Saturday morning.

As I learnt while talking to someone at our Ground Zero cenotaph, only the direct victims of what is now a fatefully insignificant tragic statistic in Kenya’s history actually remember it. The park may be called a ‘memorial,’ but beyond it simply being a commemorative plaque of one dreadful event in Nairobi hiss stories, the monument is now a simple revenue collection bin. 

That some choose to piggy-back on the park to fill their piggy-banks is hardly new. It is also, sadly, no news. Your government is still inept. Your morality is still for sale to the highest bidder. Your public utilities are still inutile. Your health system still sucks. 

You still don’t know who you are; still can’t tell what you need from what you want. 

You will still sit on your arse and wait for the next tragedy – small or monumental, natural or otherwise. You will wait only for you to react; to say, to never think or act independently.

“Stupid is as stupid does. Are you happy with your life today? Time is a blessing, that ticking clock has been sent to remind you that your life is valuable.

It is also futile; it has a beginning and it has an end.”

• Seven Sentences

And so tomorrow you will wake up. It may take longer than 24 hours, but tomorrow you will wake up. You will shed your patriotism. You will lose your nationalism. You will lose your leased ideals and leeched morality. Latch on to your good old need to feed off your brother’s flesh.

Indeed you will accept, you will move on, your choices will have no consequences.

Already you wonder what these tens of lives lost, these disquieting tens of hours under siege have done to your money. What they have done to Kenya’s economy, and if we can recover. 

Already you replace past silent tragedies with this latest loud one. 

Already you are marveling at the picturesque pictorials of gore, talking about the effectiveness of their insensitivity. Already you are rising up to defend your respective tribal leader’s squirms or otherwise squeamish action during the skirmish. 

Already you are baying for blood. 

Accusing your Eastleigh brother, that Somali Arab-looking brother you don’t know, for the acts of terror inspired not by race or place, but by creed. Already you are talking of reactions to these terrifying actions of terror. You have killed – if understandably so – every last gunman in that mall. Make no mistake, dear KDF , for I applaud your patiently conclusive reaction. 

It was, after all, in self-defense. You were, after all, doing a job that should only be yours as a last resort.

A job you did in defense of inhabitants – temporary or permanent – of Westgate, who on the day became hostages and victims. It is by no fault of your own that every possible trail – it would seem – as to whom and the wherefores of the attack, runs cold. 

We are left in an all too familiar position now, however: that of shooting in the dark.

People died in 80 odd hours from Saturday morning. They died at a rate, perhaps, of 1 life per hour; a rate, more so, of countless hungry, overall. Countless wept, overall, but few of these weepers were conscious, sadly. 

Nigh fell. Many prayed. They did the natural thing when confronted by the unknown. They went for the unseen.

That is no critique, this atheist might add, for the unseen comforted me too. I went for my music. And while unlike any god this music could be heard, I had but my own interpretations of this music to go by. 

In this way I was similar to some religious folk; but not to those who rely on what is interpreted to them of what they believe to be their own script.

That kind is no different from the ilk that shot to death unconfirmed denizens in the dozens of dozens.

But already, dear hustler, you have returned to Kenya to help ‘calm the situation’ down… to "participate in security briefings." 

To consult. 

Because these attackers chose a time when you were not here to strike. Of course they did it in spite of you, not to spite you, dear hustler. Don’t come chasing waterfalls, while your colleagues sit chasing after doves in and outta parliament.

"We hope that some people will begin to contextualize what is going on and begin to appreciate the challenges that Kenya is going through, the region is going through, and the complications that are brought by what is going on here."

H.E. the VP of Kenya, W.S. Ruto, in "The Hustlers also Cry".

What does it matter? After all, opportunity – bloody or otherwise – is for the strongest to reap from. 

 

"In light of the circumstances and the views heard during the hearing, the Chamber excuses Mr Ruto from the proceedings.

For the moment the excusal is permitted for one week only, subject to any further requests that Defence counsel may make if need be to extend it,"  

Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji swallowed. Hook and line sunk.

This too shall pass. Not because we are a strong nation. Not because we are unscarred; because we are oblivious to our own bloodshed. At the least, this time around, we have a common enemy. Who that enemy will be, however, remains to be seen as the year closes down. 

I am worried. Not slighted, for that would imply – if only by similarity of sound – that it was slight. Worried, you see, sounds to me like war. It sounds like all out warfare unto the few in my town who think they know, while knowing not. To those who forget to feel, because – and get this – they have bills to pay. 

We all have bills to pay. We all need passion. Yet passion pays no bills. So ask yourself this:

“If you don’t like what you are doing right now, if your [life and work don’t] wow you…then why are you still doing [that]?”

• Seven Sentences

To paraphrase one of my favorite quotidian reads, quoted and attributed extensively through this post, is it simply because family responsibilities? Or is it because financial security? Perhaps it’s because some other lying, cheating, stealing reason?

“A good dream won’t make you poor, if you think it through, if you plan it well…”

• Seven Sentences

So if you’re doing what you don’t mean to be, then every time you are asked why you’re still at it, forget every other excuse, and give this reason:

I cannot think my dream through. I cannot plan it well enough to follow it through…

 

Only say you care about the world if you care enough to suffer through doing something to impact it. Regardless of what happens to you through it all.

The Riskiest Thing You Can Do Right Now Is To Simply Keep Doing The Same Old Thing.

Calling all African Writers: USD 3000 to be WON in Children's Lit Competition

Click here for more details

Calling all Assholes - Will the Real SLIME Shady, please stand up?

As we reel in the aftermath of a year long campaign binge laced with the typical sentimentalist sycophancy that characterizes Kenyan politics, as well as a new and mainly middle-class magical thinking that embodied Peter Kenneth's dream of State House, it takes a strong stomach to watch the fairly horrific scenes that have been these past 50 odd days since the election.

From the reactionary barbs that followed President Uhuru's number-crunching win on March 9, there was only one consensus on the nation's direction since then; downhill. For a while, however, there had seemed to be something so completely soothing about keeping the peace and making history while at it. Two of Kenya's bastards, conceived during the colonial twilight hours and birthed despite - if not because of - the near fatal labour pains of anarchy and despotism, had at last triumphed.

We seemed to have forgotten that for over half a century, their skull-like faces had kissed millions of dying children goodbye, after having bludgeoned their fathers to death and raped their mothers as they watched. Mere statistics at this point. Because in one fell swoop, Fisadi and Kabila had conspired to give their country the vainglory of a 'world record' in voter turnout at an election.

That kept the jubilation mobs occupied for a moment. But just as the dynamic duo finished their beers, picked up the shovels and returned to the pile of pungent human mulch at their feet, former Prime Minister Raila immediately declared war his intent to file a petition against the IEBC at the Supreme Court. Cue social media madness, as the tribal groupthink encouraged by both of the top candidates during the campaigns knocked up their cyborgs counsel during the trial.  

The average Kenyan has often been referred to as Wanjiku - or Atieno, Mueni, Chebet, whatever your preference is. But along with the reforms that have seen the e in Kibera deemed surplus to requirements and dragged off to the vowel museum, I suggest we rename Wanjiku. A good literal name for her would be Britney Spears, what with her once iconic invitation to 'hit me baby, one more time.' The only difference between the two being that in Kenya's case, the hits just keep on coming.

Our Supreme Court declared the IEBC's conduct of the elections free and fair, seemingly ignoring what seemed to have been emergent incidences of human error's bias against a bewildered Raila. Kibaki retired to his 6 million-dollar playboy mansion cushioned by a bloated pension, and passed on the baton to Uhuru in a pomp-laden, bowel-moving, taxpayer-funded 3 million-dollar+ inauguration. The combined total, approximately 9 million dollars (KES 800 million), being the exact amount that the Chinese government promised to invest in 2011 to improve Pumwani Maternity Hospital's infrastructure, but that seems not to quite have been delivered yet.

Exit statesman Kibaki stage left from the murky world of politics to celebrate 10 years as Vice President, 5 years as official leader of opposition, 10 years as president, and 50 years of sitting on the fence with a KES 1 million monthly pension, KES 25 million in lump some gratuity, 100 acres of land, and a KES 500 million retirement home. For a man billed as an economic genius, the remuneration figures seemed oddly simplistic in their derivation.

Meanwhile, Raila and co. pulled a diva move, the jet-setters jettisoning their vanquished behinds off to South Africa to "visit" an ailing Madiba. Why we tolerate these assholes - collectively, not just the Cord trio - I would not understand, were it not for the fact that within days of the inauguration, KTN's Jicho Pevu published their tabloid version of 'investigative' tele-journalism, complete with a sensational clip of Ciku Muiruri, who served as their Page Three girl. And what did we do? Like a pack of marauding zombies, we missed the fact that nothing new was aired in the 'epic' episode they aired, and went baying for Ciku's blood instead.

And now, when we're not busy ogling our socialite fashionistas' nudes on Ghafla!'s black trash trailer park, we're busy whetting our gluttonous appetites for bullshit with various opinionistas' drivel, as peddled by the daily rags. All the while we practice our poker faces in the mirror - lest we expose our tribal allegiances out there in the real world - and reserve our damn faces for display as we chide UhuRuto derisively and remark at their oh-so-genuine on-screen chemistry in equal measure. Ok, maybe not exactly equal; perhaps more like in a ratio of "50% + 1 is to others."

A couple days ago, the CIA revealed that Kenyan shoppers have a near religious faithfulness to familiar brands. The CIA, here, meaning Consumer Insight Africa, not Conspiracy International America. If it were the latter, one would only hope they'd go a step farther and correlate that belief in brands to the masses' disregard of their brains in favour of toeing the tribal line. Cord and Jubilee being the brands that command the biggest chunk of that deified belief.

"Honourable" Mithika Linturi vowed to see to it that the constitutionally protected Salaries and Remuneration Commission members are removed, for slashing MPs' salaries (from USD 122,000 to USD 79,000 annually)

In his first speech to parliament, our new president and supreme surveyor went on to talk about opening up a million acres of Kenyan land through irrigation. I half-expected him to mention the 500,000 odd acres rumoured to be in his family's possession - and remarkably, none of it anywhere near a road reserve, where it can be Syokimaud. But that nusu mkate expectation was deluded at best. Parliament quickly set about contorting its body, displaying a staggering level of flexibility as it stuck 290 feet in its mouth, so deep that it could only speak out of its arse. Talk about increasing salaries is unconstitutional, not to mention that this premature ejaculate - directed at a public that is already paying the world's highest rent - is aimed right at our faces.


Uhuru campaigned on a platform of sovereignty, arguing that the international community should not attempt to undermine our right to choose the supreme idiot-in-chief to govern the rest of the idiots in Miss Independent Kenya. And by overwhelming the ballot with votes cast for him, we sanctioned this idea of sovereignty. Which is why it's a bit of a shame that despite the e in Kibera having enjoyed - and still enjoying - massive support in Kenyan lingo (undoubtedly more than 50% + 1), the sovereignty of that e has not been fought for nearly as much. We might want to tighten security for the few other remaining vowels, maybe get them two bodyguards each, lest we end up having to buy mutras and samsas in the streets of Nairbi as we drive our flag-less Subrus and Toytas to work.

Finally, a parting shot to Raila and co. I realize that when your girlfriend of many years dumps you at the altar and marries another abusive guy whose guts you detest, it's only natural to want a rebound girl. What's unnatural, though, is going to your married pregnant ex-girlfriend's house and demanding that her husband surrender his conjugal rights over to you, on account of you having a bigger dick. 

The World without the Internet...would crash and burn #Reblog

Reblogged from TweepSang (@Kipsang)

Fuck Mass Suffererz: your Government is killing you

Chuku chuku, Tchoo! Tchoo!

The cheap, rickety, sway-with-me-now surreal orderliness of the morning train through 'Eastlando' is a disaster begging to happen. Feeling a bit dazed by this apparent contradiction? Let's break it down.

Rickety

Sure. That's not the part that dazed you. I hope. And quite frankly, the fact that the train creaks like a spring bed on a cold winter evening - connect that to bedminton - is not the disaster. Given the train charges 40 bob when the cheapest next best thing at the same hour charges double that, I think you'll agree with a fellow sufferer when I say " 'rickety' on Looney Train!'

Sway-with-me-now

Riding the Githurai 44 route train to town can get you sea-sick. Assuming you have the time - or money - to be sick, Sufferer. Forget that the nearest respectable body of water is at least an hour or two north or south of the railway route's radius.The side-to-side front-to-back journey through the motions, intermitted by incessant screams and wails (not from passengers, unfortunately, but the engine) would make your stomach rumble. Would, but doesn't:; why? Coz:

a) You wouldn't find a toilet to cure that rumble, till you get to Nairobi at least; and

b) You don't have the time - or money, as discussed above - to have a stomach rumble. So you rebuke that demon of the stomach rumble before he challenges you. In the name of Cheezaaz!

c) The train costs, once again, 40 bob. Hiyo ni bargain major sana. Deal with the shakes!

Surreal Orderliness

I sometimes live somewhere in the throes of Eastlando. Sasa, I will sometimes take the morning train to work as a result. [For reasons, see #BudgetYaMasufferer]. Usually, at around 5:30 to 6:30, or 6:30 to 7:30 in the am, that the train passes by my doorstep. In the area I sometimes live. 

That train's NEVER late. 

The train has never been late. Unless it breaks down. Which usually SUCKS!! Imagine being stuck in a veritable jungle somewhere in the Serengeti that Eastlamdo sometimes is. At that unGodly un'Allah'like 5 am. 'Yawa' is the only response your vocabulary should throw at that imagined scenario.

Back to order, the train is never late. Always within the same 5 minute bracket of time. It arrives, passengers have 30 or so seconds to board, et voila...the train tchoo tchoos on to the next Gare/ Stage. Inside the train, the couches, old though they may be, accommodate amply well, leaving you space to stretch your legs out. If you so dare. Seeing as they have never heard of Safety Belts at Kenya Railways, you'd probably fall off faster than it takes to say Yohana Mtembezi [Johnnie Walker]. Or maybe just faster than it takes that cry baby at Tusker Project Fame to break an eyelash sweat.

The order in that train reminds of Okoiti Omtata's words at POWOJune2012; indeed, Kenyans are willing to queue, wait in lines longer than Uhuru Highway, if they know that something awaits them at the end of that queue.

Disaster waiting to Happen 

This country's idea of Disaster Management and Preparedness is in preparing to manage the disaster's after effects. We, captained by chest-thumping tomfoolery, chose to walk KDF {Kenya Defence Forces - defending who? what? where?) into a running battle with Guerilla war lightweight champs in Somali. End result of poor forethought? Bombs left right and centre, above, below and within. Now a gang of maniacs storm a church in Garissa; their tithe, their offering...a spray bullets on the innocent crowd. 

Enter the train from Eastlando. No safety precautions whatsoever. No metal detectors, no sniffer dogs, zilch. nada, niet, nein...zut alors! This, despite the fact that passengers board and alight, bags and all, practically at every stop.

Does the scenario seem dire enough yet?

Enter the train station, at the Arrivals in 'Railways'. Policemen. General Service Unit. AK47s and all that other 'shock and awe' show of force. Not least, an actual Rottweiler that darn near bit off a young lady's head this morning. Literally. As in despite its handler, it jumped all the way 2 or so metres up into the air, going for her head  as she passed by.

At the exit, you find metal detectors and armed guards. Even at 6:30 am in the morning. Impressive, aye?

Well, it is; but only if you miss the fact that the powers that be would much rather cure than prevent attacks on the citizenry who board such a train everyday. Only if the irony in having so much security at the mouth of the CBD - Central Business District - while none goes into securing the people traveling into it, does not stand out to you.

Kenya ni Kwetu; lakini jichungeni Mass Sufferers.

In Other News:

[i] Are you a Kiss 100 fan? Do you feel like your earphones (assuming you use them) are constantly trying to 'Make you Dance'?

Am gonna make you dance

Am gonna am gonna make you dance

[ii] Why you need to know what the US, British, Saudi and Israeli interests in Kenya (Nairobi particularly) are? Because they could KILL you...that's why. At least if Iran is to be feared; and Israel, believed. See today's headlines for more.

[iii] Does anyone else feel the Mass Media sometimes acts like a Public Toilet? A regular dose of 10 bob opinions going down the sewage pipe. In case you missed it, that's an insult. To the Media. And more so to the public.

Siku njemani!

Schizofrenetic Conundrum

More than once I have been asked why I started the Diary of a Serial Schizo. More than once, more than just many a times, the response has left many at pains to grasp their minds around it. Perhaps I should try key it down in some sorta logically aligned fashion that could help add some grain to the cobs and wipe away the webs. And to do this, I see no better way than to go back in history.

In 2008, The Pawns of Reality came to be. Not unlike many in a similar position, losing a close companion changed the essential mouldings of my future; the fundamentals, however, remained pretty much the same. I was lucky to grow up in an environment that was once classy but degenerated to void really early in my life. Not too early for the ‘bourgeois’ foundations not to take hold in me, but early enough that shedding them was not as difficult as it might usually be. 


Soon enough the only thing that kept me and my siblings in school was nature, for nature dictates that survival befits the fittest; and in the eyes of a dogged businessman turned educationist, we were indeed the fittest. That is to say that we stayed in school despite financial constraints because he was unwilling to lose his best students in our respective classes.

The school itself was situated in Central Province, what seemed a social desert juxtaposed to our former places of abode in the expressive jungle Nairobi was even in the early 90s. Quite an inconceivable contrast to my buzzing young mind; but one that allthemore presented an appealing challenge to fit into. Fast forward through the dusted days and grazed nights; we once again found ourselves flung into quasi-metropolitan bliss, in the way of an illustrious academy in Central province. 

The wont of many an affluent family is to buy the best education for their young ones, and this factor meant we got to rub shoulders with the allure of glamour once more. My eager mind now began to learn from them what rumours the new Nairobi had come up with; among them was something that sounded pretty much like Swahili, but had the knack to shock you every once in a while with something linguistically unseemly. Hence my first acquiescence to the acquaintance turned lifelong friend that is sheng’. 

I still recall wondering why they were calling me buda, which the kamusi aptly informed me was a term of respect for grandpas. Don’t even get me started on the phenomenal marrow, derived from murram to refer to Githeri. KuBielo, kuGoot kudinya...it was all Greek to me.

You can probably guess why we called it murram

These kids also introduced me to the idea that it was not the fact that you spoke English, but how you spoke it that mattered. For the first time I heard of shrubbing – better yet kung’oa and kushema. I had been good at writing the colonist’s language, but now I was informed that I had to speak like him too. By the time they called me to Starehe Boys’ Centre and School, I was rid of the rural influence in my language delivery; I still, however, had a shrub or two in me. Not the entire bush, but a few well-pruned branches still cropped up in some circumstances. 

Circumstance 1: A sneaky mate asks me who was famous for the Moonwalk. Eminem, says I.

Circumstance 2: Another sneakate mentions that his favourite part in ‘You are Everything’ is Ja Rule’s rap. Being an ardent Sisqo fan, I proceed to argue with him:

Shrub: Zi! Hiyo ngoma ni ya Sisqo! Ja Rule hayuko!

Sneakate: Ngebe! Ja Rule ndo hurap!

Shrub: Niko na tape ya Sisqo na hiyo ngoma ni yake!

He proceeded to explain to me a little foreign ideology known as a collabo. That essentially crushed my sterring swagger for a couple of days (sterring was a shagz mundez way of saying star, adapted from the fact that we always saw great actors’ names after the word Starring; ‘mi ndio sterring’ and later ‘mi ndio sterrow’ were thus common utterances).

Anyway, life in Starch was the usual, a story for some other day. Once I got out, however, I realized that I had two personalities fighting within me. The good guy and the bad guy; the Don Juan and the Don Quixote; the wit and the geek; the loud mouth and the loner; the conformist and the free spirit. 

I also realized that for me, rules were made to censor living, not regulate it. Religion became a rumour replaced with Rebellion in reason. Authority became a menace replaced with Autonomy in action. The only thing I chose to believe in was right and wrong, and my ability to know the difference.

Before Varsity happened, I also realized my affinity for women and their place in society; not every woman, but many a woman. The oppressed lot; the resilient kinds who stick by their brutes and hide behind the lilac embers of non-existent love, ignoring the grey ash grounded all around them. I was at a bit of a loss; I wanted to be that devious Casanova with a Gregory Housy MD in chutzpah, but constantly found myself dragged back by this ‘burden’; this conscience that made me wanna be the good guy. 

Fast forward through the trips and traps that the stupid little fat crimson imp masterminded to ambush my path, and you get to 2008. I had just lost my mum, in my first year of campus. And suddenly came the urge to write, to put the pain on paper and shred it up. By mid-2009, courage finally mustered me, and posted this rant full of bile on Facebook. Suffice to say that I never looked back.


It was only last year, however, that I finally got the jilt to diversify my audience beyond Facebook walls; a friend went through a horrid time, as chronicled in Mateso - The Prelude : R.E.S. Pia C. Maboy Tumekosa and Mateso: Aluta Continua. As an established Facebook note-writer, she turned to me for help. Yet even with my efforts to get her story out there and get the perpetrators of a heinous act of rape to justice, I found that I could not be of adequate help to her needs. 


Diary of a Serial Schizo came to be for that reason. I now have a mouthpiece. To channel my crazy out for all to see, and every once in a while, channel what needs to be said, but doesn't seem to be for some reason or the other.

I am the sober drunk, the clean junkie, the philanthropic robber, the romantic arsehole and the industrious vigilante all rolled up in one. A serial schizo.

Yule Mbois Mndialala ( Diary of a Serial Schizo

 @french_freddy

Mind over Mutant: The spelling bee who couldn’t e-n-u-n-c-i-a-t-e

First Published on Randomity Personified by @notmutant

An initiative of the Kenyan Reading Revolution

My family didn’t have a TV till I lobbied for one successfully at the age of 6. @andywarhola could write tales about that, too. The distinct and utter lack of a TV. Or, going to the neighbour’s house to watch one. On the sly. That house, for me, was my friend Subira’s (her name means patience, goes to show) and that of a boy called Dan (who had three brothers-the beginning of my love affair with friendships with male people). That makes two houses… Yay me.

I taught myself to read at the age of 2. I read the same book - 'Kaka Sungura na Ndugu Mbweha' - over and over again till I could read effortlessly. If you are a Kenyan and you read that book; high five. My parents were the epitome of student poverty. Maybe I exaggerate but as I have grown older I have realised our charmed counter-cultural life (no help, no TV) was a response to the general absence of money. That and the accompanying surfeit of love. The egalitarian environment-father bathes child as mother labours over stove before father reads child book and mother tucks in child as father washes dinner dishes-was indicative of the fact that their reality did not allow my parents the privilege of traditional gender roles.

Did I just say ‘traditional gender roles’?

*Fights with the being that has usurped her body & wrests control of her blog from it.*

Phew! That was close! This post was inspired by @French_Freddy who urged me write a little something (is this little enough, Fred? May I stop now?) about why I read as my contribution to Kenya’s Reading Revolution (@readkenya on Twitter). Plus the encouragement of Juliet Maruru (@sheblossoms on Twitter) Aleya Jamel (@aleyajamel on Twitter) and tweeps such as @twezlie and @EdwinAbuga

“Quit stalling, lady!” a voice shouts from the gallery. All right my good people, these are my confessions:

I read because it’s an escape. At just about the point when the world has thrown all manner of things my way, it throws a book that rights my upside-down existence and evens the valleys. Then I walk through; barely looking up but safe in the knowledge that I shall survive and live to read another day. It’s an escape from the misery, the uncertainties of life. @veelangat and @kemikali can testify to that far-away, did-you-say-something, effect books have on me. And they know me well enough to be agents of the universe when I need a book thrown my way. The book cover as trapdoor. Escape.

I read because it’s what we do in my family. Reading as tradition. My brother T, now 11, used to read the paper upside down as a toddler. Read, in a manner of speaking. More like observe the text with a keen, intent look. Trying to piece together what it was that kept his pre-teen sister and parents so absorbed. And when he started to read, his enthusiasm couldn’t be curbed. Now that I’ve written that, I’ve remembered how I used to ask the butcher to wrap the meat in particular pages of the newspaper so that I could read the article on the paper when I got home. My mother knew I did this-I requested those very sheets of paper even when she was the one buying meat with me by her side-and she approved of it. That’s just, as the young would say, how we roll.

I read to be informed. The written word as teacher. My parents are of that in-between generation that had never talked about sex(uality) with their parents but was faced with the scourge that is AIDS at the time when their children were growing up. To talk or not to talk? Or in my parents case, to foist books on said child or not? Foist not, converse not; my parents decided. And being lovers of the spoken word, they would not choose to deny themselves the chance to have The Conversation. Many times. I read a plethora of Sex-Ed books. Christian ones, secular ones, NGO-funded ones….with some Kama Sutra thrown in at 11 or 12; for good measure. I couldn’t be bothered in those days; I actually thought they were being nags. These days, when I am with my age-mates and I am treated like an oversexed female person for all the knowledge I have, I see what motivated my parents. Knowledge is power. I am powerful. It’s not just about the birds and the bees that I read to be informed. The world, money, power, war and peace. Love, pain, pleasure; one knows so much more when one reads.

An oversexed female person, for all the knowledge I have

This will sound ridiculous but I read to learn to write. By which I mean spell. Kemikali (the man usually referred to as X) has made a comedy out of my inability to pronounce words. My constant rebuttal? I can spell them. I know, it’s lame, I should go for Toastmasters or something similar. But why, when I can spell, spell, spell? My brother, rearing himself on a steady diet of TV (how time flies! How things change!) can spell a word by the hearing; I can explain a word by the reading. I’m the spelling bee who can’t pronounce words, he is the champion born too many miles from the Big Apple. And so I continue to read. I may never get to say myriad words as they should be said (on what side of the Atlantic, ask I?) but at least I can write them. From the gallery, “Write on, sister! Write on!”. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

I read to experience the full gamut of human expression and feeling. The happy, the sad, the flights of fancy, the ideas that transform, heal, change. The Bible, the Qur’an, the inspired writings of Kahlil Gibran. Frost, Garcia Marquez, Soyinka, Ngugi, Mahfouz, Gordimer, Adichie, Arundhati Roy….Emily Dickinson (or My high school crush). Those ‘trashy’ romance novels (my dad encouraged me to read those as a teenager; so I could wrap up the fantasy bit of my life that much sooner, I guess), those bits of classic literature (I used to drive my mum to church and sit at the park outside reading ‘War and Peace’, heathen that I was; ha ha), contemporary literature. I may never be left on bridge by a lover, or have a lesbian one; but I can read the experiences of one who has. I have never been to Kathmandu and shall never go to apartheid South Africa though I have a sense of what it’s like to be in those places.

A story: Once I was at a supermarket and an autistic child (thank you, Reader’s Digest) walked up to me and held my hand as he looked into my eyes with a piercing look. I was, quite honestly, enchanted (I was 19 and sans lover; not a lot of people were lining up to look at me like that) and held his hand as I greeted him and asked him his name (he told me) before his mum came and took him away. Greetings, transfer of child, best wishes. Then we met again at a the pharmacy in the very mall. A repeat of what had happened earlier and a fresh round ofgoodbyes.

I may never have a child, let alone an autistic one, but I felt like I had met that child before. In a book. Not this specific one but the different, the unusual, the outcast, the misunderstood. I had met him in his world and in those of others and I felt like I was meeting an old friend when I met that lad. My empathy was informed by my knowledge of that child from the wealth of books read. The world is full of experiences, situations, feelings, that we may never chance upon. Yet, in a book, we get to experience all these. And so much more.

I read because it’s a cheap means to wealth. No, I’m not talking about all those motivational books. I am talking about a wealth of knowledge, of expressions, of feeling, of twists and turns; and of money, too. The book that costs one less than 50 US cents that transports you to a whole new world (cue Aladdin on the magic carpet), the fantasy worlds explored. I realised, as an adult, that bar ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Snow White’, I read all the other fairy tales in their unabridged form. That is to say, as The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen first presented them (thank you, Penguin Popular Classics). The student poverty mentioned earlier was the chief cause but looking back, I can honestly say I grew up rich. I got a slice of history and it was a gift that kept giving. I went to 19th century England, and walked with Mowgli through the jungle. I learnt why things fell apart and pieced together the reason behind all the strange animals in those Australian cartoons (Australia was a bit of an obsession at age 5) as I ran away from the Amazonian creatures on my way to the ruins of ancient civilisations. All this while I admired the Sphinx and cried over the beloved country. All this knowledge, all this history for the girl who was rich because she read. So much for my ‘few words about why I read’, huh? But these and so many more are the reasons why I read. I could go on and on but as I conclude I would like to say that nothing opens the mind more than books read, nothing whets the appetite for knowledge better than the written word, nothing quenches the thirst for answers more than that which comes to you through reading.

I am a Kenyan who reads and I support the Reading Revolution. Why do you read?

Tagged: All the tweeps mentioned herein who love to read and haven’t written about why they read