Falling in love with a pen...
I was watching another writer at his craft when I first fell in love with writing. Though I didn't know it then.
The year was 2003, and I was supposed to be in my final year of high school, but for some reason that is best explained in a different post, I had dropped out of school and with little hope of ever going back.
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In fact, I was in Mbeere District, more than 400 kilometers from my home in Eldoret, when I watched this writer bang away at his rickety manual typewriter.
"I am writing a war novel, care to read some of it, tell me what you think?" he asked me as he reached for a pile of type-written pages on his dusty desk.
"Why not?" I replied, half-heartedly, as I took some pages.
To be honest, I didn't care much for what he was writing. In fact, I found his English too complicated. I had to look up half the words he was using. His writing was good, I guess, but it wasn't for me. I particularly remember his description of the different types of guns the soldiers used and the army terminologies and I remember thinking: "show off."
I don't remember getting through the first chapter.
When he was not bent over the typewriter trying to beat the darkness (since there was no electricity in the house we were staying in), Irungu, my cousin, the writer I am talking about, had another passion. Reading.
"I am reading a Robert Ludlum novel, The Matarese Circle. You should read him too. He is very good, not like me. I think you will enjoy his work," he suggested, imploringly.
I conceded and slumped into the nearest couch holding a tattered paperback copy of "The Road to Gandolfo". I positioned myself so that the light from the Kerosene lamp would hit the book and I didn't leave that position for the next three hours. I was hooked from the first sentence.
It is rather strange, come to think about it. That in my 17 years I had never thought of reading as a pleasure, or found a story so absorbing. The only written stories or novels I had encountered before then were the set books shoved down our throats by the school syllabus.
Reading was meant to be a chore, not a fun activity. Poetry was for analyzing, a code to crack. Not something to enjoy, a light to bask in.
For some reason, I don't recall reading any fairy tales as a child. Somehow, I skipped that phase. But Robert Ludlum opened a door to a world that I vowed never to leave for the rest of my life.
Or rather, I should say Irungu Thatiah, my cousin who abandoned his unfinished novels and went on to become a journalist (and is now , by the way, the author of a political expose on President Uhuru Kenyatta: "Hard Tackle") helped open this door for me.
In a remote village in Eastern Province, hundreds of kilometers from home and with no hope of completing my education, I heard my name. And the voice that was calling out to me came from a pen lying on the table.
Suddenly, an object that I previously only associated with homework and official documents, the pen, became a conduit for expressing myself. And just the following year, I would win a girl's heart through a letter, a girl I had never spoken to face to face.
In the years that followed, I read more stories and wrote more letters and poems and when I became a Christian in 2006, I wrote devotions for the college student ministry bulletin. I have never stopped writing since.
I find myself writing about everything these days. I write for work and I write when I am taking a break from work. I write for fun and I write when I am down. I write when I feel like and I write when I don't feel like (I write about writers' block). No, writing is not my life, but it is the atmosphere in which I live. It is the means through which I make sense of life. I thank God for this gift.
It took a perfect storm of circumstances to expose me to a world that I had never even imagined for the first 17 years of my life, and yet I was to spend the rest of my life there.
I had discovered the magic wardrobe, and I have never regretted taking that first step through the door. This is my Narnia, and I love it.
Oh, and thank you Irungu Thatiah, for bothering me with your work that day 12 years ago. You sparked an eternal flame.
The year was 2003, and I was supposed to be in my final year of high school, but for some reason that is best explained in a different post, I had dropped out of school and with little hope of ever going back.
In fact, I was in Mbeere District, more than 400 kilometers from my home in Eldoret, when I watched this writer bang away at his rickety manual typewriter.
"I am writing a war novel, care to read some of it, tell me what you think?" he asked me as he reached for a pile of type-written pages on his dusty desk.
"Why not?" I replied, half-heartedly, as I took some pages.
To be honest, I didn't care much for what he was writing. In fact, I found his English too complicated. I had to look up half the words he was using. His writing was good, I guess, but it wasn't for me. I particularly remember his description of the different types of guns the soldiers used and the army terminologies and I remember thinking: "show off."
I don't remember getting through the first chapter.
When he was not bent over the typewriter trying to beat the darkness (since there was no electricity in the house we were staying in), Irungu, my cousin, the writer I am talking about, had another passion. Reading.
"I am reading a Robert Ludlum novel, The Matarese Circle. You should read him too. He is very good, not like me. I think you will enjoy his work," he suggested, imploringly.
I conceded and slumped into the nearest couch holding a tattered paperback copy of "The Road to Gandolfo". I positioned myself so that the light from the Kerosene lamp would hit the book and I didn't leave that position for the next three hours. I was hooked from the first sentence.
It is rather strange, come to think about it. That in my 17 years I had never thought of reading as a pleasure, or found a story so absorbing. The only written stories or novels I had encountered before then were the set books shoved down our throats by the school syllabus.
Reading was meant to be a chore, not a fun activity. Poetry was for analyzing, a code to crack. Not something to enjoy, a light to bask in.
For some reason, I don't recall reading any fairy tales as a child. Somehow, I skipped that phase. But Robert Ludlum opened a door to a world that I vowed never to leave for the rest of my life.
Or rather, I should say Irungu Thatiah, my cousin who abandoned his unfinished novels and went on to become a journalist (and is now , by the way, the author of a political expose on President Uhuru Kenyatta: "Hard Tackle") helped open this door for me.
In a remote village in Eastern Province, hundreds of kilometers from home and with no hope of completing my education, I heard my name. And the voice that was calling out to me came from a pen lying on the table.
Suddenly, an object that I previously only associated with homework and official documents, the pen, became a conduit for expressing myself. And just the following year, I would win a girl's heart through a letter, a girl I had never spoken to face to face.
In the years that followed, I read more stories and wrote more letters and poems and when I became a Christian in 2006, I wrote devotions for the college student ministry bulletin. I have never stopped writing since.
I find myself writing about everything these days. I write for work and I write when I am taking a break from work. I write for fun and I write when I am down. I write when I feel like and I write when I don't feel like (I write about writers' block). No, writing is not my life, but it is the atmosphere in which I live. It is the means through which I make sense of life. I thank God for this gift.
It took a perfect storm of circumstances to expose me to a world that I had never even imagined for the first 17 years of my life, and yet I was to spend the rest of my life there.
I had discovered the magic wardrobe, and I have never regretted taking that first step through the door. This is my Narnia, and I love it.
Oh, and thank you Irungu Thatiah, for bothering me with your work that day 12 years ago. You sparked an eternal flame.
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