To Write....or Not.

So now I have an inclination towards writing.

From early on I possessed a tentative love of reading - tentative as it was a stuttering, on again off again kind of reading. It was in keeping with my very nature, a quiet, independent minded and laid back boy, yet annoyingly aloof and dispassionate about anything in particular. As soon as I would get really into something, I would grow tired of it and gradually develop slight antipathy towards it, as though I was trying to maintain my independence.

The earliest books I recall reading were the "Moses" series of novels by the late Barbara Kimenye, God bless her soul, although I remember nothing in particular about the storylines which at the time I found very interesting. Next was Chinua Achebe's "A Man of the People," whose predicaments facing the main character resonated somewhat with some of the more affluent folks I knew in Lutonyi area of Kakamega town, where I grew up. I half-read "Things Fall Apart," partly because there was already a television series chronicling the famous life of Okonkwo.

As I grew up I became a familiar face at the Provincial Library in Kakamega, curiously located just across the fence from my local school, Kakamega Primary School. There, I discovered crime and thriller fiction of the mould of James Hadley Chase and Sidney Sheldon, which my neighbour - the popular-with-ladies Evans - endlessly supplied. I was soon popular with my English teacher in my final year at the Kakamega Primary School, the late (again, God bless her soul) Mrs. Dolorose, due to my "compositions" which sufficiently impressed her. The fact that I achieved a perfect score in English KCPE national examination must have pleased her immensely.

However, being me I soon grew tired of crime fiction, and sought to dabble in more "serious" writings. I became obsessed with writings on religion, driven by a subjective quest to confirm my misgivings arising from the events in the Middle East and sectarian violence within Islam, which I found bizarre to say the least. Atheism dangerously beckoned, but that too I found bizarre. Into my confused adolescent mind I fed tentative convictions that were always somehow refuted, to the extent that I settled on an aloof stance that rode on a self-constructed ambivalent wave of Islam. Readings on religion and spiritual matters, as well as those on evolution and creationism, achieved a predictability that always becomes apparent as soon as I grow tired of anything.

I recall the day I laid my hands on Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina", which, in my excited mind, separated the men from the boys. Tolstoy, much like Achebe much earlier on, introduced me to literary fiction that portrayed real societal issues. I followed it up with "War and Peace," which admittedly I took almost six months to read through. By then I was an impressionable youth at the University of Nairobi excitedly confused by Dialectical Materialism, Marxism, and Realism, which were essential tools for pleasing hard-nosed and ideologically biased Professors. I wrote - apart from the necessary dissertations and reports - very sparingly, surprisingly managing to get a commentary published on a reputable website.

And then, inexplicably, I stopped reading.

Perhaps academic reading drained me. Perhaps the job I landed in Nairobi, a city with enough hustle and bustle to discourage a dispassionate mind like mine, drained me too. Perhaps even the posting to Pretoria didn't have the desired effect. Reading became a necessary activity to keep abreast of current affairs, more like a cumbersome and onerous task meant to gather enough facts to impress conversationists and appear knowledgeable in tandem with the job description. The writing too was much similar - official briefs and reports which were good enough to earn me a decent reputation in the corridors of the work place. Personal writing became something I did under emotional distress, more of therapy, after which I always felt so relieved as to post on Facebook, pleased with myself. Reading and enjoying literary fiction became a nostalgic memory.

Until recently, that is.

A dispassionate mind has reclaimed a lost passion. I could perhaps credit the Caine Prize for African Writing's annual short story shortlists. Maybe NoViolet (yes, recently I met a Zimbabwean lady called Asset, and she didn't know why her dad, who passed before she was born, named her so) Bulawayo's "Hitting Budapest", or Elnathan John's "Bayan Layi" inspired me. Most certainly Pede Hollist's "Foreign Aid," which I dare bet will win this year's Caine Prize, has had a decisive effect. The first few chapters of Adichie's "Americanah" spar me on. Delightful African literary fiction with themes one can relate to.

With the reading comes a prodding to write. And hence my inclination towards writing. But should I write? What would I write? Politics? Fiction? Social commentary? A little bit of everything? Perhaps. Let's see how this goes.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my blog