Michael Onsando
I Read Because Of Why
When I was a child I never really fit in to crowds. So I overcompensated by being loud and making a fool of myself therefore as opposed to being the random kid that walked the street with his hands in his pockets kicking a can, I was the kid who would walk slowly marveling at the world around me, always animated. In fact, a walk from the estate gate to home, that takes me about 3 minutes today (a song on my iPod), had the capability to take almost half an hour back then. See, the world was fascinating and everything was so colourful and amazing so I couldn’t help but want to experience to touch smell and feel everything. Sure I was a bit awkward in my ways but who cares about awkward when you can be running against the wind?
I cannot exactly pinpoint the moment in time that began my discovery of words and books but I know my mum had a great influence in this matter. See, she was a teacher and every week she would borrow two books from the library and make me read them. I read every single Hardy Boys, Famous Five, Nancy Drew and these pacesetter books that there was to offer. In fact, I even had my moments with the sweet valley books that were bought for my sister, although this was done in the secrecy of my room under my bed because those were books for girl.
What I do, remember was the first completely new bit of information I learnt from a book. I had just ploughed through my Around the World in Eighty Days during an hour long Kiswahili double lesson and was amazed when I got to the bit where the author explains of how when you move in one direction round the earth you gain a day while when you move in the other you lose a day. I couldn’t believe it. This was huge you could actually travel through time, sort of. I got home and found my mum, who obviously didn’t know of this phenomenon, of how if you moved west you would gain a day and if you moved east you would lose it. I went on about the sun and revolutions (adding as much science as a class 6 child could muster) and my mother learned something that day.
In retrospect maybe my mum knew about the way direction affects time long before I told her, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is from that day onward me and books were inseparable. I had a novel with me everywhere I went, I actively looked for the latest hardy boys and plowed through the Penguin Publishers books faster than an angry combined harvester on a wheat farm. By the time I was in class 8 I had moved from eager kid to annoying know- it-all. See, I was reading “big boy books” as I called them, going through the smaller books in my Father’s vast collection.
By the time I was done with The Pelican Brief (form one term two) I knew that me and books had a long way to go. I guess I was right because to date nothing excites me more than to smell the pages of a new book fresh from the press. See, books solved most of life’s problems for me. As a child I always knew that the place to find answers was books, not google. I still have the same inquisitive mind, I still look up at the stars and marvel on my way home, I still wonder why the street lamps keep winking at me, so I guess on a larger part I still am the child that I was. The little kid who just wants to know why.
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