My Journey in Writing
I cannot remember when and where I start writing.
However, I remember writing notes in secondary school.
To kill the boredom, I choose to write a book.
After some other years, I complete typing my manuscript of Zahara Mage.
Every page of the book has countless mistakes.
The book drops from glamour to embarrassment.
I quickly list the mistakes in the book indicating page, paragraph, line, and word. I send the list to the publisher with a request they withdraw the book from market and make the corrections. The publisher withdraws the book but ignores my request to make corrections.
This forces me to take a useless legal step.
Every day, after school I write my Uandishi wa Insha and finally submit the manually typed manuscript to Heinemann Educational Publishers.
I submit once more to East African Educational Publishers (formerly Heinemann Educational Publishers) the manuscript for this great book together with another one for children, Elijah Isaac Mayukuba Shiyonga of African Kenya Sabcrynnsk of Soi Praying and Healing Church.
For years silence rules. In the year 2007 I inquire about the manuscripts. In less than two days I get a phone call asking me to collect my parcel at National Finance Housing Company office in Eldoret.
One day, I bump into a new dance. I am in a bookshop at Kakamega...I quickly and angrily realise that a university male lecturer and a secondary school female teacher have plagiarized my work!
I choose to publish the two online.
People who steal other people's ideas are parasites.
I sincerely thank Dr. Gibbe of Moi University. He gives me a key to selling books.
I quickly work to turn my A4 four-page Makosa katika Insha hand-out into a handy A6 pocket guide Makosa katika Insha book.
After teaching poetry (ushairi) in Swahili in secondary schools and participating as a facilitator in workshops for teachers of Kiswahili for over twenty years, since September 1976, I choose to write a Swahili poetry teaching textbook.
I get in touch with publisher Jimmi Makostsi of Acacia Stantex Publishers.
I am unaware I am hugging a hyena.
In the meantime, writing and my journey in writing continue.
I set out on a hunt for a publisher who can see my Mashairi Rahisi (Simple Poems) in print, to at least enable me earn some money, having lost all fat from Taaluma ya Ushairi to Jimmi Makotsi of Acacia Stantex Publishers.
Getting ideas from anything, I write a study guide to Swahili literature syllabus. I call it Mtaala wa Fasihi (literature syllabus).
Who knew there would come online publishing to save us from traditional publishers?
Writing letters is part of writing. My earliest letters go back to 1967.
I travel from Likuyani to Mukunga. It is a hard rough road to travel. I leave copies of my book. To get payment is no easy task.
I have a wild imagination that I should sell my books to home schools as a humble way of giving back to the community.
I write to Barack Muluka to get me some books so that I do serious business of hawking books. He sends me copies of Fasihi Simulizi kwa Shule za Sekondari (Oral Literature for Secondary Schools), a teaching text book and Kisa cha Zahara, a novel in Swahili, in two large cartons.
I arrange to visit a school every other day. In all the schools I leave a copy of each of my two books and my contact mobile phone number because narrow bottlenecks clog purchase process. None of the schools contacts me and none orders any book.
I exhaust my stock. I have not earned any money. I cannot pay Barack Muluka for the books he published. I cannot ask for more books. The business...