Dispassionate Pursuit of Passion- Embracing A Reading ‎Culture

By: Lewis Momanyi

The biggest innovation in human history is realizing that human beings have the ability to alter their life by altering their thinking.

In Robin Sharma’s book, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, it says that “The quality of your life on earth will be measured by the quality of contributions you have made to other humans lives. It doesn’t matter how big your house is, or how silk your car is, the only thing you can take with you at the end of your life is your conscience.” 

Growing up in the village in Kisii I knew I had a purpose in life. Like every child, I had big dreams, big ambitions and aspirations in life. I remember when I was in fourth grade, our class teacher asking us who we wanted to be in future. As expected, many said they wanted to be Engineers, Doctors, Pilots but I remember saying I wanted to be a Chief Executive Officer (CEO). When the teacher asked me why I aspired to be a CEO, My answers were simple; I wanted to lead people and bring out the best in them.

The teacher was amused and he told me something which inspired me till today; To be a CEO you need to have Integrity, Have Leadership qualities and Read Extensively. Those words sparked my ears and I vowed to follow my dream to be a CEO one day by following those three components he mentioned. I started by branding myself with the tagline the “CEO Next Door”. This was to inspire me each day I woke up to remember my aspirations in life. I read and researched extensively on every stage as I knew this was the key to becoming better in the environment that I was and always took up opportunities to lead teams whenever I had the opportunity, the end game being, to learn and to improve on my leadership qualities.

Due to my passion to empower and inspire I started a mentorship program to mentor other youths under the umbrella of Aspire for humanity initiative Kenya. Through my mentorship programs, I was appointed a board member at Abraham Lincoln Youth Initiative and at Fresh cut Foundation East Africa. Through that journey of engaging the youths, I leant that many youths did not have a reading culture as they only read to pass exams.

Why do we have a bad reading culture?

I started by asking myself the question above as it could inform my search for solutions.

My country Kenya is considered to be among the countries with highly educated population in East Africa. According to Africa Economist, Kenya has a literacy level of 85% which makes it the fourth country with the highest literacy levels in Africa. India is the world leading in the number of hours spent in reading per person which stands at 10hours and 42 mins. The introduction of free primary education in Kenya is an indication of the passion we have for education especially for our children which made me question on why we still have a bad reading culture in a country that embraces education as the key to the future to our kids.

I also noted that many youths especially those who have finished university were taking more time on newspapers. This was due to unemployment where others were looking for jobs while others could perceive that many youths are interested in the present not the future. Majority of the youths are interested in the day to day happenings from politics to trending topics of the day and that justifies why they prefer newspapers. I noticed that those are the same ideologies that makes the youths love twitter.

In some instances, I noticed many travel agencies organizing for vacations or retreats. The worrying trend was that despite a vacation being a place to go and relax your mind, very few people were going with books to improve on their knowledge. The travel agencies also playe a key role as very few organize for reading retreats. That implies how we don’t value the reading culture.

To a more worrying trend was that, l noticed that almost 90% of books are only being sold in Nairobi central business Unit. If you visit other counties you will be surprised that you will not find even a vendor selling books as they perceive it as a non-profitable business as majority of the population don’t buy the books to read. I noted that very few county libraries were equipped and the bookshops based on those counties were only selling those books approved for curriculum in schools since they were in business of profitability not impacting knowledge.

We can blame the society for not playing a critical role in promoting a reading culture, we might as well blame the teachers for not inculcating a reading culture at a young age to many in schools, but the decision lies solemnly in us. We are in this state, what are we doing in our individual capacities to ensure that we are changing this narrative? When dusk turns to dawn and in the final analysis, we take full responsibility as individuals.

My initiative;

I vowed to take the lonely journey of ensuring that I drive out illiteracy in my own capacity from my initiatives.

The first approach I started was to gift my friends with atleast one book during their birthdays. At first it seemed odd as I realized many of my friends did not take it positively. Others could read and while others after receiving the books, they could put them in the book shelves never to read again. That did not discourage me from my cause, I knew that to reach my goal I had to start from somewhere.

In that journey I joined many book fairs, Readers guild, met many stakeholders with the aim of looking for ways to encourage the culture of reading.

Last year when I was doing analysis of the books I had issued out, I realized I had issued more than 3000 books to my friends on their birthdays. That is when I decided to change the approach.

With those 3000 books, I could have had a fully equipped library where youths can access this books for free after registration to be members of the initiative.

With this in mind, I started an initiative to have 47 fully equipped libraries in all 47 counties by 2025. This will assist in improving literacy and make us be a reading nation. So far we have collected over 500 books towards the project.

Remember a reading nation is a thinking nation. When we have many readers, we will have the inherent capacity to meet challenges that we face as a country as we will turn them to opportunities.

Food For Thought: Many Kenyans have birthdays every day, what if each of us bought at least two books on their birthday and supported this cause? How many books will we have to be accessed by those who are unable to buy them? This is one way you can support the cause.

In this Dispassionate pursuit of passion, I hope you will all support this journey of embracing the reading culture. It is never too late, if you think you are too old to read, remember you have the power to change the younger generation.