How my illiterate grandmother and her son taught me the art of letter writing

I credit my illiterate grandmother—the late Lucia Amayoka—and her last-born son, Nicholas Buhere, for my education in the art of letter writing.

Our uncle, Nicholas, used to work in a place called Mtito Andei and would communicate with our grandmother through letters. Our grandmother had not received a formal education. She was totally illiterate. That was in the mid-1970s.

It was, however, common for children in those days to write to their parents and wives even though some, if not most, could not read.

It was the few young literate people who invariably received, opened and read out the contents of the letters children, sons and husbands had written to their parents or wives.

This is how my younger brother and I came into the world of letter writing between two people who were physically removed from each other. And these two people happened to be our grandmother, Lucia Amayoka, and her son, Nicholas.

This was a time when teachers had not yet taught us the skill of writing letters—what is today called functional writing—in the English curriculum.

The letters our grandmother asked us to deal with fell into two categories. We had our uncle's letters, which we opened and read for her. We also had letters that we wrote for her in reply to her son's earlier correspondence.

The contents of the letters were about ordinary things in life. Our uncle wrote about money he had sent—via the post office in those days—to do certain things for him on the farm.

Our grandmother would, in turn, reply to the letters, detailing how she had used the money as requested in a previous letter, interspersing her response with the latest happenings in the family and village and occasional references to the weather.

One thing we noticed, and which I later learned in communication studies, was the introductory remarks in the letters. A standard format that never missed in the correspondence was greetings and hopes that the recipient was in good health, followed by an acknowledgement of the previous letter.

After exhausting the introductory remarks, each of the two letter writers—our grandmother and her son—delved into the substance of the message that had prompted the letter or the reply.

My brother and I loved reading our uncle's letters as well as writing letters for our grandmother. I can assure you that my uncle's letters were always crisp, simple, clear and logical. Our grandmother's replies were equally simple, clear and logical.

When I eventually found myself called upon to write letters—to my father, mother and girlfriends—I had little or no problem putting my thoughts, feelings and ideas into words.

The same applied to the letter-writing format we were required to use to express our feelings, thoughts and ideas in English lessons in secondary school. This confidence was courtesy of the practical educational experience I had gained under my grandmother in writing letters.

The enduring beauty of handwritten letters

It is this childhood flirtation with letter writing that induced me to read most of the letters St Paul, St Peter and St John wrote to newly converted Christians and priests in the Gentile world.

I even chanced upon a letter German statesman Otto von Bismarck wrote to his father-in-law, showing Bismarck, the no-nonsense statesman we know in history, as a humble man.

The art of letter writing is an affirmation of the union of souls between two people. They share the mysteries of life across distances while breaking down physical barriers.

A letter brims with life, with the beating of hearts. For those of us who came before the internet and the mobile phone and their communication capabilities, there is life in the old way of reaching out to each other that millennials and Generation Z cannot even imagine.

SMS, WhatsApp messages and emails are frozen communications. They are dead letters, if they pass for letters.

Letter writing is civilisation itself. It expresses our hopes, happiness and tribulations on the one hand, while providing a platform to reassure people far removed from us that life is worth living.

It is unfortunate that the current generation of youth and leaders—political, business and religious—do not seem to value the place of letter writing in establishing and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships, be they personal or institutional.

I have read some of the most moving letters by great statesmen other than Bismarck, writing on matters of policy in a very humane manner.

I have in mind Abraham Lincoln's Letter to Mrs Bixby, whose five sons were believed to have been lost in the American Civil War, and his other letter replying to Horace Greeley's editorial in the Tribune, entitled The Prayer of Twenty Millions.

Classical Greece and Rome abound with letters in which their respective leaders addressed public and private matters dear to them in lucid and clear language.

I have also read love letters by some of the greatest men and women who ever lived. Napoleon Bonaparte's letters to his wife, Joséphine, are common currency among lovers of letter writing, particularly letters between women and men.

I would like to read letters by leading politicians, businessmen, educationists and religious leaders—letters on their public duties and letters written in their private capacities as human beings.

I read somewhere that Grace Ogot was moved to write by her husband, Bethwell Ogot, who was mesmerised by Grace's love letters. I am waiting for those letters.

My grandmother and her son took letter writing as a labour of love. Their exchange taught us that writing letters is not the burden it appears to be to many people today.

Why leaders must learn to communicate

There are many highly educated people who avoid letter writing. Some of them hold powerful positions in equally powerful and influential public and private institutions.

The job of people in positions of authority is to communicate—to share their vision, values, purposes and perspectives on momentous issues of public policy through the spoken and written word.

However, a distressingly significant number of these executives, legislators and administrators become mute once they reach policymaking levels.

They rely on extremely junior people in their organisations to write letters on important policy issues instead of dictating the letters to their secretaries—the way our Koko (grandmother) used to dictate to us.

The junior officer may not have the facts and nuances of the particular situation, problem or crisis about which he or she is asked to write a letter.

The officer may not have the appropriate perspective on the situation, problem or crisis. He or she may have little interest in it.

So the officer writes a letter as a matter of course—sometimes cutting and pasting statements from earlier letters that are out of sync with the situation, problem or crisis at hand.

Oftentimes, the junior officer or aide-de-camp has little passion for the basic raison d'être, or reason for being, of the organisation or the prevailing situation, problem or crisis.

That is why they scribble things for the boss that have no fire, clarity or direction.

Lessons for a practical curriculum

We often talk of a curriculum that is practical and applicable to the world. That curriculum must, first of all, appreciate and expose students to the complexities of human nature and the environment.

The substance of that curriculum must be about the cultural heritage of mankind and how people and civilisations have grappled with the beauty and problems of living.

The contents of any communication—be it a letter, speech, memo, report or minutes of a meeting—are nothing more or less than an expression of how people and civilisations have grappled with the beauty and problems of living.

Looking back, the substance of the letters my uncle Nicholas and my grandmother Amayoka wrote to each other was about how people have grappled with the beauty and problems of living.