Sometime last year, I travelled from the City in the Sun to the sultry shores of Lake Lolwe. It was the courtesy of Sir Vincent Omondi Mayienga, the Chief Principal Homa Bay School. I dropped down there to train members of the Student Council on their royal role in relation to effective and efficient governance of the school.
Albeit, when I reached Homa Bay also known as Asego, I realised that I forgot to carry Robert Shemin’s book titled How Come that Idiot is Rich and I am Not?
Mayienga is a voracious reader who is also an orator par excellence. He has a deeper understanding of the consanguinity that exists between reading and the delivery of phenomenal speeches.
I thought, while in Homa Bay, I would trace a good bookshop to purchase a great text for him. Unfortunately, like a footloose wanderer, I loitered in the chest of the town like a weird wraith, but failed to access a bookstore that stocks self-help books.
I was ravenous to set my mortal eyes on houses of gold such as the Leader Who Had No Title by Robin Sharma, Mastery by Robert Greene, Emotional Intelligence by Dr. Daniel Goleman, Presidents’ Pressmen by Lee Njiru, the Art of Institutional Leadership by Prof Laban Ayiro, You Can Win by Shiv Khera, et cetera.
Serendipitously, I bumped on one bookshop which stocked Be a People Person by John C. Maxwell.
Conversely, most of the bookshops I visited only stocked core-course books and revision books used to prop up the main curriculum in primary and secondary schools.
I was shell-shocked because in Nairobi, good bookshops are ubiquitous. Along Kijabe Street, there is the Text Book Centre (TBC) that stocks course books from primary to tertiary levels. Then, under the good roof, there are intriguing genres for general readership. It is instructive to note that most Carrefour shopping malls in Nairobi and its suburbs, host TBC, where you can buy good books to satiate your fat appetite for words knitted neatly.
Indeed, Carrefour is a French multinational retail and wholesale corporation headquartered in Massy, France. It is the eighth largest retailer in the world by revenue. It operates a chain of supermarkets, grocery stores, bookstores, convenience stores and genteel joints. As at January 2021, it had about 12,225 stores in 30 countries. Operations at TBC lend credence to the wise words of Charlotte Wood: “Bookshops are the safety vaults for the seeds of our country’s cultural and intellectual life,”
In addition, right in the heart of the Capital City, along Mama Ngina Streets, there is the Prestige Bookshop, a behemoth bookstore owned by Ahmed Aidarus. This proprietor is also the owner of Cheche Branch in the high-end Lavington Estate. He has a deeper understanding of the winsome words of John Updicke: “Bookstores are lonely forts, spilling light on to the sidewalk. They civilise their neighbourhoods.”
In the whole scheme of things, one glaring question sticks out like an appendage: Where are good bookshops in our major towns such as Homa Bay? Can we attribute it to our poor reading culture and outright contempt for print media? Arguably, most Kenyans only read when they have a date with exams. This is why most bookstores in major towns stock shedloads of textbooks and revision books yet our bookstores should become useful repositories of knowledge by casting nets. They should sell a wide array of books and entice a larger audience of readers.
Consequently, we should have intelligent investors in the book sector who can establish good bookstores in major towns such as Kisumu, Kisii, Homa Bay, Eldoret, Nakuru, Naivasha, Kericho, Murang’a, Nyeri, Nanyuki, Nyahururu, Isiolo, Embu, Maralal, Moyale, Meru, Marsabit, Machakos, Mombasa, Malindi, Voi, Gariassa, et cetera.
In conclusion, Liane Moriarty observed, “Bookshops are places of magical discoveries and the discovery of past pleasure. My bookshop, in fact any bookshop, makes me happy.”
By Victor Ochieng
The writer is an editor, orator and author. vochieng.90@gmail.com.
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