Andrewnicko Ondoro

I was born on 10th November 1989 along the shores of Lake Victoria, Kenya. My experiments with creative writing began most likely because my parents' individual careers were in the doldrums courtesy of the tough economic times of the 90s and they had use their savings to open a wholesale store which they operated as a couple. This shop gifted them more time at home with us than before. Every evening after the huge shop doors were pulled back and fastened to the floor and the lintel, Dad always took all our school-books and as we took our evening meal, we had to explain to him everything we had leant at school that day. He would thereafter append a ceremonial signature on every page of our books and would also take time to explain to us every interesting thing he had read in the day's newspapers. Mum on the other hand bought us small diaries which we faithfully filled everyday as we awaited dinner with what we came to call 'Today'. In 'Today' we had to write our entire experience of the day since the time we woke all the way to what was cooking in the sauce-pan at that time! There was not a single day that passed that we never wrote 'Today'. Every Thursday evening, as the oldest in the group that stayed with mum and dad, I had to write a letter to my elder brother who was in a different school hundreds of kilometers away describing to him all the interesting things that had occurred that week at my school and at home. This letter, sealed in an envelope would then be delivered by me the following day, when we came home from school for lunch, to the conductor of the then famous 'King George' bus. The driver of 'King George' bus used to drop passengers at a bus stop right in front of our shop at one pm before continuing on its way to all major towns along the Kenyan Lake Victoria. It became so funny that at times as I grew more and more interest in writing, and added a few more lines to the letter at lunch break, the conductor would not let the driver start the engine before I put the final touches to the letter and he saw me running from the shop in my school uniform to cross the road and serve him my letter enclosed in a white envelope and addressed to my elder brother. That way, over the years I moved from writing just letters, to poetry and short stories, and then to novels.