When the time came for me to join campus, I was really choosy as to where I would like to attend college. For most teens fresh out of high school, the University of Nairobi is usually among the first options and I was no different. The process to admission was taking longer than expected, therefore, my father and I, checked out other institutions of higher learning; applied and got accepted into Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Karen Campus. The environment was not only serene but also had recreational grounds, a factor that was very essential to me. I did not know this at the time, but this aspect would steer me into the path of writing.
Growing up I was a very active child, jolly and always full of life…then high school and puberty happened and I retreated into my shell. After class I would go get food and sit under a tree somewhere in the field with my headpiece plugged in, oblivious of the happenings of the rest of the world. This pretty much summed up my first year. My second year was not very different, only that I spoke to very few people and did my food and music indoors, occasionally under the trees and/or on my way back home from school. During my third year, I had different company and I ventured out and joined some clubs. Present in my campus years was a factor common to all that I had not noticed until a few days ago: my computer was my journal.
Back home I was enrolled into a mentorship programme well before I joined college and out of this, I formed the habit of writing down specific details of the happenings during the day and how each occurrence affected me. Nothing about this changed after I joined college, only that instead of putting it down on paper, I typed them into a folder I dubbed “MIRAME”. College has never been easy for me, and whether or not I knew that I badly wanted to prove myself to the rest of the world at the time did not matter; the pressure and expectations from society piled on. Not being very expressive before my third year, I turned to my journal and vented out the frustrations I had during my young life. Oddly, writing became very therapeutic for me.
After a while I wanted the rest of the world to see what I came up with. Writing is a form of expression just like any other; be it art or music. It needs a reader to pay attention to the words and the feelings the writer expresses in any piece of writing. It is a form of communication and more often than not, the writer carefully selects the kind of words to use having attached meaning to them as used in various ways. For writers, the readers’ understanding of what they wanted to depict or bring out in any piece of writing is an idea as to what goes on inside their minds and what they would like their readers to understand. Having this at the back of my mind was the greatest deterrent to publishing anything personal I wrote. By publishing their content, writers invite the rest of the world to criticize and appreciate their work, and this leaves them very vulnerable to what the rest of the society thinks. However, taking risks and getting out of our comfort zone should be what we strive to do time and again in order for us to grow; after all, the greater the risk, the greater the reward.
I can proudly say that now in my fourth year, I have never been less me!