Reading, or the lack of it, is one of the most serious problems facing the book industry in Kenya today. It is widely believed, here and abroad, that Africans do not read books beyond the classroom and when they finish their education, they do not read for pleasure. This view is valid to an extent; it was truer ten years ago than now.

The one thing ... that I have been thinking about ... is the lack of reading culture in Kenyan schools. One of the main things that all English teachers we worked with wanted to learn from our workshops was how to encourage reading in their classrooms. ... As an English teacher in Canada I often struggled with this challenge .... However, in Kenya, this problem is compounded by some deep-rooted issues that have been part of the education system since Kenya gained independence in 1963.

What the Canadian means by "deep-rooted issues" includes the controversial, dominant role of the English language in our schools; the contempt Kenyan teachers show for our indigenous languages; and the "crucial role" of those pesky national exams in "deciding the students' future." Quoting a 2007 academic study focusing on Kenya, he concludes, "Voluntary reading in English is therefore rare because English is perceived as a tool used only to pass exams and secure employment."

His perceptive observation that "when teachers speak of encouraging a culture of reading, they invariably mean the culture of reading in English" is indisputable. And his sentiments on language and the reading culture in Kenya remind us of Ngugi wa Thiongo's protests, which he has expressed amply in Homecoming, Decolonising the Mind and elsewhere. This is from Homecoming:

We have already seen what any colonial system does: [it] impose[s] its tongue on the subject races, and then downgrade[s] the vernacular tongues of the people. By so doing, [it] make[s] the acquisition of [its] tongue a status symbol; anyone who learns it begins to despise the peasant majority and their barbaric tongues.  

Plainly, the absence of a voluntary reading culture is an old problem whose roots can be traced to the colonial era. It's also a consequence of a failed education system and cannot be wished away without dismantling the monster that spawned it. But wishing it away is exactly what the Kenya National Library Services and others seem to be doing (as if a wish would magically produce the outcome it contemplates).

Consider a 2007 article in Business Daily -- titled Finally, We Are Reading And Writing -- of which the KNLS survey is an echo. It bases its extraordinary assertion solely on the achievements of two up-and-coming Kenyan writers (who have each won a coveted literary award named for the late Sir Michael Caine), and on that year's survey of Kenyan reading habits led by the same two authors. Ebulliently, the unidentified author of the article declares, "The question is no longer whether people read or not."

The headline betrays two lame assumptions: that there was an apparatus in place - perhaps an alliance of writers, publishers and the machinery of the state - goading an unwilling public to embrace books and literature; and that the intended goal had been achieved and we should worry no more about lacking a voluntary reading culture. 

The last paragraph of the article implies the existence of such an alliance. "Writers have urged the government, publishers and other stakeholders to adopt more aggressive policies in promoting reading and writing," the article says, evoking a proclamation that might be issued by the authorities of a totalitarian regime seeking to promote a prescribed culture. "It is no longer enough for them to keep drumming the message that Kenyans ‘should' read."

This is absurd, and laughable - the appeal ascribed to writers (assuming there was ever such) is akin to a tea farmers association's pushing the government and tea producers to promote tea drinking among the population because the habit of tea drinking benefits tea growers (we're an agrarian society, after all, and it would seem natural for writers to borrow from a farmer's approach to marketing).

This approach should bother those of us who are voluntary readers: It has the foul odour of desperation. First, no one in a supposedly democratic society should be compelled to read books through "aggressive policies." Second, writers have no assumed right to an audience - they cultivate an audience. And what's wrong with having a small but loyal following even if this makes it tougher for the writer to earn a living from his work?

But writers have reason to worry. If you visit middle-class homes in Kenya these days (households that presumably can afford to buy books), you're likely to see not bookcases bulging with works smudged with evidence of having been read, but extravagant "wall units' filled with a big television set (showing imported, lowbrow soap operas), stereos and other electronic gadgets imported from Asia. Books are not at the centre of our culture.       

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