Today is the Day of the African Child. For those not in the know this is the day in 1976 when a bunch of kids in Soweto decided that they won’t learn in Afrikaans in schools and went to the streets to protest. Now the children of Soweto and all of South Africa have the opportunity of learning the English language and I assume butcher it in their own unique Mzansi way.
In 1991 the Organisation of African Unity (they call it something else nowadays) set up a special day for kids and what better day than the day young ones went down in a hail of bullets standing for something they believed in?
So what are you doing on this special day, my African people? Well, you can join our good friends from Start-A-Library who have been hosting a series of events to help kids learn to enjoy reading. Start-A-Library is a crew that is trying their darndest to make reading cool for the youngest member of our society. These kids are important as they are also the next generation of book buyers.
Yesterday they kick-started the Read A Loud day in partnership with the Kenya National Library Service at the KNLS headquarters in Nairobi. Students got to read aloud an extract from the Book Attack of the shidas by Muthoni Muchemi.
Tomorrow you too can do your part. From 9.00 am all over the country, you are asked to take out a book wherever you are reading out loud for 15 mins. It doesn’t matter where you are. In traffic or wherever. Take out your book and read it. Loudly. On my part, I will be unleashing Kinyanjui Kombani’s Last Villains of Molo and reading like crazy.
Fear not that you are alone. You will join a bunch of other folks in spreading the word. Even the likes of singers Lady B, Avril, Marya, Eko dyda, Juma Odemba (Kayamba Africa), Rufftone, Daddy Owen, Alice Kamande, and Jemedari Muziki.
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