Married couple Gabriel Dinda and Verah Omwocha Dinda launched Questions of My Youth and Diary of the Mahia at the Mbogi Ya Mawriters series at the Alliance Francaise Nairobi on December 7, 2019.
Mbogi Ya Mawriters is a new series for writers hosted at the Alliance Francaise Nairobi. Mbogi is a Kiswahili word meaning railway carts adopted in current times in sheng, a pidgin of Kiswahili and several other languages, to mean a crew or group of people. Mawriters is a word for many writers in the aforementioned sheng, therefore, Mbogi Ya Mawriters is a crew of writers. The series started in November with Mombasa Raha My Foot by Haroun Risa followed by the launch of Jeanie Marima’s children’s book Trio Troubles.
The third in the series was the couple book launch by Gabriel and Verah Omwocha Dinda who were celebrating one year as a married couple. Gabriel Dinda is a lecturer who is also the founder and CEO of Writers Guild Kenya, an organisation that supports and publishes writers in the East African country. His book Questions of My Youth, is a nonfiction tome exploring how he could have spent time as a younger man in a more efficient manner. Verah Omwocha Dinda, who also works for the Writers Guild and is pursuing a master’s degree in literature, has the book Diary of the Mahia also a nonfiction offering that speaks about the challenges of young brides and married women.
The event, emceed by Eric Opon, was a four hour affair, yes ladies and gentlemen four hours for a book launch, which included poetry from Samantha Navuri aka Samantha The African Poet, Griffins Ndhine aka The Beast, and Miss Nina. There were several speakers on the day including author Joe Khamisi, novelist Haroun Risa, Alliance Francaise’s Dennis Mucheru and others.
The highlight of any book launch is the writers reading from their texts and discussing them with moderators and audiences which happened for the period of the event. Below is more video from the Alliance Francaise.
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