STORYMOJA

I am tempted to write about something that went wrong for me at the festival because believe me it would give you a good laugh. But, I will take the advice of my esteemed MD who once told us that people on the outside should only see the bike moving and not the cycling making it move. So allow me to show you the moving bike.

Guests mingle and talk at the Storymoja Hay Festival

Organizing a 3-day literary festival for the first time is a very difficult thing but it is more difficult if you have never attended such an event. It was therefore a great surprise to ourselves when we pulled off the biggest literary event in East Africa. You may wonder what made it such a success. Well according to me, we had some of the greatest thinkers in Kenya and Africa and I got to interact with most of them but do I say? We also had some very esteemed international authors at the festival, and I had a lot of fun with them.

Say Vikram Seth for example, the guy who most media guys really wanted to interview but were afraid to approach because he can really blast you yaani, give you a piece of his mind. He likes PROPER interviews, one that has been arranged before, one where he has been told who the interviewer is and one where he has been told the profile of the media house. So when one newspaper reporter approached him for ‘a couple of questions’ was given 2 minutes to ask his questions, asked the colour of his toes and was asked if his dimples are infectious all in one sentence.

Just to show you how ‘at home’ this best selling author of ‘The Suitable Boy’ felt at the festival, he volunteered to man my registration desk at the green room so I could run around and make other guests comfortable.

One of the most famous authors on this planet enjoyed the festival and would love to come back to Kenya, so my bike really moved. Just don’t ask me about the cycling.