My thoughts on the Storymoja Hay Festival by Reeves Sinei
August 4th, 2009 | Published in Features, Storymoja Hay Festival 2009 | 2 Comments
A wise horse once said, “Make hay while the sun shines.” I wonder if it was ordering its keeper or just being wise. Whatever the case, those who attended the three-day StoryMoja hay festival definitely ‘made hay.’ Not only did they use the opportunity to meet up with friends, they sampled the various displays that were on offer.
Personally, I was glad it wasn’t a celebration of hay, grass or any other animal feed, although the UN tent dwelt endlessly on the need to go green. If only we could recycle the 12 digit PIN numbers on safaricom scratch cards, the environment inside our wallets would definitely improve. Alternatively, they could make the scratch cards from bio-degradable….or even better, bio-edible material. Yummy! “Hey give me that munch card, I mean scratch card!”
Going back to the hay festival, or was it the hay marathon? I’ve never made so many laps around a field before. And it’s not that any of the tents were too boring for me to spend time in. On the contrary, I found it hard to decide which tent to stick in. They were all too exciting. I could have been in the ‘diversity tent’ and think, “Boy, I need to diverse!” and just like that, I would be on my way to another tent.
In spite of the chill, writers, artists from all different cultures got together to celebrate
Speaking of the tents, there were so many of them. Together with the books and laptops, someone could have thought a couple of super nerds were getting married. And instead of the bouquet, the bride was to throw a giant encyclopedia.
After numerous laps, I finally settled in the ‘Can-do tent,’ mainly for the enlightening ICT discussions. I learnt of a virus that installs itself into your computer, destroys any other existing viruses in your system and establishes itself as the dominant force. Spooky! Maybe we should use the same approach for AIDS, except that we’ll have to create another virus to counter the virus that destroyed the AIDS virus. Well, what can I say? It’s a world where solutions and problems seem so close; they could even solve each other’s problems!
Writer Dickson Migiro left, and IT guru Emmo Opoti, right.
Nonetheless, the StoryMoja Hay festival was a rare treat. Different cultures, films, books, stories, drama, IT…what more could we have asked for?
