My father
inculcated in me a love for reading both by nature & by nurture. Even though he was a Doctor, he was also a man of letters. On many days & nights, I read and re read the set of 12 red encyclopaedias that decorated our home. One of my best passages was "The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wardsworth Longfellow.
I was fascinated very early on by the Newspapers that were delivered every day without fail at our doorstep - I browsed through the Kenya Times, Standard, Nation Newspapers during an époque when journalists wrote extremely inspiring articles. This was before google, social media & instant reporting. The political Weekly Review was a weekly staple and how I wish that Hillary Ng'weno had ploughed on.
Dad waxed lyrical about Anne Frank's Diary and wanting us to be like the legendary Anne Frank who kept a diary at a very young age. At that time of our lives, all we could think about was playing with our siblings & friends and he must have been exasperated by our lack of enthusiasm for the lessons he wanted to teach us. Although my brother confessed that he understood BODMAS - and never forgot it - through the old man.
I read my father's copies of the Godfather, the Thorn Birds, Papillon, (which my sister reminded me, had a butterfly on the cover page), Escape from Alcatraz and many other classics before I eventually came of age and started purchasing my own copies. Somehow, I always knew that - when push came to shove - the inheritance that I would have wanted from him was his set of books so well covered and preserved. Like any other child and teenager, in between, I went through the phase of Fairy Tales, The Brothers Grimm, Secret Seven, Famous Five, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, African Writers Series & courtesy to my big brother, very many comics.
People remember my Dad for various things. Recently, I stumbled on an article in the Standard on the "Allure of the Local Dance" that credits the likes of my father for the Local Dance in Western Kenya; My younger brother stumbled upon a dentist in Mombasa named for my father because the Doc delivered his mother of him; Another brother went to school with a mate who is into my dad because Dad was his mother's gynaecologist & also delivered her of him. Some of his constituents remember him for the Sugar Cane wars, fighting for the farmer in Mumias Constituency during the four terms he was MP. Like everyone else, he must have had detractors who could not abide him. For me, I remember, "We once had a father who had a passion for books...". Each time I read a book, I will remember that I do not need a DNA test to prove that "I am my father's daughter"!!!
In August 2003, our father walked into the sunset and never came back. We cannot do justice to the man he was. Although we have consistently fallen short of his ideals, he left an indelible mark on us. We see him in our eyes, laughter, habits & in the faces of our siblings. We also see him in the faces of our children and in the way we rear them. In his memory...
