OWAAHH: I don’t want my face to compete with the story

Owaahh is a writer, researcher and blogger at www.owaahh.com He also moonlights as a freelance journalist. I want the reader to go into the story without the distraction of my face. Plus, not having my face all over allows me to observe. PHOTO COURTESY

What you need to know:

  • I am intrigued by the quirky and the macabre. It’s a force of habit. I think if I was forced to choose, it would be the story I wrote about the woman who sews up the dead at City Mortuary and then bites off the thread.
  • She is good looking, yet there she was nonchalantly putting back together bodies after post-mortems and then biting off the thread. It was intriguing!

Owaahh is a writer, researcher and blogger at www.owaahh.com He also moonlights as a freelance journalist.

He spends most of his time digging into and investigating mysteries, beating stories into shape, and eating bananas.

You must have read his most recent pieces, Why Kenyan Banks Fail and The Sack of Imperial Bank. 

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1.  Why the mystery? There isn’t a single picture of you online.

Because I want to tell stories. I want the story to stand out more than my head, and I have a big one (it seems all male Kenyan writers do). I want the reader to go into the story without the distraction of my face.

Plus, not having my face all over allows me to observe. My writing is built on detail, detail is everything, and you need to not stand out to take detail in.

2. Are you going to do a story for every banking scandal that comes out?

No actually, only the interesting ones, and even then, only if they meet a certain number of criteria. I only tell stories I would love to read, and solve mysteries of interest to me.

I believe that that’s the only way one can tell a good story. There is also the fact that the story of Kenya’s banking scandals is surprisingly boring. It has been the same trend for 30-plus years, yet we are not learning. I might do a few more though. 

3. What’s the weirdest story you’ve ever written?

I am intrigued by the quirky and the macabre. It’s a force of habit. I think if I was forced to choose, it would be the story I wrote about the woman who sews up the dead at City Mortuary and then bites off the thread. She is good looking, yet there she was nonchalantly putting back together bodies after post-mortems and then biting off the thread. It was intriguing!

And yes, it happened. 

4. Who’s your favourite writer?

I am surprisingly shifty when it comes to writers. It depends on which side of my art I am trying to grow, so I choose writers depending on that. Right now my focus is creative nonfiction, so I am gobbling up a lot of Guy Talese, the man who wrote ‘Sinatra has a Cold’ and ‘The Voyeur’s Motel’. 

5. Your favourite cartoon...

'Family Guy'! Haha, do you know the ‘Bird is the Word’ song, redone by Peter Griffin? You should find it.

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