Gitaa: I wrote my best-selling book while stuck in city traffic

A chance meeting with Ngugi wa Thiong’o, where he challenged her to write in Kiswahili during their brief encounter, was all the motivation Moraa Gitaa needed to start on her first Kiswahili novel.

With five English novels so far to her name, two of which are award-winning, and a Kiswahili novel in the pipeline, Moraa’s versatility and talent are quite obvious.

Her books include Crucible for Silver and Furnace for Gold (2008), Shifting Sands (2012), which won the National Book Development Council of Kenya Literary Award in the Adult Fiction category, both by Nsemia Publishers, and The Shark Attack (2014), published by Moran Publishers, which won a Burt Award and which is her bestselling book to date, The Con Artist (2014) by KLB and Hila (2015) by Storymoja.

One of her raw, unpublished manuscripts was also shortlisted alongside Mukoma wa Ngugi’s for the 2010 Penguin Prize for African Writing.

She recently talked about her journey from a little girl with big dreams growing up in Mombasa to an award-winning author. 

How much has your background influenced your writing?

I grew up at the Coast and all my novels are set there. I feel that the Coast is under-represented in Kenyan literature. The themes explored in my novels, like drug abuse and trafficking, domestic terrorism, homegrown extremism and child prostitution on our beaches, are everyday realities of people living there. Our late dad had a hand in inculcating a reading culture in me and my siblings. Every school holiday, he would drop us off at the Kenya National Library in the morning and pick us up in the evening. 

You have written five books in less than 10 years.

Not without patience and persistence. The manuscript for Shifting Sands, for example, was lying around in a publisher’s office for over five years before anybody bothered with it. But even as I waited for someone to take notice, I kept writing other books, building on other ideas. I never wasted time. In fact, I wrote the entire manuscript of my bestselling novel so far, The Shark Attack (Burt Award Winner 2014), meant for teens, in the times when I would be stuck in traffic jams. I always carried my little laptop around with me so I would always be hunched over it, typing away.

You have single-handedly raised a child challenged by dyslexia in her formative years. Were you also affected by dyslexia growing up?

Actually, yes but mine was a mild form which I discovered quite late into my adulthood after some heavy research into my daughter’s condition. I wasn’t doing well in mathematics, physics and chemistry and this is because dyslexics think with the right side of the brain and are thus creative and think in pictures and patterns and don’t grasp equations, algebra and formulas too well. I was labelled a C student. In the 80s not many people, including my teachers or my parents, really knew anything about dyslexia.

I took my daughter through private schools whose teachers were sensitised on the learning disorder. It’s my prayer that KICD consider putting art back in the curriculum, otherwise where would dyslexic children fit? Some famous dyslexics include Pablo Picasso, Whoopi Goldberg, Anderson Cooper and Sir Richard Branson. I hardly hear of any famous Kenyan personalities coming out to say that they were challenged by the condition, yet research shows that 10 per cent of Kenyans have dyslexia. 

How would you sum up your feelings about your achievements?

I would say awe because I started writing as a form of self-therapy. I am often filled with a sense of surprise at how well-received my books have been.

My debut novel Crucible for Silver and Furnace for Gold and the second one, Shifting Sands, are currently being studied at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels for comparative literature, gender and cultural studies both locally (University of Nairobi, Moi University, Kenyatta University and Egerton University) and internationally (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the University of Toronto in Canada, and University of Minnesota, Duluth). I have won a Burt Award and National Book Week Award.

There are very few contemporary female novelists in Kenya. Why do you think that is so?

I have young people come up to me and say that they have ready manuscripts but have been completely unable to get a publisher who is willing to publish them. Joyce Nyairo nailed it when she said what is lacking are intelligent strategies for marketing what exists and for nurturing new generations of writers and readers. Even if they manage to get published, then they have to face the next hurdle for marketing and distribution. Unfortunately, most of our local publishers leave this to chance. There are no strategies to walk the length of the full journey with writers. I feel that literature by younger women writers in Kenya is under-developed. 

The themes in your novels are quite diverse. Where do you derive inspiration from?

I never let my experiences go to waste and use them as launching pads for ideas. Hila, my latest novella, for example, is set in a Casino. I once worked as an attendant at a casino in Mombasa so I used the memory of what I experienced there to write it. The level of addiction in the casino, to the point of them gambling away their homes, shook me to the core so I promised myself that one day, I’d write about that place.

I write mostly from the memory of things I have experienced. My writing is influenced by that of authors like Muthoni Likimani, Margaret Ogolla, Rebecca Njau, Marjorie Oludhe, Grace Ogot, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Mwangi Gicheru and Meja Mwangi, and also Russian and English classics which we inherited from our parents – my mum is also such a reader.

Other influences were the Pacesetters and African Writers Series, some of which I still have and were my dad’s first editions. Muthoni Likimani is especially amazing and is writing to date. 

You have been writing your novels in English but your latest manuscript is in Kiswahili. Why the switch?

You can blame that on Ngugi wa Thiong’o! He is one of my literary idols and I grabbed the opportunity to speak to him for a few minutes when I met him during the Kwani Literary Festival in 2010. He asked me: “You grew up in Mombasa, why are you not writing in Kiswahili?”. I grew up in Mombasa, so I feel at home with the language. 

What else are you working on?

I am polishing up the manuscript that was shortlisted for the 2010 Penguin Prize for African Writing.  I am also back in school studying for a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies at Africa Nazarene University. 

Last word for budding authors?

Never submit your first draft. You need to revise, rewrite and rewrite again before sending your manuscript to a publisher.