Rebel author on a mission

Moraa Gitaa has had an eventful life, and she does not shy away from addressing experiences in her life many would not be caught dead talking about.

She gives the example of the time she broke up with her daughter’s father. “Our relationship had reached a level where I could no longer take it,” she says. “The man was growing abusive and I knew that sooner or later I would end up regretting.”

When she decided to call it quits, her relatives, including her mother, would hear none of it. “They warned me against breaking up with baba ya mtoto, that I should persevere as that is how men are. In short, they were telling me to suffer the abuse ‘like a woman’.”

Keep quiet

She is quick to point out that most women face most of the issues she has gone through. “I am different in that I chose not to keep quiet,” she says resolutely.

And she does not go shouting about her predicament. She writes instead.

Ms Gitaa had over time written down her life’s experiences, both good and bad, in manuscript form, all awaiting publication.

There is one problem though. All the publishers she took her manuscript to were not willing to publish it. “While they said that my manuscript read well, they however regretted that they could not publish it as I wrote ‘unconventional and unorthodox things’.”

In short, the message she got was that she was being too generous with the truth.

“The world we are living in today is faced with issues like drug abuse, homosexuality, prostitution, abortion, among others,” says the fast-talking woman. “Yet, the more we pretend they do not exist, the more they will continue eating us up.”

After finding publishers’ doors closed to her manuscripts, Ms Gitaa decided to try her luck online, and sure enough she found a website that was looking for kind of stories.

In G21, her works found a home. The site was looking for unconventional African stories.

African Writing

That was in 2004. Within no time, part of her story had been included in an anthology and was submitted to the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing.

“The fact that they found my stories worth submitting to the Caine competition told me that I was doing something right,” she says, a quiet satisfaction showing in her face.

Soon, another online journal Author Me, found her stories agreeable, and they too published them. They also submitted her stories for the Caine Prize.

Ms Gitaa says her passion for writing began when she was a little girl. “It stems from the fact that I was exposed to books at a tender age,” says the second born in a family of seven.

Two weeks ago, her unpublished manuscript, From Shifting Sands to Deeper Dimensions, won the inaugural National Book Development Council of Kenya Literary Award in the Adult Fiction category.

“This was, to me, a vindication of my writing prowess,” says Ms Gitaa.

And a number of publishers have expressed interest in publishing her manuscripts.

Just why does she think her life story is worth reading, I ask her. “Well, I write differently and candidly,” came her reply.

And after reading an online version of her winning manuscript, I’m convinced that she has something to offer the literary world.