The pencil makes circles over the word ‘The’ in the book ,as a 60 year old prisoner, Hanna Smidtz, learns
to read by matching the words written in the book with audio tapes . She loved reading but was an illiterate
and too ashamed to admit it that she accepts life imprisonment rather than accepting her illiteracy.
Still mesmirised by Hannah smidtz , the Oscar winning character of the movie ‘The Reader’ , played
by Kate Winslate, I was truly inspired when I unfolded the newspaper today.Those words that make the title
of this post are of Kimani Maruge. No world leader. Just an ordinary man with an extraordinary zeal to
learn,which took him to school at the age of 84 ( a Guiness book world record).
A Kenyan caught up in the turbulent Mau Mau revolt in his youth , he failed to attend school as a boy. But the intense desire to be able to read Bible for himself drew him to school at an age when most people wait for death. And he was true to his words that he would only stop only" if he goes blind or dies" ; nothing
stopped him. Cancer didn’t; loss of his home which was burnt in post election crisis didn’t; being displaced
to an old age home didn’t. Nothing but death stopped him from going to school. Two years away from
completing his primary education , Maruge , the man who travelled in 2005 to New York to urge world
leaders to press education for poor , died at the age of 90.
Even the newspaper imbibed his undying spirit and printed his picture in class room sitting, with little
boys ,hunched intently over his notebook . As his pencil moves on his notebook I imagine a sparkle in his
eyes and am filled with awe as his unfathomable intense desire to learn seems to reflect from his wrinkled
bony face.
to read by matching the words written in the book with audio tapes . She loved reading but was an illiterate
and too ashamed to admit it that she accepts life imprisonment rather than accepting her illiteracy.
Still mesmirised by Hannah smidtz , the Oscar winning character of the movie ‘The Reader’ , played
by Kate Winslate, I was truly inspired when I unfolded the newspaper today.Those words that make the title
of this post are of Kimani Maruge. No world leader. Just an ordinary man with an extraordinary zeal to
learn,which took him to school at the age of 84 ( a Guiness book world record).
A Kenyan caught up in the turbulent Mau Mau revolt in his youth , he failed to attend school as a boy. But the intense desire to be able to read Bible for himself drew him to school at an age when most people wait for death. And he was true to his words that he would only stop only" if he goes blind or dies" ; nothing
stopped him. Cancer didn’t; loss of his home which was burnt in post election crisis didn’t; being displaced
to an old age home didn’t. Nothing but death stopped him from going to school. Two years away from
completing his primary education , Maruge , the man who travelled in 2005 to New York to urge world
leaders to press education for poor , died at the age of 90.
Even the newspaper imbibed his undying spirit and printed his picture in class room sitting, with little
boys ,hunched intently over his notebook . As his pencil moves on his notebook I imagine a sparkle in his
eyes and am filled with awe as his unfathomable intense desire to learn seems to reflect from his wrinkled
bony face.
