Bottom Shelf

Well, here we go. The bottom shelf of my bookshelf tour. And no, nothing rude down here - unfortunately.

Starting from the left, we have a whole load of Kinyarwanda children's books, mostly by Fountain Publishers in Rwanda.

I bought these many years ago at the now defunct Nakumatt store in UTC. This was back when I had aspirations of improving my Kinya. So far, that hasn't happened and I am still only capable of ordering food, beer, and getting home on a moto. One day, dear readers, one day...

The one in the bottom left is a special title as it is the story of the warrior Maguru (Long Legs) and the shapeshifting mythical beast, Insibika.

Friends turned this into a reggae hit in Rwanda back in 2007. It was an anthem of the time, filmed an Nyanza Mwami Palace (the King's Palace in Nyanza). I am determined that one day I will be able to read this.

To the right of those, we have a notebook that I think my friend Cassie sent me... though I'm not 100% sure. My handwriting is absolutely illegible so I always feel guilty defiling the pages of a nice notebook. I usually scribble things down on pieces of scrap paper. So far, my thoughts and doodles will remain undiscovered.

There's also a few copies of the English, Kinyarwanda, Kiswahili pocket dictionary and the English-Kinyarwanda pocket dictionary. They're more novelty items than particularly useful. Rwanda now has four official languages: Kinyarwanda, English, French and Swahili, though hardly anyone speaks Swahili. Kinyarwanda is a Bantu language that's pretty tricky for Westerners to learn, but Swahili was invented around the early 1700s as a lingua franca for trade in the East Africa region. Because it is a lingua franca, it's much easier to pick up and more widely spoken, but as I started out with Kinya, I've continued with Kinya. When I have guests, I find these useful to leave on their bedside table and it's nice to look through other languages and learn a few words.

On the right is a pile of my own books. Some of these are copies of long-ago published works by publishers, and others are more recent proof copies of KDP releases. Nowadays, post takes anywhere from three weeks to four months to reach Rwanda and Amazon seem to have stopped delivering, so I can no longer get hard copy proofs of self-releases. I rely on friends and family to give the covers and content a thumbs-up. You can find all my books here.

Underneath all of that I've buried my childish side.

And I've also got a couple of children's books by Imagine We, who published Karen's book (on the middle shelf).

The first one is signed by Dominique Uwase Alonga, the founder of Imagine We, who gave a reading of this at my friend's restaurant. The second is signed by Peace Kwizera at the book launch in 2016.

So, that's what's on my bottom shelf. We have one more post to go, a rummage through the shoe rack, but that concludes my main book collection.