High school teacher chases writing dream

Mr Gichaba Nyantino has been a history and geography high school teacher for the last 26 years, a job that also involves mentoring thousands of students to be positive thinkers.

Beside this, Nyantino has authored three novels, which took him many years to publish.

Nyantino was born in Kisii County in 1967 and studied at Moi High School Gesusu between 1982 and 1987.

He joined Kenyatta University and graduated in 1992 with a Bachelor of Education degree before he started his teaching profession.

He started writing actively in 1997 after being an avid reader of multiple genres and disciplines which helped him in teaching and expanding his knowledge.

“In the course of reading I gained a lot of knowledge and embraced diverse worldviews that morphed into an urge to write my own book, and in 2003 my short story titled The Talking Pot was shortlisted for the Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa.”

Boosted morale

“This major recognition boosted my morale to write my first novel,” he says.

It however took him seven years before he published his first novel titled The Winding Road.

He says this was due to the fact that most publishing institutions he came across concentrated more on school textbooks, which have a ready market.

“I write fiction, which takes long to sell unless it’s selected as a high school set book for literature,” he added.

The main theme of his first novel was identity, which was based on real life experience.

He created characters that were in a long search for their roots, having born in a single parent family set-up.

 “As a teacher with long experience, I’ve come across students with this identity stigma and, like I narrate in my book, I always endeavour to encourage them that the stigma need not bog them down and that they can achieve their dreams if they deal with it positively,” he says.

Nyantino, who is currently a teacher at Bomasan Secondary School in Nakuru County, says he has an intense passion for writing and that he is always on a project.

“I’ve written three novels so far, where two are available at the global market - Amazon - and one is available locally,” he said.

“The third one is coming out soon and at the moment I’m penning my fourth novel,” he adds.

Nyantino says he is putting together a collection of short stories and poetry.

In his second novel, he focuses on love and choices. It is about a beautiful young woman working at a bakery who falls in love with a handsome man who is her co-worker.

On the other hand, an inner voice within persistently warns her he is the wrong man and she eventually turns him down.

She’s vindicated later when it turns out the man is a wanted criminal.

Nyantino says completing a single book depends on the scope and range of the story.

“My first book, which is 334 pages, took me four years to write. My second novel titled The Silent Voice, which is a much shorter work at 110 pages, took one year to write, while my third book, titled End of Peace, which is 580 pages, has taken me 10 years to write,” he says.

He noted that End of Peace is a massive historical novel that required intense, deep and wide research to write.

Three centuries

It is a story that spans three centuries; beginning deep in migration history to end in a future yet to come.

He says despite the challenges that he encounters along the way, the passion to tell a good story keeps him going.

“It is more of the urge to pen prose differently by not giving readers more of the same stuff and styles of writing and a radical paradigm shift in the way we write novels,” he said.

His long term plan is to study creative writing to widen his scope in writing and telling of stories.

“I hope to become an authority in matters creative writing at university level and, ultimately, a professor in the same discipline,” says Nyantino.

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