Let's Enjoy Our Trash; Mochama Says - Section the First

Many times writers find themselves grappling with words to express events in a literary work appealingly. T.S Elliot, in Four Quartets, says; "words strain/crack and sometimes break, under the burden, under the tension, slip, slide, perish/ will not stay in place, will not stay still."

The above events don’t easily bow to being conceived and delivered from the womb of the mind, thanks to contradictions and doubts. Writers wonder whether these events are imaginative, worth-noting, and realistic or whether they really exist in real sense; whether they can positively affect the world. 
 Perhaps this is what had dawned on Tony Mochama while abroad some time earlier. On Saturday October 26th  2013, during the monthly Amka Space Literature Forum at Goethe Institution-Nairobi, Mochama said that Venice was so quiet and dead; no murders, no civil wars, strikes - nothing exciting and touching to write about.
                                       Vibrancy and liveliness

"This is not the case with our country. Kenya is vibrant and lively; a situation which offers fertile soil for writers to cultivate their stories on. Therefore, we should enjoy our 'trash'”, the 2013 Burt Award winner for literature maintained. Now, as our armpits were being tickled by this piece of humour, we literary did not only laugh its wisdom away, but also digested it with nodding heads.
 No doubt Mochama was right. ‘Trash' or rather dirty events grace our country daily. There is usually prevalence in rape cases, political wars and sagas, corruption scandals, strikes, illicit brew blinding merrymakers' eyes, pointing accusing fingers at one another, looting here and there etc. (I'm pretty sure some writer somewhere in the country is currently working on something about the devastating West Gate Mall attack and its aftermath).
                                     Authenticity and Openness

This is the sort of 'trash' Mochama was trying to dispense into Kenyan writers. He wanted all authors to paint a creative and imaginative picture of the real human society; not angels’! Our writers are admirable for their works’ openness and authenticity; whether penned in the country or overseas. Under the command of their pens, societal filth is laid bare with an aim of transforming hearts, fine-tuning minds, cleansing souls of dirt.