My fascination with books.

Growing up in Gwabalanda/Luveve surbub in the mid eighties, I still remember vividly the days I spent going through the book shelves at a local public library. Needless to say that I had began my education in the rural areas where there were no libraries at all. In those days the Bulawayo City council took great care of its facilities. The Luveve library was one of them. I first visited the library when I was in the company of a friend Peter. He was already a member there. In my mind I thought the library membership was out of reach for people poor people like myself. I was amazed to learn that with the little pocket money, I could be a member and enjoy the privileges of the library. The only problem I had was that in order for me to join the library I needed produce a rent card for our house. This would help the library authorities verify my residents. To be honest I did not know such a thing existed and I was afraid to tell my parents home.

When I finally got the guts to mention the subject I was glad they did not have a problem with that. As time went by, going to the library became a hobby for me. We were given two weeks at most to finish a minimum of two books. That to me was a very long time and most of the times I would return the books within one or two days. Being a fourth grader I read books like Tom Sawyer, Tales from the Arabian Nights, Nancy Drew, The Hard boys. Some were simple Bible stories. I even read books about different countries of the world. It was at that age that I learned that India and Pakistan put together makes one third of the world's population. I could read anything my eyes came across. One of my favorite books was titled "The magic bean stalk." I read it over a dozen times.

It was one of the tales, but being young and immature I believed it. As a matter of fact I never knew that there was something called fiction. I was to be disappointed when I learnt that my favorite story was a lie. When I got to form one I was had already graduated into Pacesetters. There are only a handful of them that I did not read. The only time I did not read much was on the last years of my high school, this was because of the load of school work I used to have.