I remember my auntie bought me a little book filled with nursery rhymes. I was only six years old. I had already started school, but I couldn’t read. Good thing I could recite those poems.
All the poems were illustrated so I could remember after my auntie showed me which poem was “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” which was “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” and so forth.
Now, all I had to do was recite them and memorise how the words were spelt.
That’s how I started reading. For those poems I didn’t already know, I struggled to read if they had any unfamiliar words. With her help, I could read and make sense of everything in that little book.
My favourites were “Whether the Weather Be Fine” and “Peter Piper.” I was always scared to read “Humpty Dumpty.” That poem gave me the creeps. Why would anyone try to put a broken egg together again?
And why did he sit on the wall if he was that vulnerable? As an adult, I think I’ve had my Humpty Dumpty moments.
You know, do something I know would hurt me, but do it regardless of the consequences.
Anyway, that nursery rhyme collection gave me a solid foundation in reading, of course with the help of my auntie.
By age 10, I was reading books written for pupils far older than me. I started reading graphic comics. I read Asterix and Obelix and The Adventures of Tintinat the library.
This would be when school was on vacation and my childhood friends were going on hunting expeditions with their dogs.
The funny thing is I’d joined for one or two trips, but the dogs chased a big black mamba towards the direction I stood, so I lost interest. I decided the library was a safer option.
From comics, I read The Famous Five. After finishing the entire volume, I moved on to nonfiction.
I studied atlases, health, etc. By age 15, I knew what cigarettes did to your lungs, how HIV was transmitted, and the capital towns of all the West African countries.
When I realised I needed to own books, I started stealing them from the library. The only reason I wasn’t caught was because I entered secondary school, so now I could go to the adult library.
It was impossible to steal from that place. Besides, the library could loan me a book, so I didn’t see the need.
This was all before 2004. Now I have ebooks and I get them for free. I love to own books, and I think it goes beyond reading them.
Because there are books in my possession that I haven’t read, I had to have them the moment I read a review.
I’m not proud of stealing books. It’s wrong. But if not for the internet, an average Ghanaian like me would not have access to many books.
Most Africans don’t have access to even books written by African authors.
That’s not why I wrote this though. I just wanted to explain that reading saved my life. I had three close childhood friends.
Before age 23, I had lost two. The last one is a drug addict. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. It’s been ages since I saw him.
You may be asking if they died for not reading. I’m sure that’s not the case. But reading is the reason I made different life choices from them.
All of us grew up with a single parent, and often they were too busy taking care of the family to even notice if you started abusing painkillers. I’d read about alcohol, painkillers, cigarettes, etc.
Did drugs kill them? No. Not directly.
But they made one wrong decision after the other. I’m just lucky my bad decisions weren’t as deadly. This is not an attempt to use someone’s misfortune to explain how fortunate I am.
Reading still saves me. I approach every decision by reading about it. For example, I was given antibiotics for an illness.
If I hadn’t read about my symptoms, I wouldn’t have known it was GERD and the antibiotics route wasn’t ideal.
According to a 2016 study titled “A Chapter a Day: Association of Book Reading with Longevity” published in Social Science & Medicine, reading books can reduce mortality by up to 20%.
Who knew?