Edwin Ogachi

Mrs. Grant
UWRT 1101
September, 3 2014
The Sponsors
Literacy has always been and always be a big deal in the Ogachi household. Seeing as
how both my parents were teachers, my siblings and I were not given much choice in the matter.
We were simply born into a household of literacy.
My third grade teacher, Ms.Slais, has been by far the only teacher to leave an incredible
impression on me. She encouraged me explore my passion for reading and by doing so made my
transition from Kenya into America bearable.
Mr. Lewis, my sophomore English class teacher from high school, was and is by far the
coolest teacher Ive ever had. I and he had a similar taste in literature, so it was only natural for
us to talk about books constantly. The biggest impact he made on me was the books he suggested
for me to read. To this days some of those books are my favorite of all time.

The Parent
I often say English is a hard language but people usually think Im joking around when I
say that. In reality Im actually not. Growing up I had to learn Ekegusii, my mother tongue,
Swahili, official language of Kenya, and English, the national language. Out of those three
English was the hardest to learn since it was rarely spoken. But just because it was rarely spoken
in public. That however did not stop my parents, specifically my mother, from constantly
nagging us to learn, write and speak it. Although we hated it, me more so than my other siblings,
we did not have much choice in the matter. Unlike the other kids our age who were busy playing
and having fun, we were inside busy reading children novels. We hoped that mother would run
out books for us but we knew that was just hopeless wishing. She was a language arts teacher
after all so she had an endless books at her disposal. By the time I entered school I was able to
read at a second grade level, so I was well above my peers. But being able to read better than my
friends did not go well with me. I felt like an outcast, while they were busy struggling to read
simple sentences like I was part of the group, I was formulating paragraphs. I hated the idea of
me being vastly ahead of my peers and for that I started hating being reading books. I read the
minimum amount of books required and avoided my mother as best as I could just so I did not
have to read her books. When I did have to read, I was not reading with passion. I was reading
with attitude, the one a person has when they are forced to do something they do not want to do.
And because of that, I was seen as a bitter little child. Up and till we moved to America I was
just this little vicious bitter kid when it came to books and reading.
The First Teacher
Moving to a different country is by far one of the hardest challenges a person faces in
life. You never truly know what youre in for until you arrive at said country. And that is exactly
the experience me and my family had when moving to America. Everything was new and
different, repulsive yet enticing. The biggest obstacle that I personally had was the language
barrier. It truly never sank until I started school here. I was so used to being good at English
back in Kenya that it never occurred to me that there were kids better than me out there. The first
day of class was horrible. I remember getting home and just bursting into tears. Unlike back in
Kenya where I was able to be fully understood and express my opinion, America was different. I
knew very little English compared to the other kids in my class, and the English I did know was
not able to be understood when I talked. This made the first week of school torturous for me. It
would have continued being torturous if it was not for my saving grace, my teacher Ms.Slais.
Being the great teacher she was, she made it her mission to help me transition from Kenya to
America. She got the school to enroll me in an ESL class, which helped me greatly overcome the
language barrier. It was also in ESL that I was able to meet people like and make some of my
closest friends during elementary school. She also helped me get better at my reading and
writing. At times during recess, instead of me playing with the other kids, she would take me
aside and help me strengthen my ability to read and write. She would get me books that I was
interested in and help me read them. If we somehow did not get through a book, she would let
me take it home and read it there. This continued for a whole year and as a result my ability to
speak, read and write in English grew exponentially. But it also cause a change in my view of
books. Instead of resenting them, I loved them now. I would be eager to get as many books as I
could and just immerse myself in them without care. I remember the summer after third grade I
went to my first public library. I was flabbergasted with the amount of books the library
contained. It was like I had found my own little heaven. I would go there once a week and
borrow as many books as I could and take them home and just read. My passion for books just
kept expanding from there forth and to this day still has not reached it limit.
The Second Teacher
High school was a strange place for me. I started out loving it and by the end I loathed it.
Its fair to say that my hatred for high school is one of the many reasons I decided to graduate a
year early. But I didnt necessary hate everything about high school, I actually learned a lot from
the experience itself. One of the few things, I liked was my sophomore English teacher. He was
the coolest teacher I have ever had to date. What made him cool was the amount of likes we had
in common. I and he had a similar taste in comic books, manga, novels, ideology and etc. I
remember the first time I actually talked to him was after he assigned as the novel, Anthem, to
read. I went up to him and told that I had already read the book and it was one my favorites. He
told me that he also loved the book and that why he assigned it to the class. I stated after class
ended and talked to him for a good period of time about what books we liked. We found out that
we both liked comic books and manga and had a similar taste in authors and book genres. From
then on he started recommending books for me to read. Be it Amazing Spider-Man or Brave
New World, I read every book he suggested. He recommended also recommended books that
opened up new ways for to think and see things. Some of those books being Ishmael by Daniel
Quinn and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. And as it turned out I happened to like most if not all
the books he suggested. Thanks to him I was able to expand my horizons in literature and life.