Seven & eleven year old sisters’ co-author a book

Little did it dawn on the parents of Towera and Tia Kasakula that what started as a play date visit in March 2022 to her friend Talandira Kamtukule, who previously authored a book called the “Helpful Kalulu”, was enough to ignite a writing interest in their own daughters.

After the visit, Towera, who wants to become a lawyer when she grows up, got very inspired and started locking themselves in their bedroom with her youngest sister Tia trying to create something and embarked on the process of co-authoring the book titled “The Unpredicted Mbalame”.

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It is apparent she is on the road to achieving this dream because during the book launch which coincided with her graduation, she came out as the best student in Mathematics at 2024 City Mock and the school’s mock examinations.

As if this is not enough, the 11-year old has been scooping first position throughout the whole academic year of her standard seven.

Towera explained that the book chronicles around a kind and loving bird who helps out everyone and one day when it met a life-threatening situation, the female bird realized who her true friends were and together they managed to overcome the situation.

“I encourage other kids to use the book so that they can get motivated to write books. The journey was not easy; we came through so many hard times but we’ve managed to make it to this day as we’ve graduated”.

According to her, one of the lessons the book offers is for people to be kind and treat others the way they want to be treated adding that as children, they need to know who their friends are and the enemies who want to pull them down.

Her seven year old sister Tia was visibly excited during the interview.

“I’m very happy today because we’ve launched the book and my sister is graduating. My friends should use the book because it can help them to learn more things on kindness”

Their mother Temwa Kasakula said at first she brushed off the possibility of her two children taking on writing, but the persistence from her daughters for her to read their book made her take a keen interest in their newly found hobby.

Undeterred, the duo who are learners at Christian Heritage School (CHS) together embarked on this journey and sought assistance whenever the need arose.

Through the process, the mother realized that kids have potential, talents and desires to be what they want to be and a parent role is to guide, listen and give them the necessary support.

“Gone are the days where white collar jobs were all over. Like now, people are earning a living through different talents, so as much as I support them to work hard in class; I also make sure that as parents we also encourage the other talents that they have so that they can be whatever they want to be.

“Discipline is one very good thing. As parents, we have a role even God commanded us to support our kids and raise them in a way that God wants us to do. So when we instill discipline in the kids, they understand what it wrong from what is right; and they become focused and they end up realizing and understanding what they want to do achieve in their life”

For the two sisters, it wasn’t a walk in the park as at some point they were almost giving up but they remained focused knowing that this came from them and nobody forced them hence the culmination of the book launch.

Guest of Honour during the event, Madalitso Mijiga said it is encouraging that the learners are doing well and being taught how to read and write

He urged them to read books by authentic authors noting that some of the issues on the social media cannot be authenticated and there is lack of creativity in them.

“It is motivating to have children, kids who are writing at an early age and it gives us hope that as a country we’ll be able to have Malawian writers. When we were growing up, we used to read books from Nigeria and other countries but now we have our own writers in the country”