You know that feeling when you hold a brand-new book in your hands? You turn it over gently, open it carefully, not wanting to leave a smudge or a crease, then you bring it to your nose and inhale — hoping, somehow, to breathe in the story itself. And how about those wonderful moments at work when you’re in the trenches and suddenly an exciting moment from your current book flashes across your mind? The rush of excitement drives you over the final hurdle and all the way home until you can pick up where you left off.

Books can be a source of deep joy, but for many children – especially those with dyslexia – they can provoke more of a sense of anxiety than contentment. We live in a society that sees literature as the pinnacle of storytelling, and while this narrow definition may have proven itself over millennia, it excludes a vibrant, often-overlooked world of dyslexic storytellers who carry the unexplored potential to create narrative in more innovative ways.

Dyslexia can be a storytelling superpower, but the lived childhood experience of most dyslexics is imbued with a sense of shame rather than potency. A lack of understanding seems to be the source of the problem, but as we story lovers know, problems are there to be overcome. Can Kenya lead the way in this hero’s journey? Let’s set the scene and find out.

Rethinking dyslexia: difference not deficit

Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental difference that affects reading, spelling, and writing. Approximately 10–20 per cent of people globally are diagnosed dyslexic. It is not a disease, and therefore better to describe someone as “dyslexic” rather than say they “have dyslexia”. More importantly though, as special needs consultant Alix Daykin from Accelerate Learning Kenya explains, it has nothing to do with intelligence. Many dyslexic children score highly on verbal and nonverbal cognitive tests, but struggle with decoding text, encoding sounds, and manipulating written language. “They are often fantastic problem-solvers and creative thinkers,” Alix says, “with big-picture vision, incredible imagination, and verbal skills that far outshine their written work.” Despite having strong verbal skills, which are enhanced when they can enjoy stories read aloud, dyslexic children tend to think in pictures, not words. They experience the world differently, think laterally, and their ideas are inventive and unique. As a result, for the most part, dyslexic people make exceptional storytellers.

The reality: anxiety, avoidance, aversion

But when dyslexia is neither understood nor embraced, the inherent storytelling abilities of dyslexic children are limited to coping mechanisms. As Alix describes, “The stories they're telling often mask the difficulties they’re dealing with.” She goes on to list common avoidance narratives like needing to go to the nurse or the toilet when called to read aloud in class, as well as more intricate stories of how they have left their book at home, or they can’t find one they like. Well-respected Kenyan businesswoman and dyslexic, Kendi Kamanja Oketch, ran away from school several times to avoid punishment for her apparent lack of reading and writing skills. On being discovered, she used the excuse of having a toothache and was immediately taken to the dentist who “removed a perfectly good tooth”.

The main challenges for dyslexic children within the bounds of traditional literacy are with decoding (sounding out words) and encoding (writing words). Therefore, joining words and letters together and manipulating the sounds successfully present serious challenges. The task of tracking word by word, sentence by sentence in a text can be extremely tricky. One child who was interviewed for this article described how the letters appear to “swim” around on the page when he is tired or nervous. Consequently, the eye might skip over words or whole lines, which can render non-literal, metaphorical language — like that used in poetry for example — almost impossible to follow on the page. Perhaps now it makes more sense why dyslexic children can experience crippling anxiety when asked to read aloud in front of peers whom they fear will peg them as stupid.

Living the story: Matt Utterback and Phyllis Munyi

Matt Utterback, co-founder of accessible publishing company eKitabu, vividly remembers the U-shaped classroom arrangement of his childhood. “The good readers sat at one end, and I was at the other — next to the disruptive kids.” Though his parents — both teachers — were deeply supportive, the system itself was confusing. “Was I smart, or not? I loved silent reading but reading out loud terrified me.” Today, Matt credits his love of jazz music and visual thinking for helping him succeed — often by working backward from the answer. His dyslexia didn’t limit his intelligence, it reshaped how he accessed it, and the freedom that accessible technologies afforded his learning and reading, indirectly but undoubtedly influenced Matt’s decision to establish eKitabu.

Phyllis Munyi is a prominent figure in Africa's dyslexia advocacy landscape. Her own son’s diagnosis of dyslexia led her to found Dyslexia Kenya, and through her position as executive director there — as well as co-founder of the Rare Gem Talent School — Phyllis has significantly advanced awareness, early diagnosis and inclusive education for children with dyslexia in Kenya and beyond.

With people like Phyllis, Matt and Alix around, you could be forgiven for believing that painful classroom experiences for children with dyslexia are a thing of the past, but for a child to truly flourish, knowledge is best applied holistically across the full breadth of school staff, family, caregivers and peers. And while dyslexia is a hereditary neurodevelopmental difference passed down through family lines, so is the misunderstanding that it is an intelligence issue. In her book Dyslexia and Me, Nigerian educator and author, Onyinye Udokporo, writes, “I often sit and remember the look of worry in my mother’s eyes while she cuddled me in the evenings after my failed attempts to read the books we collected from the local library.”

Colonisation: Cycles of Shame

Alix posits that the relatively high incidence of dyslexia among the old colonial farming communities of Kenya today, is because many British young men — believed to be “too thick” to cope with careers as lawyers, doctors, teachers and civil servants — were sent away to “manage” the colonies. Rather than being particularly unintelligent, Alix believes these men were struggling with dyslexia in an inaccessible system of education that corporally, emotionally and verbally punished them for their difference. However, today we see how these cycles of fear and shame have been perpetuated within families and influenced native communities. Through these systems, children and adults were labelled as “slow” and “stupid” for not being able to read or write in the way that Western literacy curricula dictated.

But with its rich oral storytelling heritage, is it possible that Africa did not use these derogatory terms until the colonisers arrived? In his 1986 novel The River Between, Ngugi wa Thiong’o reveals the havoc created in Kenyan communities by the enforcement of British schools and colleges. While it is not known whether wa Thiong’o was dyslexic, this novel certainly reflects his own struggle with such an oppressive education system.

Reclaiming Storytelling: Beyond the Page

Perhaps, then, it isn’t so much about ensuring dyslexic children have access to books as it is about equipping them to tell their own stories and championing them as they do so. Sally Gardner, an award-winning dyslexic children’s author, spoke in a Guardian interview of how traditional schooling tried to “cure” her creativity, but her dyslexia diagnosis was like a gift that freed her to write in her own way. The child whose voice was cited earlier, illustrates how creativity blooms when it isn’t boxed in. He loves to tell stories through dialogue, images, and sound — much preferring to recreate the full-colour world that lives inside his head than stick rigidly to a literacy exercise. When asked what he finds helpful, he replied instantly: “A scribe!” Someone or something that helps him tell his stories aloud and captures them in writing.

From Access to Equity: Tech, Tools, and the African Context

It seems that what we need is to rediscover the art of storytelling but with a modern upgrade. Phyllis and Alix are passionate about building awareness among teachers and parents in rural schools and communities. “But it’s not just about understanding,” Alix says, “we also need tools.” The assistive technology is certainly out there already — from speech-to-text apps like Dragon Dictate to creative platforms like Book Creator and Clicker — but there are gaps. Alix dreams of an app that would allow a child to read aloud and then “prompt a misread word” or use voice input to autocorrect grammar but still “preserve the child’s inner voice.”

Millions of dyslexic children across the globe still lack access, and many schools need the basic resources to support neurodivergent learners. However, in our rush to make amends for the damage done to dyslexic people over hundreds of years, could it be that we have painted them as victims of a dominantly literate society, when it may be that the rest of us are the losers? Our insistence on telling stories in a specific way has denied us a plethora of narratives that might have entertained and brought hope and meaning in multi-dimensional ways not seen before. But if Phyllis is to be believed, there is hope. And if organisations like Dyslexia Kenya and eKitabu were to join forces with passionate, consummate individuals like Alix, then perhaps Kenya could lead the way in this old but new territory, after all.

To find out more about dyslexia in Kenya check out https://www.dyslexiakenya.org/

You can connect with Alix and learn more about her work with dyslexia and ADHD at her website https://www.acceleratelearningkenya.com/ 

Also check out Black, Brilliant and Dyslexic, a book that celebrates the achievements of Black dyslexic individuals, edited by Marcia Brissett-Bailey

Virginia Clay is a Nairobi-based children’s author and editor. virginiaclay.co.uk

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