Larry Matoyo is seventeen. A 12th Class IGCSE Feza International School student in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, he is author of a book titled: Larry Bourne: Where’s The Pharaoh? – pegged on an archaeological site in the neighbourhood of Giza in Egypt.
Kilimanjaro Dialogue Institute (KDI) talent nurturing programme lands on him. The encounter turns out to be a possible title for another book. The whole story is but what indigenous knowledge holds. Indeed, what brings famine leaves a tip behind on where to scout for supplies.
Larry wrote the first novel at an enviable age of fifteen and is currently working on the second. Fate has it that due to his health status, he could not engage in laborious school manual work activities. “Most of the time I spent reading. In between I had a go at small, short stories. My teachers liked them and gave me a lot of encouragement.”
He confesses: “I had a lot of help from my parents and my aunt. They supported this talent of mine. I remember my grandfather had links with newspapers…”
He admits Larry Bourne: Where’s The Pharaoh? is fully packed with adventure, mystery and action because “most of the books I’ve read are (exactly) about that. And among them adventure comes first. He is right. His first book is about the adventures of Larry Bourne. One reader even puts it better in a review by expressing it as “an exciting adventure that will have your heart racing right to the end.”
There is no doubt that Larry Matoyo has the talent. He has never been to Giza. But he can express himself extremely well that far combining the first experience of an animated mummy to locating the lost treasures of Egypt.
He laments Tanzania’s wanting state of reading culture. He advocates the writing of children’s books, although his target readership is the young adults.
