Most men his age wake up slowly. They take morning leisurely walks, switch on the television, or sit back and let the day unfold at an easier pace.

Professor Charles Orero does none of that. At 73, he wakes up, sits at his desk, takes a fresh notebook, and begins to write, be it on a weekday or weekend.

Day after day, Orero pours his thoughts on a paper, only stopping at lunchtime, after which he comes back and writes some more until late in the evening. This has been part of his life since he retired in 2016.

In a glass cabinet inside his home library sit 180 empty biro pens.

Some are blue. Others black. A few red. All are carefully arranged, labelled, and preserved like artefacts. Each one , Orero says, represents roughly a month of work. Each one is completely drained of ink.

They are evidence of his purpose after retirement, his intellectual productivity, and the legacy he is building.

It is also how he has stayed off the perilous path that sees many men slowly wither away after stepping away from active work.

“If you retire and just sit there, you will die,” he says matter-of-factly.

He is still engaged in academia, teaching online at the Kenya School of Revenue Administration. The pace is, however, lighter than his decades-long career at the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), where he rose to Assistant Commissioner over 37 years of service.
But the real work, he insists, is elsewhere.

The discipline of paper and ink

At 73, Orero’s mornings are still defined by writing. He sits at his desk, opens a fresh notebook, uncaps a biro pen, and writes until lunchtime. After lunch, he returns and continues.

The rhythm has defined his life since he retired from full-time public service in 2016.

Most men his age, he acknowledges, slow down. He did not.

It happens on paper.

A second life in book

Since retiring, Orero has written eight books. Four have been published, one is awaiting release, and three are still in progress. Most run to 400 pages or more.

Every one of them begins the same way: by hand. Not typed. Not dictated. Written, page after page, through repeated drafts of the same sections.

“Page one, page two, page one, page two,” he explains. “Then I take it and start typing.”

It is slow, deliberate work in a fast, digital world. But that is precisely the point. Writing by hand, he says, keeps his mind engaged. It forces thought to keep pace with ink.

“It slows me down just enough to think clearly and deeply about what I’m putting on the page.”

And the pens are witnesses to that process. One after another, they are exhausted, replaced, and quietly added to the cabinet.

The man behind the routine

Before retirement, Orero spent 37 years at KRA, rising through the ranks in revenue administration. That long institutional life, he says, shaped his discipline and his refusal to stop working altogether.

It also left him with a warning he never forgot. “If you retire and just sit there, you will die,” he repeats the phrase that has become both philosophy and instruction to anyone who seek his wisdom.

For him retirement was a transition, rather than termination. His days now, he says, are structured with precision: writing in the morning, revising in the afternoon, reading in the evening. Even weekends are quiet extensions of the same intellectual routine.

“My life is readership,” he says. “I cannot avoid reading every day.”

The pen, for him, is an extension of that daily conversation he has with ideas. And the results speak for themselves. He is 73 years old, sharp, energetic, and producing work that younger people have not attempted. “I have not changed much,” he says, sitting straight, eyes clear and steady.

The quiet archive of pens

The cabinet of 180 pens was not planned. “I was just putting them there,” he says.

One pen would finish, then another. Days became months. Months became years. Eventually, curiosity about the number of pens he had gone through interrupted routine.

“I thought maybe 50,” he says. “When I counted, they were far more than 50.”

The final tally was 180. Each pen lasts about a month. He buys them in bulk from the University of Nairobi bookshop, paying between Sh20 and Sh30 apiece. He does not track expenditure.

“I’m not interested in the price,” he says. What matters is what they produce.

Why he writes

The books themselves reflect concerns that have followed him through his career. They cover ground that he feels strongly about, areas where he noticed that very little had been written before and where he believed he had something real to offer.

His first book is on pride in knowledge. Growing up, he watched people be dismissed and looked down upon for not attending the most prestigious schools.

“They would ask, 'We didn't see you,' meaning you did not go to Alliance, you did not go to Nairobi University," he recalls.

That quiet cruelty stayed with him. He wrote the book to push back against it, to tell Kenyans that education belongs to them too, no matter where they started. He says several people have gone back to school after reading it.

His second and third books, two volumes on charity and economic empowerment, came from his fascination with how great philanthropists like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and the Rockefellers gave generously while building lasting wealth at the same time.

“When you do charity, you are also doing economic empowerment. It is not just charity alone," he says.

The volumes carry a foreword from Manu Chandaria, one of the most respected business figures in East Africa.

He has also written on personality virtues, making the argument that good character and good habits are the real foundation of any successful life.

“If you have good ones (virtues), you will be successful. If you don't, you are not successful," he says plainly.

He is currently working on books on wealth and devolution, and another that simplifies the world of taxes for ordinary people, drawing on his long career in revenue.

“I’m not copying anybody," he adds. “They are very original."

Recognition and legacy

Now, Orero wants recognition for what he has built. The idea of a Guinness World Record emerged only after he counted his pens and reflected on the scale of his work.

“What I want is just recognition,” he says. “Not the material bit of it.”

He says he is not chasing money or celebrity. He is seeking acknowledgment that a retired man can, through consistency alone, produce eight substantial books written entirely by hand and measured, almost inadvertently, through the consumption of 180 pens.

He also hopes his story carries a wider message. Young people, he says, often want outcomes without process.

“Start something small,” he advises. “After starting, the others will follow.”

The philosophy of endurance

There is no sense of urgency in the way Orero speaks, only certainty. He sits upright, composed, deliberate in his phrasing.

He sees no contradiction between his pens, his books, and his ambitions. They are all part of the same continuum: repetition, discipline, accumulation.

“Nobody has done it and nobody will do it,” he says, not as boast, but as conclusion.

Outside his study, retirement often looks like slowing down, withdrawal, silence. Inside his, his faithful companions,
a desk, a notebook, and a pen uncapped await at the start of every morning.

And, somewhere behind him, a cabinet slowly filling with the quiet record of a life that refused to stop writing.

→ moochieng@ke.nationmedia.com