Built from lived experience

This app exists because
reading was hard for me

WaziSoma wasn't built in a boardroom. It was built by someone who spent years wondering why their brain wouldn't cooperate.

I was always told I was too distracted

My name is Muujiza. I'm 23, and I grew up in the Democratic Republic of Congo. From as early as I can remember, one of my mom's most common refrains was — "Muujiza, you are too distracted."

My school reports told the same story year after year: good student, but too distracted. I wasn't failing. I wasn't causing trouble. I was just... somewhere else. I could never quite explain it, and neither could anyone around me.

"Good student — but too distracted."

Every report card, every year

Back home, mental health isn't inspected or discussed the way it is in Western countries. There was no framework for what I was experiencing. No name for it. So I carried it quietly — a vague sense that something about the way my brain worked was just... wrong.

Reading felt like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it

Reading and studying were where it hit hardest. It wasn't that I couldn't read — I could. But I would go back to the same sentence ten times and still not register what I'd just read. The words would go in, and something between my eyes and my brain, the information just wouldn't stick.

I'd finish a paragraph and realize I had no idea what I'd just read. Not because the words were hard. Because my brain had moved on before I could hold onto them.

This made everything take longer. Exams, assignments, studying — tasks that felt simple for others felt like running uphill for me. And because I didn't have a word for what was happening, I did what a lot of people do: I assumed I just wasn't capable.

Then a language barrier made
everything even harder

When I moved to the United States, reading got harder before it got better. Now I wasn't just trying to focus — I was also decoding an entirely different language. I'd have to stop mid-sentence to look up a word, and by the time I found it, I'd lost the thread of what I was reading entirely.

The focus it took just to understand the words left almost nothing left over for actually absorbing the meaning behind them. It felt like trying to run two programs on a computer that was already at 100% CPU.

It was only in the US, at 22 years old, that I finally got a name for what I'd been experiencing my whole life: ADHD.

That diagnosis didn't change who I was. But it changed how I understood myself. Suddenly, so many things made sense — the distraction, the re-reading, the overwhelm, the overthinking. It wasn't a character flaw. It was just how my brain was wired.

One video changed everything

One day I came across a video — I think it was on TikTok — about something called Bionic Reading. I'd never heard of it. I was skeptical. But I tried it.

And I was stunned. I was reading faster. And more than that — I was registering what I was reading. The information was actually landing. For the first time, reading didn't feel like a fight.

"I was reading faster — and actually remembering what I read."

The moment WaziSoma was born

I thought: I need this as a proper tool. Something I can paste any text into and actually study from. And if it works for me, it'll work for other people going through the same thing — people who were told they were too distracted, people who gave up on reading, people who just needed the right format.

So I decided to build it. Not because I'm a developer — I'm not. But because the need was real, and the tools to make it exist were available to me.

Why WaziSoma?

Swahili is my mother tongue. It was the language of my childhood, my home, my family. When it came to naming this app, it felt right to root it in something personal — not just a generic English word, but something that came from where I came from.

WaziSoma in Swahili
Wazi Clear / Open
Soma Read / Study

Together: "Read Clearly" — the entire purpose of this app in two words. And in Kinyarwanda, WaziSoma means something even more direct: "You can read." A statement of possibility for anyone who ever doubted it.

That phrase — you can read — is what I wish someone had told me years ago. Not as a challenge. As a reassurance. Your brain isn't broken. You just needed the right tool.

WaziSoma is for anyone who has ever felt like reading was too hard

You're not too distracted. You're not incapable. You might just need the text to look a little different. That's what this is for.

Try WaziSoma free →