The science of reading

A great introduction in a short review article by Caleb Crain, also just appeared also is The Science of Reading published by Blackwell.

Meshack Asare, children's author from Ghana

Two very nice books (Meliga's Day and Kwajo and the Brassman's Secret) from the prolific Ghanaian children's author... excellent illustrations and stories guaranteed to appeal to a village reader. The problem? Go to amazon.com to ask how much these cost? Here is what you get:

Meliga's Day (Opon Ifa Series, 2) by Meshack Asare (Paperback - April 2000) 2 Used & new from $88.12 Books: See all 30 items

Yes, most of his books- ordinary children's paperbacks- are selling in the used market for $20, 30, 40, 50, even $88.12 dollars! Incredible. The books can, though, be ordered from Michigan University Press and the African Books Collective.

Quietly saddening evening reading

Of course I mean William Trevor. His 2002 novel, which I just finished, would make a perfect gift for a serious reader. Here's the review from Powell's.

Kunka community library in Ghana progressing

Thanks to a generous donor, FAVL is proceeding with refurbishment of a building in Kunka, Upper East region, Ghana. The library should be open sometime in January, is the plan. Our coordinator in Sumbrungu, Lucas Aligire, is doing a great job of working with the village community to make it happen. We will keep you posted.

I read children's books too...

But I realize I never write about them here, so I should start. Tonite I read The Blue Marble, a wonderfully illustrated book for 10-14 year olds by Jackee Budesta Batanda, an up and coming Ugandan writer. The right mix of realism and happy ending. Published by Sub-Saharan Publishers and UNESCO.

My own reading, continued....

I started, one evening, and then simply could not stop, R.K. Narayan's The Financial Expert.... the ending was predictable and disappointing, but the first 100 pages were enthralling, and nice crisp writing of course, what else from Narayan?

Read something different for the holidays? Novels from West Africa

I spent a few minutes putting together a short list of novels from West Africa on amazon.com. These are what our readers in the libraries in Burkina Faso really enjoy reading. A more comprehensive list of the 100 Best from Africa is at the Africa Book Center.

Tina Brown on Christmas in America

For the New Yorkers especially, a nice piece in London's The Spectator on why we're different... And Bruce and Rosemary Harris's work to establish the Chalula Community Library in Tanzania is featured! Hats off to all the Chalula donors, and especially the village leadership in Mvumi, including the indefatigable Joseph Biseko. Here's one more picture from Chalula, at the opening last week. Enjoy the holiday season.

Photos from Bereba, first FAVL library in Burkina, featured

Santa Clara University photographer David Pace had some portraits included in a recent cover photo essay... click on the image for the link.

Why the insistence on program evaluation and measuring impact should be taken with salt

In the annals of the "flip-charts have no effects" department...
Adult Literacy Programs in Ghana: An Evaluation
2004
Niels-Hugo Blunch
Department of Economics
George Washington University
Claus C Portner
Department of Economics
University of Washington
Abstract
This paper examines the effect of adult literacy program participation on household consumption in Ghana. We find that in most cases there is no significant effect on consumption from participation after allowing for self-selection into the program. For households where no adults have completed any formal education there is, however, a substantial positive and statistically significant effect on household consumption, pointing towards the potential importance of adult literacy programs for the parts of the population which have not participated in the formal education system. Possible explanations for why adult literacy program participation does not seem to significantly affect households where some formal education has been attained are explored, as well.

Ben Okri on his new novel

A favorite author of mine (whose short stories are excellent for teaching about Africa) has just released a new book... can't wait to read it.

Reynolds Price and Walter Mosley

They don't have much in common, but I read Fear Itself (a mystery) and Noble Norfleet (pretty incomprehensible)... I'm not a big mystery reader, but Fear Itself is an interesting portrait of Los Angeles in the 1950s (from an African American perspective), and since it is where I went to visit my grandmother on vacation in summers, I get an appropriate feeling of nostalgia when Doheney is named in a book... Noble Norfleet... the writing careens about, and the story never really gels... interesting but hard to recommend.

Doris Lessing's Nobel lecture

Steve Cisler sent me the link to the speech... rambling (calculatedly so?) but full of the power and importance of books and writing in Africa:

The next day I am to give a talk at a school in North London, a very good school. It is a school for boys, with beautiful buildings and gardens. The children here have a visit from some well-known person every week: these may be fathers, relatives, even mothers of the pupils; a visit from a celebrity is not unusual for them.

As I talk to them, the school in the blowing dust of north-west Zimbabwe is in my mind, and I look at the mildly expectant English faces in front of me and try to tell them about what I have seen in the last week. Classrooms without books, without textbooks, or an atlas, or even a map pinned to a wall. A school where the teachers beg to be sent books to tell them how to teach, they being only 18 or 19 themselves. I tell these English boys how everybody begs for books: "Please send us books." But there are no images in their minds to match what I am telling them: of a school standing in dust clouds, where water is short, and where the end-of-term treat is a just-killed goat cooked in a great pot.

Is it really so impossible for these privileged students to imagine such bare poverty?

I do my best. They are polite.

Chalula library project in Tanzania: Open for readers...

Bruce and Rosemary Harris just got back from Tanzania, where they helped put finishing touches on the new library in Mvumi village. The beautiful building is one of the nicest among the various FAVL managed libraries. Kudos to Bruce and Rosemary, who led the effort. The project was conceptualized by a group of Habitat for Humanity volunteers who had been in the area building houses, and decided to strike out into library support. They all tapped into a deep network of generous friends and family... it goes without saying that the library is going to make a huge difference, especially for the village students. We are hoping that people will want to visit and volunteer in the library when they are in the area, near Dodoma ... just a long 8 hour bus ride from Dar es Salaam! Drop us a line if you want to get added to the mailing list.

Governments vs. NGOs to deliver literacy/education

The New York times had a nice story on the slow pace of aid delivery by the Millenium Challenge Corporation focusing on Burkina Faso.

The agency, a rare Bush administration proposal to be enacted with bipartisan support, has spent only $155 million of the $4.8 billion it has approved for ambitious projects in 15 countries in Africa, Central America and other regions.

FAVL co-director Kate Parry's recent paper - Languages, Literacies, and Libraries: A View from Africa

Kate presented this at the recent IFLA conference in Durban, South Africa. the full paper is available here.
Abstract
Africa is one of the most linguistically diverse regions of the world. This paper, based on experience in Nigeria and Uganda, explores the implications of that fact for the development of literacies and the role of libraries. Many people in these two countries speak at least three languages: their mother tongue, an African lingua franca, and English, the former colonial language. The three (or more) languages are used for different purposes and are associated with different social groups and ways of life. Accordingly, literacy cannot be seen as a single skill that applies to all of them. Rather, each language has its own literacy, and the problems of developing a reading culture are different in each case. Mother-tongue literacy is limited by the fact that most African languages have only a limited range of written material, while some have none at all. Lingua franca literacy has more scope, and therefore more potential for giving access to information to large numbers of people; but it is seen in some areas as a threat to the mother tongues, while it is itself often overshadowed by literacy in English. English literacy has greater social prestige as well as more written material to sustain it, but it suffers from the fact that English is an alien and often resented language, and the majority of African people have little chance of learning it well. The paper argues that libraries, especially ones targeted at rural communities, are particularly well suited to addressing these problems. They can cater to the demand to learn English by providing access to English materials that are linguistically appropriate and culturally accessible. They can likewise provide materials in the local lingua franca so that people who speak it can learn its written form. As for mother-tongue literacy, they can not only collect and provide access to whatever written material is available but also organise educative bilingual activities and encourage more mother-tongue writing. In these ways community libraries can complement formal education systems and can enable their members to move beyond the restrictions imposed by schools to become independent multilingual readers.