Summer reading in rural Africa

Thanks to some small grant support from Santa Clara University and Osu Children's Library Fund, this summer FAVL will run a few more pilot small-scale summer reading programs. Nowhere near the scale of the UK's national Summer Reading Challenge but enough to have some measurable effects at the village level. Osu Children's Library Fund will help fund a small reading camp in one of the libraries. We're thinking of running it for three weeks, five days a week. Participants (aged 10-13) will do a lot of reading (in groups, with partners, alone, aloud, silent) and a lot of playing (crafts, games, puzzles). The Santa Clara University research grant is to run some less intensive summer reading programs (once a week book discussion groups).

Maybe by the end too we'll have a little Youtube video advertising the programs... turns out there are dozens that have been posted to Youtube- librarians with a little too much time on their hands????

Two high-minded novels and a question....

This was a bad reading week... I did not enjoy at all two high-minded novels- Ben Okri's In Arcadia and J.M. Coetzee's Foe. Foe is apparently taught in a number of high-minded literary theory courses. I'm not averse in principle to hard to read novels that are making a point about me as a reader and the author as a writer and all of us using langugae and so on. It's just that I wonder while I am reading these two particular books why exactly is it that I find them hard to read, and the only conclusion I can draw is that they're boring. I'm reading with a feeling of tedium, turning page after page and not really caring much what the characters are doing (perhaps because they aren't doing much). And I don't find myself puzzled and interested in my reactions to the text (I'm bored). So, not every book from Africa is a gem, some are just bad. These are two I don't recommend, and they are from excellent authors, at that!

The question... I was giving a presentation about FAVL to a group of returned Peace Corps volunteers, and towards the end the question was raised whether this whole endeavour, with its focus on the technology of books, wasn't simply missing the point, the point being that electronic reading material was rapidly eclipsing books. FAVL may as well be setting up darkrooms and teaching people how to develop negatives using chemical photoprocessing techniques. What do I have to say about that? It is a good question. People are indeed writing and reading text messages on their cell phones, even in remote villages in Burkina Faso. And undoubtedly someday people will be reading Ben Okri on their cell phone, the way people read novels on cell phones in Japan. But my son, who is 9, and an avid reader, and who lives in Silicon Valley, has yet to read anything on any electronic medium. And most likely he'll never read fiction in an electronic medium, unless the technology improves really really fast. So kids in African villages are unlikely to lose much from the investments FAVL donors make in community libraries. Besides, I believe the most important investment we are making is in the institution of the community library, rather than the books per se. This is the mission that drives FAVL every day, and makes FAVL so different from the book-oriented NGO.... our focus is on building the community library as a long-lasting community institution. So we are technology neutral. Not Luddites, and not bookworms. FAVL doesn't exist to give people warm and fuzzy feelings of reading printed letters on pages bound into books (covered in calfskin?). FAVL exists to help people read.

Ian McEwan's Atonement

Read in in a five hour sitting on the flight from New York to San Jose last week. Curious that no airlines advertise on-board libraries. Jetblue makes a big deal out of their 64 channels. But practically any book is more entertaining and customer-satisfying than the pabulum available. There can be no greater demonstration of what the Jesuits mean when they aspire to the "highest humanism" than to be reading Atonement, take a break, accidentally flip to Fox News, and watch "not highest humanism".

That said, there is something a bit too precious about the book. I enjoyed the self-conscious asides about crafting a novel, a somewhat welcome contrast to the over-serious Crow Lake. But at the same time, important elements of that self-consciousness are left out. Why are the characters in Atonement impossibly rich? Important for the story? Can only rich people be "minds" that need to be understood? Or does McEwan understand the market for fiction, where rich people are going to sell more movie rights than poor people? But a wonderful book, I thought.

Learning to read in a classroom in Ouagadougou

The text that accompanies the video is as follows:

A second grade class at Naab Abga School in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, taught by Juliette Guere, was videotaped as part of a World Bank effort at developing teacher training materials on how to improve instructional time use and learning efficiency managed by the Human Development Network and Independent Evaluation Group, task manager Helen Abadzi. The teacher takes time to write brief texts on the blackboard. The students take turns reading this brief text at the board, write it on their slates and finally reorder the words using the slates. The brevity of the text limits reading practice in class and delays the acquisition of automaticity. As a result, the students may remain functionally illiterate for years.

Les petits acrobates du fleuve, (The Little River Acrobats)

FAVL board member Deb Garvey points us to some wonderful children's books about Africa from the publisher L'ecole des loisirs including this one, Les petits acrobates du fleuve, (The Little River Acrobats), illustrated and written by Dominique Mwankumi, L'ecole des loisirs, 2000. Deb has translated and expanded the publisher's blurb below:

This charming African-village themed book for children ages 7 to 9 is a great introduction to village life in west-central Africa. The story is set in the remote village of Sakata, Democratic Republic of Congo, along the Congo River. The great river churns dangerously whenever a mailboat packed with merchandise arrives at Sakata's tiny one-wharf port. Despite the dangers, the mailboats are tempting targets for the children of the village. Children (aka "little acrobats") scramble into their fragile small pirogues and row out into the turbulent water in order to touch the hull of the mysterious boat. One day, a little boy named Kembo decides it is his turn to have a go at the mailboat. He is even determined to board the mailboat once he reaches it. However, reaching the larger boat requires skill in handling the pirogue in the dangerously choppy waters and a great deal of courage, neither of which Kembo lacks. Accompanied by his friends, Kembo will attempt this very dangerous act of acrobacy....will he succeed?

Mary Lawson - Crow Lake and The Other Side of the Bridge

These meticulous character studies of children growing up to be adults in a tiny farm community in Canada are gripping and Zola-esque (but much shorter) tableau's where destiny and choice come to a head in the second to last chapter. So they are deeply satisfying reads... until the second to last chapter, because when destiny and chance come to a head, well, the experienced reader always sees an author making choices, so suddenly the "transporting away" evaporates which is a little disappointing. But 200 pages of fantastic prose for $19.95 (or free at your local library) is a bargain, natch. Thanks to Sheila Conway at SCU's Orradre Library for reading at the coffeehouse one day and prompting me to ask what the book was.

Malaria is horrible for schooling even when kids not sick

A nice presentation by Matthew Jukes at the Comparative and International Education Society meeting this morning, about a randomized trial in Kenya where older kids who are relatively immune to the fever symptoms of malaria, but nevertheless are infected and full of the parasites, improved school performance significantly with a once-every-three-months anti-malarial pill. Seems that the parasites make you anemic, even if not feverish. Books are important for reading, but not having malaria is pretty darn important too. So what if kids had a book where they read about all the awful effects that malaria was having on them, and showing how to use a mosquito bednet? That would be a good book for FAVL volunteers to start working on.

"We have a million books in boxes in Liberia..."

Comment of the day at the Comparative and International Education Studies conference at Teachers College in New York after our session on village libraries. Seems to be more on the way, too:

Bush declares Liberia safe, gives more books - Feb 22, 2008
United States President Bush, has pledged one-million text-books to the Liberian school system to provide learning opportunities for some ten-thousand children for the next few years.

Problem is, apparently there is no plan or budget for how all these books will be funneled into institutions that will make use of them. I think there is one simple question to ask in these cases: In ten years time, who will be paying the salary of the librarian responsible for the books? If the answer is "I have no idea" then the project is in trouble!

Subject: petit rapport sur notre voyage de niankorodougou

From: dounko sanou
To: mkevane@scu.edu
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008
Subject: petit rapport sur notre voyage de niankorodougou

Bonjour Michael a bereba tout va bien nous sommes de retour de niankorodougou ou Chelsea et moi nous sommes allés depuis lundi matin Meghann qui se trouvait a bobo se jour nous ai atendu et nous sommes parti ensemble . Nous avons pu rencontrer le Comité et les Candidats le mardi et le mercredi soir nous avons fais le test du choix d'un bibliothècaire tout c'est bien passé . Le Maire qui est le president du comité ,les membres du comité tous etaient content par ce qu'ils ont bien compri leur role et devoir ensuite ce que le Gerant doit faire . Le choix du Gerant s'est deroulé en presence du Maire, Meghann, Chelsea et moi très correcte selon tout le monde. Egalement le Maire m'a remercié par ce que explique tout en dioula plus de detail dans mon rapport du mois de mars 2008 merci . Sinon le cyber a houndé est ouvert selon les info depuis bereba bye salu tout le monde.

Blattman's cheap shot.... ;-)

Chris Blattman takes a cheap shot at.... well.... us? Surely not me? And not Kate! But others, definitely. The development tourist. It's food for thought. What are you (the short timer volunteer) actually doing? Is your short trip a morally and practically desirable thing? Do you consume more resources by your trip than services provided? Chris seems to have in mind that instead of paying $3,000 for your round-trip plane ticket, visa, hotel, taxi, food at the airport, you simply make a donation to... well, he doesn't say to whom. For the record, I totally disagree with Chris. For a whole set of reasons, but mostly because I don't think the short-term development tourist does any harm, and because I think it is morally dubious to condemn someone who heads down the right path for not doing enough! It's like condemning a person who has decided to eat less meat out of ecological and moral concerns for animals, saying they are a hypocrite for still eating some meat. There is little virtue in pointing out the failings of people who are trying to be righteous, but aren't completely righteous. This kind of moral reasoning (if you can't do it completely right, then you are an awful person) is terrible for the book trade, because buying a book to read yourself is always the wrong thing to do... to be above reproach you have to borrow it from your local public library. (You knew I had to get libraries in there somewhere.)

Ironically, on TV here at the Grand Hotel in Khartoum is Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz as development tourists in Tanzania....

Some news from Uganda

The Uganda Community Library Association (UgCLA) now has a coordinator -- Grace Musoke. She is organizing the small grants competition as well as taking minutes of meetings, writing reports of workshops, and looking into possible sources of funding in Uganda.

The Kitengesa building project is proceeding apace. The library's eGranary is also up and running now, though not many people can access it since we have only one computer for it. When we have our new building we should be able to network more computers to it.

Books in Khartoum

I am in Khartoum for four days doing a training for an evaluation of fuel-efficient stoves. When the training ended, I went walking around town, looking for bookstores. Found one. Thrilling to see that they had the Arabic version of my book, Kordofan Invaded. Or more properly, the dusty bookshop's manager was thrilled to see me, because I bought all four copies! Then I browsed around for children's book. I didn't see any. When I asked, the manager shook his head. Children's books from Sudan? Are there any? Ah yes, there is one, he remembered! In the back. A small book printed in 1994. 50 cents. Lovely illustrations, but not a very good story (though my Arabic is somewhat rusty, it's been 15 years since I lived in Sudan). I'll scan the cover when I get back. So, elation (my book) to depression (practically no children's books) in 5 minutes.

First reports in from Chalula library, Tanzania

Everything seems to be going very smoothly after the opening to regular hours in mid-January. The librarian did his training at the regional library. The library has over 3300 books and solar panels have been installed. The library had over 950 visits in January and over 2,000 visits in Feb. An MLS student from Pratt University will be making a site visit in July and will stay at Chalula for two weeks to help implement "best practices" and think about reading programs.

Thanks to ....

St. Jude's Episcopal Church, Cupertino CA, outreach group, just decided to generously fund some of FAVL's activities as a way of contributing to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals of achieving universal literacy, halving of poverty, improvements in maternal mortality and gender equality! Libraries, we think, are important actors in this global effort. Villagers in Burkina need to read, and need to read well.

Santa Clara Rotary Club also decided to fund a small pilot by our current university student volunteer in Burkina Faso, who is creating four picture (photo) books on local themes. One is on how to make coura-coura, a delicious fried groundnut pastry). Children love seeing pictures of their own familiar lives, and then deciphering the words in the accompanying text, which will be in French and Dioula, the major local language of southwestern Burkina Faso. The books should be ready in May, and we'll keep you posted.

A book about chickens and microcredit

You probably heard the story on NPR if you are in the U.S., but what a great book. A Ghanaian chicken entreprenuer started small, many years ago. A small donation by you can make sure that hundreds of kids in Ghana will get to read this book! Just write "One Chicken" on your donation, and we'll get copies of the book for our three libraries in northern Ghana.

Is "I just don't care" good enough, or will it get me into trouble?

People who don't run small non-profits aren't aware of the seismic transformation of the field by the so-called social entrepreneurs, who promise measurable impact and sustainable growth through serving the marketplace of the bottom billion. Venture capitalists feel good about changing the world with their smart investments that yield high returns. Microcredit is the darling of this movement, since you get transformation for nothing. But frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. I play the game as best I can, but small community libraries are a different kind of passion. It is a cliché, but most of the people motivated to donate time and money to community libraries are the same people who donate time and money, and who benefit from, their local libraries. They are avid readers, people who are profoundly affected by the reading experience. When I read Chinua Achebe or Amadou Kourouma, or Jane Austen, the experiences in my brain are worthy of study, they're so interesting! So what a library is about, is giving people opportunities to become passionate, avid readers. Is there a study that says that this is a good thing by some other measure? I'm not sure we need that study- isn't becoming an avid reader a good thing in and of itself? Does it have to have some other effect?