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Does your president pay his taxes?

Wonderful 'direct talk" from writer Alain Mabanckou...

Avril 2009 : tous les américains ont pu lire la feuille de déclaration des revenus de la famille Obama. Le président américain et son épouse ont déclaré des revenus annuels d’un peu plus de 2. 650.000 dollars. Le couple a ainsi payé plus de 850,000 dollars à l’Etat fédéral et près de 78,000 dollars à l’Etat de l’Illinois… (cf. lien en fin de cette chronique)

Obama millionnaire ? Ce sont les droits d’auteur des deux livres publiés par le président qui ont « gonflé » les revenus du foyer. On ne devient pas président dans le dessein de s’enrichir ! En regardant de près cette déclaration des revenus, j’ai songé aux présidents africains. Quel africain en effet a déjà « vu de ses propres yeux » la déclaration d’impôts de son président ? Mystère… Payent-ils vraiment les impôts, nos présidents des tropiques ? Si oui - parce qu’il faut en tout temps accorder le bénéfice de la bonne foi - comment alors se calculerait leur assiette d’imposition si leur fortune personnelle correspond au centime près à la richesse entière de leur pays ?

Payer les impôts signifie déclarer ce qu’on a. Or depuis « les soleils des indépendances » le dirigeant politique africain pratique l’opacité absolue des revenus. Les taxes et autres contributions payées par les populations viennent gonfler une « caisse noire » dans laquelle les ministres et le président puisent sans vergogne.

Let's digress... Economics and modeling

Lee over at RovingBandit had some discussion of the value of economists making assumptions that people are rational and self-interested (as opposed to ordinary humans who are far more complex). I wrote a longish comment. Today I just happened to be reading an abstract of a new paper (see below) and the thought occurred to me: regardless of whether you think their results are simply an interesting math problem or some serious deep insight, the simple likelihood is that only the rational and self-interested assumption lets you do this kind of modeling. Anything else is simply too complex at this time! And the math results that come from this modeling form the stepping stones for more complex modeling that will happen when some math-oriented breakthrough economist comes up with clever algorithms or theorems (there's one in economics that was revolutionary, called the "revelation principle") so that we can model people who are bounded in their rationality, emotional, and often weird.

So both camps can be right at the same time- most models of rational self-interested actors are just sometimes fun sometimes boring math problems, but solving thousands of those math problems generates tools that will be useful down the road, and is the only way to generate the tools, and they are probably better in the meantime than just repeating "in my opinion based on what I had for lunch today" stories back and forth.

Foreign Influence and Welfare
Pol Antràs
Harvard University and NBER
Gerard Padró i Miquel
London School of Economics and NBER
February 4, 2009
Abstract
How do foreign interests influence the policy determination process? How is trade policy affected? What are the welfare implications of such foreign influence? In this paper we develop a model of foreign influence and apply it to the study of optimal tariffs. We develop a two-country voting model of electoral competition, where we allow the incumbent party in each country to take costly actions that probabilistically affect the electoral outcome in the other country. We show that policies end up maximizing a weighted sum of domestic and foreign welfare, and we study the determinants of this weight. We show that foreign influence may be welfare-enhancing from the point of view of aggregate world welfare because it helps alleviate externalities arising from crossborder effects of policies. Foreign influence can however prove harmful in the presence of large imbalances in influence power across countries. We apply our model of foreign influence to the study of optimal trade policy. We derive a modified formula for the optimal import tariff and show that a country’s import tariff is more distorted whenever the influenced country is small relative to the influencing country and whenever natural trade barriers between the two countries are small. We also show that the viability of free trade agreements can be hampered by large imbalances in power across countries.

African crime literature... calling Ro Harris!

Rosemary Harris, a major force behind Chalula community library in Tanzania, is also a mystery novel writer... she would have enjoyed this conference I'm sure... but it was back in 2008. Still, really interesting suggestions for books...

African crime fiction represents a comparatively new literary genre and an even newer topic in the critical study of African literatures. On the surface, crime fiction is concerned with the detection of crimes (petty as well as large scale), with corruption or political conspiracies. Its capacity for bloodcurdling mystery accounts for part of its popularity. Just as much, however, African crime fiction is concerned with a whole lot of other aspects, such as questions of authority and power within a postcolonial context against potential projections of a (neo-)imperial West; with working up the past of African nations and grappling with order and disorder in postcolonial societies; and with the renegotiation of gender and race relationships. Many authors have thus broadened the theme of investigation to address issues of community, beliefs and identity con­structions across geographic and national boundaries. Others have broadened the genre by in­venting recognisable sub-categories which relate to the social, politi­cal and historical formations of their specific African postcolonies. Dealing with such “serious” issues in a complex manner has long been regarded as the prerogative of African literary works aimed at elite readerships. Today, however, crime fiction has become one of the most active and ambitious sites of literary investigation. Contemporary African authors deliberately employ the immense popularity of the genre to reach readers from all walks of life. To borrow from an essay on multicultural detective narratives, African crime fiction ingeniously represents “murder with a message” (Gosselin 1999).

White Teeth, by Okot p'Bitek

This short novel from 1953 is very poignant, and translated in 1988 from Acoli it reads well. The story is a commonplace- the young man wants to marry, but his father has died, so he must leave for Kampala to earn money. The descriptions of the village boy heading out into the world, woefully unprepared, ironically makes the case for reading itself, even though "the city" is responsible for the boy's woes. The thought experiment: if every village boy in Africa read White Teeth, would Africa be a better place? Clearly, to me, the answer is yes. But better enough to justify the 50 cents per child to get a copy "readable" to each child... now we are talking about something interesting.

Promoting a reading culture in Kenya

Nice blog posting by Konrad Glogowski:

...While I agree that it is challenging to encourage students to use English outside of school where they seem perfectly happy communicating in their mother tongue or Kiswahili, it is imperative that the use of English in school change from purely formal and transactional to more expressive, interactive, and socially meaningful. One of the main barriers that has traditionally made this shift impossible is that teaching in Kenya is very teacher-centred. In addition, instruction in an English classroom is often limited to cloze tests, reading comprehension exercises, and short answer questions. Students are generally not given opportunities to express their opinions or engage in class discussions or debates. Chalk and talk dominates classroom interactions.

But, how do we encourage teachers in Kenya to adopt a more student-centred approach? How can we support them in this shift to a more participatory environment?

I think that the small, gradual steps - the approach we used this past summer - are necessary to help teachers move out of their current comfort zone and test themselves using a different teaching methodology. According to Commeyras and Inyega (2007), two research-based Kenyan documents (MOEST, 2001; Willis, 1988) suggest that teachers can promote greater interest in reading by reading aloud to their students. Furthermore, talking with students about the texts as preparation for independent reading can also be very effective (Willis, 1988). Of course, the challenge here is that this approach requires that the teachers themselves be committed and enthusiastic readers willing to share their personal stories and reactions with their students. I believe that the students need to see in their teachers a high level of authentic engagement with a text in order to be encouraged by this approach. Teachers need to learn how to communicate their passion for reading and they need support in learning how to initiate and sustain meaningful conversations about texts in their classrooms. This is not an easy task for a teacher who is used to lecturing and who every day walks into a classroom where the students have been conditioned to sit quietly and listen

Read the full post here.

Sticker supply boost thanks to Debbie Tanzer's book, Do One Nice Thing

FAVL has received many lovely stickers for our child readers upon a recommendation contained in Debbie Tanzer's book, Do One Nice Thing. She included a wonderful 2-pg write-up of our work and how individuals could help incentivize our reading program by sending cute stickers. We've received 5 packets, the most recent a delightful sticker and bookmark collection prepared by a grandmother and her grandkids as a summer project. The accompanying notes are heartwarming, too.

Overachieving kids are the same the world over, even in Darfur refugee camps!

He sure could use a library, but unfortunately at this time FAVL has no plans to expand to Darfur refugee camps, though we would certainly love to if a major donor wanted to fund that (but we're talking major here!)

Rahma Profile from iActivism on Vimeo.

More photos from Summer reading camp in Bereba village... photo: Madelyn Bagby

Ding dong the 990's done...

Every small non-profit dreads the day of the IRS form 990... and last May we dreaded so much we just applied for automatic extension. yesterday FAVL Treasurer sat down for five hours and completed all the forms. Yaay! Big THANK YOU to Deb... without dedicated people like her, willing to spend five hours on a gorgeous Saturday morning here in San Jose, FAVL would not be able to implement the libraries and reading programs that our generous donors help fund.

FORGE library for refugees in Zambia

A long time ago... FAVL made a financial contribution to help this library get established...

"learn earn return" or "concern learn return" or "earn learn return"

As a college professor, students are always engaging me in discussions about what the better strategy is. Especially the ones going to law school. There are all kinds of maxims out there, and the only wisdom I feel I ever impart is for students to not be over-optimistic about their ability to retain their former self present in their future mind. And sometimes that former self might even be subject to insult by the future mind... "What were you thinking.. you were a total idiot!" I do tell the story of Andrew Carnegie, who as he saw that he was going to be capable of becoming very wealthy, wrote himself a letter to remind himself to give his fortune away and help the less fortunate. And that is what he did... though he postponed until he was well into older age. he sold out to J.P. Morgan and gave his fortune (though critics accuse of self-serving giving).

FAVLers and others passionate about helping kids read... a mystery in terms of how it fits into a coherent life philosophy.

Why read when you can twitter?

A hilarious (to me) posting from ugandan insomniac on "what if" Museveni were twittering...

Had a rough nite. Mbwenu journalists are giving me grief 4 ordering the arrest of errant policemen in Nateete. They say it’s an attempt @ cheap popularity. As if!

Who Controls African Literature?

FAVL friend Chelby Daigle send us this editorial by Tolu Ogunlesi:

LAGOS: The literary world is once again shining a spotlight on Africa. There are new prizes: the South Africa-based PEN Studzinski Literary Award for short stories, and the Penguin Prize for African Writing, a pan-African prize covering both fiction and non-fiction genres. There’s a new book series, the “Penguin African Writers Series,” which will include not only new books from emerging writers, but also classics taken over from the defunct Heinemann African Writers Series. And next year South Africa will be featured as the “Market Focus country” at the 2010 London Book Fair and African writing will be showcased at the Gothenburg Book Fair.

The African ‘Greats’–Ngugi, Soyinka, Gordimer, Okot p’Bitek– have given way to a new roster of names — Chimamanda Adichie, Chris Abani, Helon Habila, Binyavanga Wainaina, Sefi Atta, Monica Arac de Nyeko, Chika Unigwe, Brian Chikwava — who have become the new faces of contemporary African writing.

This explosion of literary talent and publishing opportunities might be likened to a similar one that accompanied the heady post-independence days of the 1960s. But in spite of all the inspiring and exciting happenings of recent years, there still remain nagging questions regarding who exactly are the proper ‘gatekeepers’ of African literary tradition and production.

Read the full article "Who Controls African Literature" here.

Ricky Alexander report from Chalula library

The food situation is more than satisfactory. Henry is coordinating things on that front for me in the village as Aaron is busy with some local government business and has been ill with the flu the past week or so on top of it. Henry has been great, making sure I'm satisfied with everything and the food is great! I'm sure going to miss ugali and mchuzi when I get back to the US! haha Henry set me up very nicely in the guesthouse adjacent to the school and library and I'm sleeping there with the company of a few children who are very sweet. It works out well...I tutor them in English and they help me learn Swahili. So food/lodging are great! (Joseph has been very helpful with escorting me to and from transportation and helping me while I'm in town at Dodoma. He lives here in Dodoma and works with Habitat for Humanity but is very much in touch with Henry and Aaron and very helpful and responsible. He is a great contact and knowledgeable about development in rural areas in Tanzania.)

The library is a wonderful place for the children to read during school breaks and after classes get out for the day. It is a nice structure and the bookshelves and tables/chairs are in good condition. What is lacking are resources (as I'm guessing is the case with most if not all FAVL libraries and other educational facilities in sub-Saharan Africa). The 200 or so Swahili children's books are tattered from overuse and many are falling apart and need to be taped together. The English books do not get used much as the nearest secondary school is quite far and the teenagers rarely walk the distance to the library. (Also, many are not culturally relevant as they are American/Euro-centric). So...what is needed are more children's books in Swahili, beginners/intermediate level English-learning books, rudimentary English stories, bilingual materials would be ideal, and a comprehensive Swahili-English dictionary would be great. I look forward to discussing possibilities for utilizing FAVL funds and/or fundraising to send some of these resources to the Chalula library when I return.

While resources is the main issue, usage is very high. The library is usually very full with all the tables and chairs full and scores of children sitting on the floor/along the walls. The children understand the importance of education/literacy and seek it, when the facilities and encouragement are there to promote it.

Three Cups of Tea... over coffee

I spent the last four days up in the Sierras at San Jose Family Camp (our city's socialized but market-priced camp site), blissfully reading Three Cups of Tea in between poker matches with kids, beautiful hikes with friends into the Hetch Hetchy/Yosemite watersheds... and lots of coffee (in socialism, bad coffee will be available for free in copious quantities, as long as policemen's pensions can be capped at under 95% of salary...that last strictly for San Jose insiders).

Anyways, odd that the two premier development blogs (Blattman and Easterly) apparently have never mentioned Mortenson (at least a search of the blogs was empty on both sites). Too bad, because it's a good book, with lots to discuss, and more importantly, is probably the single most widely read "tract" about development aid in the last decade, and so what it says, or does not say, is probably shaping the perceptions of millions of persons around the globe, far more than the development studies academics' wishy-washy "we don't know the answers" style.

So just so you know the book's main message: heroes are taking care of the problems, just like they always did. Sure, things were smelly in the Augean stables, but Hercules was ready! So here comes Mortenson, ready to tackle world poverty (one girl at a time^TM).

So I'll say up front that while I obviously find Mortenson's work and devotion and success very inspirational and fantastic and laudable, I find the book raises all kinds of interesting questions, and raising those questions will inevitably make me appear less laudable than Mortenson. But hell, I'm an academic and the whole schtick is to raise questions.

And questions to be raised, there are. Only two paragraphs in the 330 page book are "questioning," in the sense that they diverge from the standard 40-something-American "it's all good" refrain, and these deal with an important issue, non-profit governance. Otherwise there is nary a questioning attitude to be seen. Weird, cause the guy writing it is a journalist (David Oliver Relin, who keeps himself completely out of the text, but must have insisted on inserting two photos of himself that make no sense at all... the captions just use his last name, and for 2/3 of the book I thought the guy in the pictures was some Pakistani dude who would be introduced later on).

So we have a book about a hero. It's a thrilling book, but it brings to mind the Brecht line (yes, Michael Watts did influence my reading habits...) from his play Galileo: “ANDREA: Unhappy the land that has no heroes! . . . GALILEO: No, unhappy the land that needs heroes.”

I could go into literary analysis- what is a hero and all that... but since this blog is about development and literacy, better to focus on that. Mortenson is basically doing what FAVL would have been doing if someone had given *us* a million dollars! So of course one can't help the sour grapes. But I do feel that gives me a rather unique perspective. Most people reading the book probably feel unqualified to be critical. They have never slept with a yak, nor befriended an authentic representative of "The Other"... Haji Ali. Of course, Haji Ali turns out to be Yoda, a very nice, reasonably wise uncle figure prone to platitudes about listening to the wind. Anecdotes and trials and tribulations are played to maximum effect... and some are downright bizarre- Mortenson's "bodyguard" beats up someone leering at his wife breastfeeding. A Pakistani general cowboying around with Mortenson in a helicopter buzzes "like an angry bee" the compound of some local chief who's fallen afoul of Mortenson. These anecdotes, and much of the book, serve to make clear to the reader that there are good guys (hero allies) and bad guys (hero enemies) and the hero can tell the difference (loyalty... everyone is ready to "give their life for Mortenson") except when the hero is tricked. Oops, no more literary analysis!

One more aside. My overall impression is that Relin was more interested in name-dropping mountaineers killed here and there than Pakistanis or Afghans killed during the various stages of the wars in the region. The brand-name turn in American literature is there, instead of riding around in an "old helicopter" it has to be an Alouettte. Instead of wearing an "old parka," he has to give the brand name. I confess I never understood the reader interest inknowing the brands of their book-characters, but then again, I wear a cheap watch, cheap pants, and cheap shoes.

As you can see, I am meandering around my thoughts, and it is now late, so I'll come back to the development and literacy stuff tomorrow.

Civic engagements...

SCU student Louise O'Rourke will be spending the Fall in Burkina on the Santa Clara University study abroad program Reading West Africa, that is operating in partnership with the FAVL libraries... Nice article about her and her sister in the Bellevue Reporter.

Summer reading camp in Bereba village... photo: Madelyn Bagby

What is development studies good for?

Most people who come to the topic of development studies do so because they are interested in a particular region or problem. They realize that sometimes it is useful to have exposure to both broader views and narrower perspectives and analyses. For example, someone visits Ghana and becomes interested in learning more about why the people of Ghana are so much poorer than people in the developed countries (the broad view), and also whether spending two weeks volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity building site in Tamale, Ghana, would be a worthwhile way to spend their time (the narrow view).

The broad view enhances the contextual knowledge required to be a person of solidarity operating in a globalizing environment of increasing connections and significant inequality. Certainly we would think it somewhat arrogant to express opinions about poverty in Ghana and know nothing about how the economy and society of Ghana functioned. The minimum we might expect from a person interested in poverty in Ghana would be the capacity to fit Ghana into a broad schema, or model, of the essential features of developing countries. Such a schema or model makes generalizations about the multitude of regions that one might think of grouping under the rubric of “developing.” Some of the generalizations might be commonplaces: “In Ghana as elsewhere, people are motivated by a mix of material incentives and non-material goals.” Analyzing these commonplace generalizations is important, because often newcomers to development studies fall into the lazy trap of thinking that poverty is due to an indecipherable “culture.” A good chunk of the work in mounting a general schema is in leveraging people’s intuitive sense that culture matters into a more nuanced sense of how cultures matter.

The narrow view develops the analytical tools and experiences that enable a person of solidarity to be an effective agent of change. We should not applaud the do-gooder who botches a job, even as we acknowledge that botching a job is an important way that people learn! Some due diligence should happen before a job is undertaken. All sorts of examples come to mind. Some are simple common sense, involving learning from the experiences of others. Should a small village library classify books according to the complicated Dewey Decimal System? When installing a borehole well, will the villagers have the ability to maintain and repair the mechanical parts? Others are more complex and have to be thought about. When installing the borehole well, should it be the private property of a villager or should it be owned collectively? In setting up a computer lab where digitally-challenged villagers will pay a small fee for use, what incentives guide the computer lab manager in straddling the challenge of ensuring lots of users and minimizing costly breakdowns?

As these questions illustrate, some of the reflections in the broad approach (about what motivates people) are important for the narrow view (how to structure a contract to ensure long-term success).

Fille des crocodiles Auteur : Marie-Florence Ehret

From publisher Ricochet-jeunes...

Fanta vit dans un village du Burkina-Faso avec sa grand-mère Mâ, tandis que sa mère Delphine garde des enfants blancs en France pour gagner un peu plus d’argent. Les deux femmes sont modernes au regard des autres habitants : elles refusent que la petite fille soit excisée, projettent pour elle des études… Mais Fanta, à qui on n’a pas demandé son avis, est un peu perdue.

A rebours des romans qui mettent d’habitude en scène des enfants immigrés en France, l’auteur a choisi de faire rester son héroïne dans son pays d’origine. Mieux, de le lui faire aimer, au point d’hésiter à partir vers l’Eldorado occidental ! Une attitude atypique, qui nous permet de pénétrer dans l’intimité d’une Afrique rurale à mi-chemin entre traditions et progrès. La vie quotidienne est dure, tendue vers l’autosuffisance avec le travail des champs. Le puits conserve une place centrale, qui possède une moto ou un téléphone portable est considéré comme riche. A côté de ce qui semble archaïque, la vie est aussi simple, socialement plus active. Les hommes se retrouvent pour boire un verre le soir, tandis que les enfants écoutent le conteur refaire le monde. Les fêtes durent plusieurs jours, la religion se partage sans heurts entre islam et animisme (voir les ancêtres crocodiles). Marie-Florence Ehret sait faire vivre ces aspects positifs, mais s’attaque sans complaisance à la réalité de la vie des femmes : d’abord l’excision, puis le mariage, enfin les enfants.

Une des tantes de Fanta n’a que quelques années de plus qu’elle, et la petite fille a peur de ne pas trouver d’époux quand sa grand-mère s’oppose à son excision. Cette décision choque d’ailleurs le reste du village, la vieille femme, revenue de la ville à la mort de son mari, n’est pas comme les autres. Fanta, si elle ne mesure pas sa chance à ce moment précis (elle regrette plutôt de ne pas avoir de robe neuve comme ses amies), sent bien le statut particulier accordé à sa famille ouverte sur le monde : mère exilée qui fait bouillir la marmite des oncles, sœur aînée partie étudier à la capitale.

Ethics of libraries... are people opposed to reading?

Violence in northern Nigeria has left hundreds dead, and some stories suggest that a militant Islamic group is largely responsible, having raised a cry against "western education." This extract from a New York Times article I thought revealing:

A more mainstream Islamic group in Nigeria, the Jamaat Nasr al-Islam, or J.N.I., on Tuesday condemned the militants, known as Boko Haram, a Hausa expression meaning “Western education is prohibited.”

J.N.I. said through its acting secretary general, Abdulkarim Muazu, that the attacks on the police were “criminal.” Mr. Muazu added that “nobody is against Western education.”

“The first injunction is to read so that you improve on your life,” he added.

I can't help but think that Boko is a dervied Hausa word for book... so "Forbid Book" would be the better translation? But a little web research (amazing, this "western education" suggests that boko Hausa refers to writing Hausa language using Latin alphabet), and this posting tells the sorry tale of British responsibility during colonial rule for setting in motion the backlash.

Reading in the village... photo Madelyn Bagby

Community Libraries in Pakistan

One of my colleague's here at Ashoka sent me a profile of an Ashoka fellow in Pakistan that she thought I would be interested in. His name is Asad Danish and he is doing peace-building work, with one of his main outlets in addressing the population: rural community libraries!

Asad Danish is doing peace-building along with development work in Afghanistan. He is addressing the urban Afghan immigrant community and publishing literary and knowledge books. Asad is promoting education and establishing libraries in rural and urban schools by encouraging a book-reading culture and increasing the literacy rate.

The Idea:

Asad is working towards bringing harmony to war-torn Afghanistan and the Pushtoon tribal belt in and along Pakistan in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). He is focusing on education and learning using publishing, creating libraries and getting to the illiterate masses through radio. His publishing house prints ‘knowledge’ books including dictionaries, how-to books, translations and magazines that bring local wisdom and global knowledge to the Pushtoon people in their own language. He is also distributing popular and easy-to-read publications among the communities.

Asad has established libraries in small towns in Afghanistan, especially in schools. He has introduced the concept of the “Dynamic Librarian”; these librarians are creating reading circles to promote education in local communities. The libraries mobilize government and community resources and the books are donated by Asad’s Danish Publication Association. Asad established the publication house as a for-profit venture that supports him and helps him invest in rebuilding Afghanistan through various community projects. The publishing house targets Pushtoon and other communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and does outreach to Afghan and Pakistani communities in Europe, North America and the Middle East. This helps mobilize resources for development in rebuilding Afghanistan.

This sounds like quite an initiative, and it is exciting that the concept of community libraries is proving to be effective, globally.

Comments??

What should we do...

Technology could really help with improving one of the most important cognitive skills of the human brain, which is how to process the written word quickly and effectively. What I mean is, how could we enable children to more quickly and effectively learn to read well. Well means both understanding the correct sense of the word they are reading, and also the sense of the entire passage they are reading.

This is especially challenging in a text-scarce environment like an African village. There are few signs, no newspapers lying around, the packages in little boutiques are "behind the counter", there are no Sears catalogues, no Boy's Life, etc.

So, should we choose One Laptop per Child, or a printed book, at this juncture, 2009?

The continuing saga of the One Laptop per Child....

Just send a $250 donation to FAVL, please... we'll get it into libraries straightaway...

Courtesy of Michele ODI blogger, in Ghana:

Five 1.5 squared meters boxes containing 600 OLPC computers each, for a total of 3000 OLPC computers, were delivered yesterday at the ministry unbeknown to most.

OLPCs are supposed to cost $100 each, but according to my ICT technician their cost is more like $250 - $270. Summing up to the handsome expenditure of $750.000 - $810.000, excluding shipment. And their impact on educational outcomes has never been evaluated.

Two children's books from T. Obinkaram Echewa

These stories are very nice, as are the illustration. I heartily recommend! The illustrations in The Ancestor Tree are by Christy Hale. Those in The Magic Tree are by E.B. Lewis. Echewa teaches at West Chester University in Pennsylvania.

African langugage books online....

Sent in by Kim Dionne :

More Swahili, Kikuyu, Dholuo
and other African Languages in Google Books via Official Google Africa
Blog by Julie on 7/21/09
En Français

We've always said that with Google Books we want to bring more books to
more people in more languages. Today we're truly delighted to announce
that we're making progress, and getting closer to making this true for
more users in Africa. In a partnership with the East African
Educational Publishers (EAEP) we're working to bring more books in
African languages to our index. From Swahili, to Kikuyu, to Dholuo and
Acholi, but also including oral languages such as Mbeere and Maasai,
the thousands of titles published by EAEP will be digitized and indexed
on Google’s search engine and become available to users in Kenya and
around the world in the next several months.

Google Books helps users discover books. It exposes readers to
information they might not otherwise see, and it provides authors and
publishers with a new way to be found. We truly believe that Google
Books benefits anyone who reads, writes, publishes and sells books.
It's good news for people who read books because they can more easily
discover books that are of interest to them, and where to buy them; it
is good news for authors because it makes it easier for more people to
discover find their work; it is good news for publishers because they
can more easily reach a wider audience; it is good news for booksellers
because readers are directed to the bookshops where they can buy
interesting publications; and it is good news for libraries because it
means more people can discover the books on their shelves.

The EAEP is one of over 25 000 publishers worldwide, to join the Google
Books Publisher Program. Google Books has over 10 million books in the
index. It includes works in over a 100 languages, and is currently
available in 142 countries.

Posted by Santiago de la Mora, Head of Partnerships for Google Books in
Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Inspiring a reading culture in Burkina Faso..

While sorting through Ashoka Fellows involved in rural development today at work, I happened upon Dieudonné Par, an Ashoka Fellow, passionate about inspiring a culture of reading in Burkina Faso!

"Dieudonné Paré has created a culture of reading in Burkina Faso through his community-led book program. By first rehabilitating discarded books and those no longer in circulation, he brings refurbished materials to rural areas through his “books-on-bikes/motorcycle” program. Providing books for rent to rural and urban youth who lack access to reading materials and libraries, Dieudonné encourages learning, reflection and an understanding of the importance of the written word as a tool for effective citizenry. " (Ashoka Website)

Read more about his idea and strategy here: http://ashoka.org/dpare It is a unique, sustainable and scalable model! It'd be interesting to get a list of the books he rehabilitates and shares.

What do you think?

From Ugandan Insomniac... (HT Kim Dionne)

If you are a fan of Chimamanda Ngonzi Adichie’s books, you have to download the BBC World Book Club podcast in which she discusses Half of a Yellow Sun.

One of things that struck a chord for me was Chimamanda’s revelation that for the first years of her life she thought about the world through the prism of Europe and America because of the books she read. For a while all her short stories were about British people and an unhealthy obsession with ginger beer.

Until I was about 9, I didn’t know it was okay to write about people like me.

Interesting.

I have a friend who is writing a book set in Eastern Europe with eastern European characters. He’s a Ugandan man who until a few years ago lived no where else but here. Oh, and he’s never been to Eastern Europe.

While I may be completely wrong in relating his work to what Chimamanda said, it reminded me of stuff. Like how many books by African writers must have a white man or woman in order to ‘make sense’ to the rest of the world. Like how descriptions of ourselves are not informed by what we know about our villages, our countries or our continent, but what the rest of the world thinks of us.

I am one to talk.

Looking around my house as I write this, I see that I am no different. I’ve tried to make my house as ‘African’ as possible – tribal masks from Congo and Rwanda, Masaai sculptures, Kiganda baskets, Ghanaian printed reed chairs, cow skin pouf, large picture of African setting sun … These are things I have been told by interior design magazines are elements of ‘colonial’ design and ‘safari’ living. I would never decorate my home the way my grandmother did. That’s too rural for me.

Yeah, I’m a hypocrite.

Anyway.

Chimamanda said what I already knew, but hearing it again, a loud brought it home.

The power of literature … stories inform how you see yourself and what you think of yourself. I often ask my friends, ‘What are your kids reading?’ It’s important to have children see that their stories are worthy of literature. It’s okay for them to read Enid Blyton, but have them read Nigerian literature as well.

Wow... what a photo! I love it... by Amy Reggio

POINT DE VUE DE KOURA SEKOU SUR LA BIBLIOTHEQUE DE BEREBA

Received from Burkina Faso...

A toute personne qui me lira, je voudrais qu’elle sache que tout en accomplissant ce rédigé j’en suis de cœur. Oui pour un rat de la bibliothèque préparant munitieusement mon prochain roman de lui-même sur l’apologie de la lecture, imaginez l’intensité de joie quand on lui permet d’en faire l’exégèse …
A priori, je tiens hermétiquement voir consciencieusement à orienter mon salut si modeste soit_ il à l’endroit de tous les acteurs en patrouille de culture, d’éducation et…Et quoi de plus émérite ! Puisque tous nous savions ce qu’il faut à celui qu ‘il faut : à la bibliothèque de villageoise reconnaissance et haute assistance.
Bibliothèque de BEREBA ,moi je tiens en tant que celui qui est en train d’écrire, je suis en long et en large redevable très redevable et redevable encore. Je sais cependant qu ‘à travers une telle subjectivité l’on serait allé jusqu’à croire que je projette à me faire plaire tel un poète. Pour toute réalité donc, je ne suis naturellement pas celui qui rit quand il fallait le cri de détresse, simplement parce que l’on m’a intimidé d’une force physique ou d’une arme me dépassant. Non ! Et non ! Il me déplait à moi de jeter des fleurs à ce qu’il ne convient car cela en serait de gratuité. Quoi qu’on dise et quoi qu’on blasphème, la bibliothèque elle, mérite à bravoure, à vaillance sa fleur honorablement étoffée.
Eh ! Mon lecteur, daigne m’excuser si je te suis trop prolixe, oui instinctivement j’aime à ergoter. C’est pour dire que tout ce dont j’ai proféré n’est qu’introductif du vif que je vais aussitôt entamer juste après ce paragraphe.
Tout est parti du cours moyen première année quand je faisais la connaissance de ce réseau de cultures mondiales à quoi l’on attribue le substantif de¨ BIBLIOTHEQUE.C’est donc à de l’année 2001 suite sur l’initiative de mon père aussi imprégné de la chose, jusqu’à l’heure actuelle et comme quitte à ce que je rende l’âme, que la largesse, la bienséance, la positivité de cette bibliothèque villageoise consistera à nourrir ma personne physique, à enrichir ma personne idéaliste à éclairer mon sens moral et à débroussailler ma grande voie spirituelle des dérives sociales en un mot elle m’a achevé d’être ce qu’; dieu veut en effet de par mes interminables lectures que de chose que j’ai découvertes !! Trop de grand personnage que j’ai enfin connu à l’interposition ; des bons nombres de philosophe emblématiques à qui personnellement je m’identifie dans le quotidien.
En ce qui concerne le volet étude ; par toutes les classes que j’ai passé moi me suivent toujours singularisé de part par distinction de lecteur, et pour cela des professeurs m’approuvaient admirablement à la différence des autres. A cet effet j’ai fini par entraîner toute une vague de camarades dans la lecture et quand il en était ainsi jante sentait fier d’entre imité.
A toute situation d’entretien scolaire ou de vie courante je viens toujours par-dessus non pas seulement par la pertinence de mes idées mais aussi par le rayonnement d’un langage appris et acquit et quant éventuellement on m’en exhorte, cela ne m’étonne aucunement puisque je sais pourquoi ceci : c’est simplement et purement légué par la bibliothèque et qui parle.
Un autre fondement est ludique : Relativement à ma typologie artistique en tant que prétentieux musicien j’ai des textes exclusifs parce que poétiques ; et qui parle de poésie cite alors la liberté d’expression d’individus !
C’est ainsi que les bienfaits de la lecture ont contribué dans mon engagement de la lutte contre l’impunité, la corruption en toutes ces dimensions. Socialement, mon souci majeur est de nécessairement passer par la voie des sans voix si réellement ces milliers d’ouvrages nous ont révélé une triste réalité de l’homme, des peuples assaillis par des boucheries de guerre, des masses impitoyablement malmenés de famines. Tous ces propos que j’avance n’ont rien d’utopique ; ils émanent des écrits réalistes issus de bibliothèque et je crois aussi n’avoir exacerbé rien. Des preuves tout à fait abonderont quand il s’agira de prôner l’adhésion impérative à la bibliothèque villageoise de BEREBA pour celui comme moi qui ai été dans trois 3 provinces du pays aussi dotées chacune d’une bibliothèque aérée que celle en comparaison. Chers amis ne vous en faites point car l’originalité de ces bibliothèques aérées réside seulement dans le fait qu’elles sont simplement vastes de construction mais si, matériellement notre bibliothèque l’emporte de par ces tas infinis, et diversifiés de tous les genres littéraires, c’est dire qu’en premier lieu, la notre ont bel et bien droit de citer
Avançons cependant qu’en dépit du succès retentissant qu’offre la dite bibliothèque, elle présente aussi bien des sentiers auxquels vous et nous devrions nous atteler en vue des perspectives plus larges pour une meilleure approche de la structure. Je voudrais croire qu’une vulgarisation de cette utilité de culture, nécessite le dévouement de tous à savoir le personnel siégeant à la localité, le lecteur, le parent concerné.
Nous aurions à nous affairer à des projets pour peu qu’ils traitent du maintien et répondent aux éventuelles aspirations.
Alors un vif souhait mais latent est de renchérir la prépondérante d’une fameuse bibliothèque développée pour s’entre transformée en un centre culturel ou instruit et analphabètes peuvent se cotonner et se donner mutuellement des idées.
Je suis d’autant convaincu qu’une bibliothèque de cette carrure plantée à BEREBA, ce serait la pêche ou le marigot refusera du monde en raison de l’excédent des adhérents.
En attendant, moi je vous prête serment pour ma part de contribution à la réédification de cette bibliothèque témoignant de tout mon être.
Oui ! Tôt ou tard ! Salut !
Kourage à SEKOUer

Nice article about experience in publishing children's books

By Carole Bloch

Although Raeez Writes is the only book (selected from the original 2002 set of books) that uses photographs, it was chosen because the committee felt that the topic of illuminating how we can support reading and writing habits was significant and because the characters would be familiar enough with children from the different regions of Africa. The story provides an example of how a young child, Raeez, apprentices himself to his grandfather, who helps him to write. When Raeez is asked where he is going, the reader is told “Raeez knows where he is going.” He is then depicted sitting at a table with Grandpa who is holding a newspaper: “Grandpa wants to read. Raeez wants to write.” We then see Grandpa stand up and help Raeez: “Grandpa helps Raeez.” “Then Grandpa reads and Raeez writes.” The final page has emergent writing around a drawing, and Raeez’s words, “Look what I wrote!”—celebrating and valuing the young child’s immature explorations in writing.

In dealing with names in the different language versions of the books, it was decided that as a rule, we should keep the name of the original, existing characters. For example, Ali and Titilope would remain such—as it is in life, people usually only change their names for cultural reasons or if they are oppressed in some way. At the same time, there are differing views on this and once the stories went for translation, they sometimes took on a life of their own, with one or another translator expressing adamantly that a name needed a spelling adaptation. For example in Orange, the original name “Beruk” became “Beruki” and “Mimi” became “Mimii” in Kiswahili. In Raeez Writes, it was decided that the name Raeez would be impossible to pronounce in Portuguese and so he became Rafique.

Nice and Clean, written in Ethiopia, is about personal hygiene. The first draft of the story was reminiscent of a lifeskills lesson, probably due in part to the challenge of translating from Amharic into English as well as the new challenge of writing for very young children. In the edited English version lightness and humor were introduced into the text through the use of repetition and wordplay. We also discussed where to best situate the story, and who the characters should be. What kind of technology should illustrate cleaning? Were baths, showers, and taps attached to sinks and basins appropriate? Could we illustrate brushing teeth with a toothbrush? None of these would be familiar practices for all children.

The challenge of where to situate a story and what characters to use was resolved in this case by a decision to use a simple outside rural environment, with a basic building that allowed for inside scenes. The characters are animals common to many African settings instead of human beings thus allowing children anywhere to identify with their actions. A mixture of scenarios were chosen and used—washing outside using a tap and bucket as well as indoors with all the modern features. On the first page we read, “Everybody needs to wash” and the story ends, “Now everybody’s nice and clean,” helping to pass on the message to young children, wherever they may be, that one of the things we share is a need to keep clean.

Read the full article here...

Little hands illustrated children's book

Carole Bloch, a South African academic, also has a project to produce children' books. They have sixteen titles... see here on their website. Really nice illustrated books.

FAVL, Champions of Quality Education in Africa?

I hate doing this... but, for the sake of the libraries... sigh. It's like Cal Worthington used to say, "I'll stand on my head to get a kid reading a book!"

Dear friends,

We need your support!

We are very excited to be entrants in the Hewlett Foundation and Ashoka's Changemakers Competition, Champions of Quality Education in Africa. This is a global competition to recognize innovative solutions to improve the state of education in Africa.

By being part of this competition, we have a great opportunity to get the word out about our work to leaders in the education field, investors, the media, potential partners, and other supporters.

The competition winners will be decided by online voting, so the more people we can inspire, the better!

Please help us rally support for our work:

1. Visit our project entry http://www.changemakers.com/en-us/node/21377
2. Leave us feedback about our entry. Here's how:
1. If you do not have a Changemakers account, please click here to register on the site. It only takes a couple of minutes.
2. Login at the Changemakers website.
3. Go to the Champions of Quality Education in Africa competition page.
4. Visit my entry, read about what I do and leave me feedback! http://www.changemakers.com/en-us/node/21377
5. Update your profile and be part of a growing online community of support!
3. Spread the word to your colleagues and friends through your emails, blogs, or websites. I've included some information about us below that you are welcome to share with others.

This contest can give our work a great boost. Thank you very much for your help!

Initiative, how do I love thee...

I can't tell you how interesting it is for me to get an email like this from our coordinator in Sumbrungu, Lucas Amikiya. They want to spend $150 on a one day summer camp for 100 kids. This will be the first ever kid-centered activity in Sumbrungu! (I did reply saying that 100 kids is too many, that they should make it smaller and by invitation... randomized invitation, of course.)

Michael,

The librarians are planning to have a one day camp for children to do a workshop sim1lar like what we did when kathy came and it will include quiz, games, the best reader, and others. This is going to be a day. The rest of the libraries will come to sumbrungu for it.

We thought having it in town but we will spent so much if mean to do it in town. Our budget is as follows.

1. Sherigu and Kunkua Transportation 40.00
2. Awards to those will part take 20.00
3. Food and Water 70.00
4. Allowances 20.00

Thank you,
Lucas

Dangerous blog for people tempted to buy books... Literary License

And they reviewed a new novel from Ghana... sounds very interesting:

In an interesting guest post at Publishing Perspectives, Kwei Quartey talks about his debut novel, Wife of the Gods, a murder mystery set in a rural area of Ghana. Quartey, born in Ghana and now a practicing doctor in California, encountered resistance when he first tried to publish his novel. An agent who declined to accept the manuscript explained, “There are two places on earth that no one has the slightest interest in reading about: Afghanistan and Africa.” Now, a decade later, all that’s changed. For Quartey, Ghana “provides a compelling background to any crime.” ... Wife of the Gods will be published in the US on July 14th.

Randomized education interventions

I'm reading an interesting paper by Michael Anderson, who revisits the data from some of the early studies of the impact of pre-K interventions (i.e. preschool: daycare in educational-type settings) on very disadvantaged childen (i.e. where significant number would drop out of high school and have criminal records).

There has apparently been a lot of concern that the three influential studies of the 1960s and 1970s were very much compromised by small sample sizes and what the experimenters call "contamination", when the experimental protocol is not followed exactly. This is what we had, apparently, in FAVL's study of the effects of the summer reading camps of 2008, where some smallish number of the assignments were changed from the random assignment, because if someone who was assigned was not in the village, they were replaced not with a random pick but with someone the team knew would be around in the village. So there was some bias, and this was picked up in some of the pre-program test scores, which were higher for the campers than for those invited to the discussion groups and those who got free books to read.

After re-analysis, Anderson concludes:

The results demonstrate that preschool intervention has significant effects on later life outcomes for females, including academic achievement, economic outcomes, criminal behavior, drug use, and marriage. The effect on total years of education is particularly strong. However, while treatment effects are sizable for females, they are minimal or nonexistent for males - a fact relevant to the design of optimal human capital policy.

So a strong gender effect, which is very interesting and important, though not explained..

But the most interesting par tfor me is the method to control for contamination.

A thorough analysis of threats to validity, conducted in Appendix A, concludes that the main results are unaffected by reasonable assumptions regarding attrition, violation of random assignment, and clustering.

What Anderson does is assign values to the outcomes (in our case the test scores) for those missing. Typically he assigns outcomes in ways that are favorable to the null: the treatment group is assigned the 25th percentile score, which the control group missing are assigned the 75th percentile. Then he computes the new differences in means and statistical significance. And why not? So tomorrow I hope to run this and see how it affects results. We have more missing than he does, but larger sample sizes.

Great posting on the One Laptop per Child

Of course the same could be said of many a library project. Human personnel and incentives are critical.

At the end of the day I am still asking myself if the computers are worth the money spent on them. The cost of the laptops was about $2300, enough to pay the tuition for 23 students for a year. Jes and I plan on using them occasionally, but I suspect that after we leave they will be relegated back to the stockroom. The computer teacher may use them to illustrate networking, but without commercial software, he can’t use them regularly in his classes. I am afraid that in the case of MCV the tech project has failed. In many ways the OPLC laptops at MCV illustrate why high-tech projects are so risky. The computer required charging, a difficult proposition with intermittent power, no converters, few plugs, and no power strips. The laptop design also failed to accommodate the population to which they were given. These inconveniences, combined with a lack of prerequisite computer knowledge, doomed the project and wasted thousands of dollars. This example would seem to demonstrate why appropriate technology should be embraced and high-tech projects dismissed. However, living in Malawi I have been exposed to a perspective which also should be given credence.

Read more...

HT: Kim Dionne... great blog!

MICHAEL KEVANE and KATHY KNOWLES :The same fight !!!

That was the title of a note recently received from our Burkina Faso coordinator... with three letters of praise for Kathy Knowles and her continued inspiration to the librarians in Burkina....

Depuis novembre 2005 le coordonnateur et les gérants des bibliothèques de BEREBA ,SARA, KOUMBIA se sont retrouvé à ACCRA au GHANA pour suivre une formation sur la gestion des bibliothèques et surtout l’entretien des livres. Le séjour a été d’un succès inoubliable que toute l’équipe de FAVL ne peut pas s’en passer de parler.

Voilà des témoignages de certains gérants :
1 . SANOU DOUNKO
CHANGEMENTS CONSTATENT DANS NOS BIBLIOTHEQUES APRES LA FORMATION AU GHANA
En novembre 2005,quatre 4 gérants des bibliothèques de FAVL ont été au GHANA pour une formation d’une semaine avec les collègues du GHANA .La formation a été donnée par KATHY KNOWLES.Après le retour du GHANA nous avons pu remarquer des changements considérables et positifs. On peut citer
_Le lavage des mains surtout des tous petits avant de consulter les livres ;
_L’enlèvement des chaussures à la porte avant d’entrer dans la bibliothèque ;
_Le regroupage des dessins en un cahier de dessin pour consultation par les visiteurs ;
_La couverture des livres par le plastique ;
_Coller bien les feuilles des livres endommagés ;
_ La connaissance et la vulgarisation des jeux de puzzles ;
_La lecture des livres par les adultes qui les désirent.
Face à tous ces changements nous remercions KATHY, FAVL pour l’organisation du voyage pour la formation et surtout la qualité que KATHY nous a permise d’acquérir.
Nous souhaitons de telles sorties pour nous former d’avantage.
Fait à BEREBA le 1O mai 2009

2. KOURA IVETTE
CHERE KATHY
J’ai l’honneur de vous adresser cette lettre pour vous remercier pour votre accueil lors de notre dernière visite à ACCRA en 2005 .Vous avez été très ouverte avec nous et ce que nous avons appris ont été appliqués aussi et nous avons vu le fruit que cela a apporté.
_Nous accueillons chaque jour dans notre bibliothèque à BEREBA au minimum 100 enfants ;
_Nous leur faisons des contes ,du dessin, chanter, jouer au puzzles, au waré,et de cartes ;
_Nous leur avons appris comment tourner les pages d’un livre, l’entretien pour ne pas déchirer, ni le salir ;
_Maintenant quand les enfants viennent à la bibliothèque avant d’entrer ils enlèvent les chaussures, lavent les mains avant de toucher aux livres. En 2008 nous avons fait un camp de lecture avec les enfants et pendant ce camp nous avons encore appliqué tous ce que nous avons appris chez vous.
_Notre bibliothèque est devenue l’ami des enfants.
Je vous remercie encore tout en vous demandant de continuer à nous appuyer pour le succès de ces bibliothèques et la réussite de nos enfants.
PAR KOURA IVETTE
GERANTE BIBLIOTHEQUE DE BEREBA

3. PEMOU LUCIE
A VOUS KATHY
Après notre visite au GHANA ,des changements ont été faits dans nos bibliothèques.
Tout d’abord merci à FAVL encore pour cette sortie.
De retour du GHANA ,une semaine après j’ai payé deux seaux pour le lavage des mains à la bibliothèque et jusqu’à présent les élèves quand ils arrivent se lavent les mains avant de toucher aux ouvrages.
Tout lecteur avant d’entrer pose les chaussures à la porte avant d’entrer et cette méthode est appliquée jusqu’aujourd’hui
Nous faisons des séances de dessins et affichons sur les tableaux pour encourager les enfants.
Je fais la lecture dirigée ainsi que les jeux que nous avons appris au GHANA sans oublier les PUZZLES.
Avec le plastique je peux couvrir les livres sans problèmes et je veille surtout à la propreté de la bibliothèque. La propreté des bibliothèques au GHANA m’a beaucoup marqué.
Dans l’ensemble nous avons retenu beaucoup de choses pendant notre visite au GHANA ,malgré qu’il y ait une différence entre nos bibliothèques nous essayons de faire la même chose.
Nous souhaitons avoir une sortie comme celle là.
Merci
PEMOU LUCIE
BIBLIOTHEQUE DE SARA

For all of :FAVL,OSU CHILDREN LIBRARIES FUND ,thank you for everything you’ve done .I really appreciate everything you’ve done .
THE CORDINATOR
KOURA DONKOUI

Great website for book news from South Africa

It is http://book.co.za/

Calling all FAVLers...

Someone want to purchase these interesting sounding books and see if they would be appropriate and adaptable to programs in the village libraries we support? if so, contribute a blog entry!

BOOKS by Christy Hale

Art Activities For Little Learners: 15 Easy & Delightful Projects Using Everyday Materials (Scholastic Teaching Resources, 2004)

Quilting Activities for Young Learners: 15 Easy & Delightful "No-Sew" Projects That Reinforce Early Skills & Concepts (Scholastic Teaching Resources, 2005)

Collaborative Art & Writing Projects for Young Learners: 15 Delightful Projects That Build Early Reading and Writing Skills-and Connect to the Topics You Teach (Scholastic Teaching Resources, 2006)

Two new librarians join the FAVL team in Burkina Faso

Michael,
Nous avons fait le test se recrutement a DIMIKUY et BEREBA et les heureux candidats ont les noms suivants
DIMIKUY
KORBEOGO SALIMATA
BEREBA
KOURA ZOMIZOU
Donkoui

Did I mention that Donkoui, who is the regional coordinator, and also a teacher in primary school, ad 45 out of 47 students pass the CP exam out of elementary school... he's a real inspiration- very dedicated to teaching.

Simon Oczkowski... The bitten man Reflections on international health

From the open source journal Open Medicine...

Tucked away somewhere in the twisting innards of Mulago Hospital, Kampala, Uganda, there lies the pink, neatly stapled medical file of a man who is doomed to die. I know this because I saw him on Thursday night.

“There’s an interesting case you should see if you have time,” said the attending physician cheerily. “You should look up his condition in your book and take a history. It might be good for a case write-up when you get home.”

We had just stepped into the casualty department, hoping to catch some of the evening’s action. It seemed as though the action had found us. Puzzled, one of us asked what the patient had.

“Rabies, a classic case,” the physician said. She paused. “But I’m not sure what to do about it.” Having had her say, she closed the door to the treatment room behind her, leaving us alone in the crowded hallway.

Read more...

Review of The Non-Literate Other. Readings of Illiteracy in Twentieth-Century Novels in English

Reviewed by Federica Zullo.

The Non-Literate Other. Readings of Illiteracy in Twentieth-Century
Novels in English
Helga Ramsey-Kurz
506 pp, 2007, $140 USD (Hardcover)
Rodopi, Amsterdam-New York

At the beginning of David Malouf’s novel, Remembering Babylon
(1993), two children from a family of colonial settlers happen to meet
a strange guy who tells them “Do not shoot. I am a b-b-British object”
(3). This is the impressive start of a narrative in which an adolescent
who escapes from England in mid-nineteenth century, arrives in
Australia, the land of “convicts,” and lives among the Aborigines for
sixteen years. After that period, his language sounds like a mixture of a
few aboriginal words and very poor English, and he represents a threat
to community life in the settler’s eyes. Malouf’s is a dazzling story
about racial hostility, newcomer fear and the impossibility of
acknowledging the “otherness” of Aboriginal culture, something that
certainly involves the problematic question of language.
Thus, it is not surprising to discover that the novel gave Helga
Ramsey-Kurz the inspiration for her illuminating and rich volume The
Non-Literate Other. Readings of Illiteracy in Twentieth-Century
Novels in English.

Read the full book review in Postcolonial Text, Vol 4, No 2 (2008)

Chinua Achebe, from Library of Congress...

At 21 min. in he talks about Things Fall Apart. Very interesting!

Readers Build Vivid Mental Simulations Of Narrative Situations

So I had a simulation running in my head Sunday night, when I stayed up until 2am reading the excellent Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, a very nice sci-fi dystopia for pre-teens, but works well as light entertainment for adults too. Elliot liked all the fighting, but I thought the emotional complexity of the main character was nicely drawn.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 5, 2009) — A new brain-imaging study is shedding light on what it means to "get lost" in a good book — suggesting that readers create vivid mental simulations of the sounds, sights, tastes and movements described in a textual narrative while simultaneously activating brain regions used to process similar experiences in real life.

Nicole Speer, lead author of this study, says findings demonstrate that reading is by no means a passive exercise. Rather, readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative. Details about actions and sensation are captured from the text and integrated with personal knowledge from past experiences. These data are then run through mental simulations using brain regions that closely mirror those involved when people perform, imagine, or observe similar real-world activities.

Read more...

Great discussion of complex issue of poverty tourism

From Glenna Gordon... in her Context Africa series... an excerpt...

The debate about "poverty tourism" rages on the blogosphere on the pages of the HuffPo, Bill Eastery's blog, and elsewhere. But, as Jina Moore (previous Context Africa feature), who wrote a great, nuanced piece about this for Christian Science Monitor, says,

If it’s that easy to be flip, you’re probably missing something.

Part of my goal in Context Africa is to look at projects that aren't interested in easy answers. There are people out there asking difficult questions, and coming back with stories, photos, and other works that don't provide straight answers. There's a lot of daily news out there that is factually incorrect, slanted, or stereotyped. But, there are also a lot of journalists committed to telling a different kind of story.

Today, I'm happy to highlight the work of Samantha Reinders, who is currently based in Cape Town, South Africa. Her take on Township Tourism shows that nothing is as straightforward as it might seem and even something as divisive as "poverty tourism" can be looked at with nuance.

Under The Reading Tree And The Osu Children's Library Fund Collaborate With Favl To Support The Randa Farmers' Library

This is the welcome that FAVL Director Kate Parry received when she visited the village of Randa, in Bududa District of Eastern Uganda, in June 2009. Randa is up in the foothills of Mount Elgon, a beautiful place, but desperately poor. Early in 2009 one of the community's leaders, Moses Mukhobeh, wrote to FAVL, UTRT, and OCLF to ask for support for a library that the Randa United Farmers' Group had just set up. All agreed that Kate should visit and report back. She did so at the end of March 2009 and, as a result of her recommendations, OCLF agreed to donate a box of books and UTRT to pay for a part-time librarian and provide an additional book budget. On this visit in June Kate went to announce the news, to the great joy of everyone in the village. The salary will begin in July, administered by the Uganda Community Libraries Association coordinator, Grace Musoke, and the box of books will arrive in August, carried by Valeda Dent, who is coming to Uganda to do research at the Kitengesa Community Library. A wonderful result of successful networking!

Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

I've just finished this beautiful long historical sci-fi novel from 1992 by Connie Willis, about a grad student in medieval history who time-travels back to the 1300s and is accidentally stranded in 1348, the black plague. There is lots of history, but the novel really turns on a portrayal of the fierce love the student comes to feel for the child Agnes. Willis is so amazingly assured in drawing the dialogue between the two, as the plague descends on the village, that it cannot be other than real, and yet it is a novel. Breathtaking, to me.

Gladwell reviews "information wants to be free"

An interesting review, but all I can say is, "I love libraries."

Just thought I would share...

A lovely essay by my sister, Bridget Kevane, in Brain, Child!

On Saturday, June 16, 2007, I was charged with endangering the welfare of my children, a criminal charge that, in the city where I live, Bozeman, Montana, can lead to imprisonment in the county jail. The Montana Code 46-16-130(3) states that a parent can be charged with this offense if she “knowingly endangers the child’s welfare by violating a duty of care, protection, or support.”

Typically, prosecution is pursued when an adult supplies a child younger than eighteen with drugs, prostitutes the child, abandons the child’s home, or engages in sexual conduct with the child. A violation of duty of care is described as cruel treatment, abuse, infliction of unnecessary and cruel punishment, abandonment, neglect, lack of proper medical care, clothing, shelter, and food, and evidence of bodily injury.

I was charged with this crime because I dropped my three children and their two friends off at the Bozeman Gallatin Valley Mall.

Read the full essay here...

Why doesn't FAVL...

In Burkina Faso...
Have all the librarians wear snazzy polo shirts, cleaned and pressed everyday, and upload the statistics from each days checkouts, visitors, events into a cell phone that uploads to a website, interfacing with an MIS system where library "friends" could then suggest books to young readers, and even get some feedback from them,... "I liked it! What else should I read?" and also make the library super modern and super clean, with formica countertops and air conditioning all solar powered and glass windows and bottled water in a little refrigerator.

Why instead, are the librarians from the village, usually pretty nervous about doing anything in public (like reading a storybook), more likely to scowl than to smile when a "client" enters the library (very typical Burkinabè "affect") and the library is made out of mud bricks and tin roof with a thatch paillote outside, and the record-keeping is in old notebooks and somewhat imperfect?

a) We don't have enough money to make it all "modern".
b) We hate the thought of a library "franchise" where we train the librarians, after having them go through rigorous selection process so that the smartest most motivated villagers are selected, to shout 'Welcome to the library, HOW MAY I HELP YOU" to every person who walks in the door.
c) We honestly never thought of making the library a kind of branded modern franchise thingy.
d) We knew if we went that route the board would never agree on whether the polo shirts should be red or yellow.
e) We thought villagers would make fun of the librarians behind their backs.
f) The villages don't have glass, refrigerators, bottled water, electricity, web access through their cellphones, etc.

Those of you who have traveled extensively in Africa know what I mean...

A video tour of UTRT's Mpigi Community Library!

FAVL's partner, Under the Reading Tree, has posted an enjoyable and well-made video capturing the activities at the Mpigi Community library in Uganda! Take a look!

Read UTRT's blog post about the library and the video here.

Reading Fatou Keita in a village...

Fatou Keita's book, Le Billet de 10.000, is definitely one of the most popular in the libraries. What an awesome cover illustration. Click on the photo to see it in larger size. Photo: Madelyn Bagby.

Kwale Community library in Kenya

Apparently being supported by Oakville Library in Canada. See their flickr photos...

Easterly's forefather... Ivan Ilich... crusty, nasty, but ultimately like a teddy bear

Yikes I would have hated to have been in the audience... but he's right of course in emphasizing a the end of the speech that the idea is to be humble... reminds me of the wonderful but completely forgotten book by B. Traven, The Bridge in the Jungle...

IN THE CONVERSATIONS WHICH I HAVE HAD TODAY, I was impressed by two things, and I want to state them before I launch into my prepared talk.

I was impressed by your insight that the motivation of U.S. volunteers overseas springs mostly from very alienated feelings and concepts. I was equally impressed, by what I interpret as a step forward among would-be volunteers like you: openness to the idea that the only thing you can legitimately volunteer for in Latin America might be voluntary powerlessness, voluntary presence as receivers, as such, as hopefully beloved or adopted ones without any way of returning the gift.

I was equally impressed by the hypocrisy of most of you: by the hypocrisy of the atmosphere prevailing here. I say this as a brother speaking to brothers and sisters. I say it against many resistances within me; but it must be said. Your very insight, your very openness to evaluations of past programs make you hypocrites because you - or at least most of you - have decided to spend this next summer in Mexico, and therefore, you are unwilling to go far enough in your reappraisal of your program. You close your eyes because you want to go ahead and could not do so if you looked at some facts.

It is quite possible that this hypocrisy is unconscious in most of you. Intellectually, you are ready to see that the motivations which could legitimate volunteer action overseas in 1963 cannot be invoked for the same action in 1968. "Mission-vacations" among poor Mexicans were "the thing" to do for well-off U.S. students earlier in this decade: sentimental concern for newly-discovered. poverty south of the border combined with total blindness to much worse poverty at home justified such benevolent excursions. Intellectual insight into the difficulties of fruitful volunteer action had not sobered the spirit of Peace Corps Papal-and-Self-Styled Volunteers.

Today, the existence of organizations like yours is offensive to Mexico. I wanted to make this statement in order to explain why I feel sick about it all and in order to make you aware that good intentions have not much to do with what we are discussing here. To hell with good intentions. This is a theological statement. You will not help anybody by your good intentions. There is an Irish saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; this sums up the same theological insight.

The full speech is here... worth a read.

Easterlyisms... poverty tourism

Bill Easterly had a casual blog post about a serious subject, poverty tourism. In his post, he lampooned some effort by the Millennium Village movement to extract more money out of frequent visitors. Now, I could see myself, at some conference in Rwanda, thinking it might be interesting to go visit a Millenium Village, because after all, according to the website, they "are proving that by fighting poverty at the village level through community-led development, rural Africa can achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and escape from the poverty trap." So it would be interesting to see. And why not have the MV charge me for that visit, instead of making it a freebie. After all, if I'm taking up project participant time while they explain their latest crop technology, why not earn something on the side? Is there really something wrong with this?

In Burkina Faso, all the guidebooks point visitors to the village of Tiebele, near the Ghana border, where women paint fantastic geometric designs on the houses. It is pretty clear, when you visit the village, that the steady stream of tourists means houses are painted more often and better, and that plenty of people make decent livelihoods through the tourism. I grew up in Puerto Rico, a tourist destination par excellence, and remember vividly the government's efforts to educate the population about what is in everyone's collective self-interest: Smile at the tourists! Is it such a big deal? Safeway famously does it in the U.S.; heck, my "customers" (the students at the university) get the treatment all the time. We want you to be happy so you give us your money.

But Easterly has a big problem with this- he thinks its sick. He's really worried about "patronizing attitudes towards Africans." As if a book (his) called "The White Man's Burden" wasn't a patronizing attempt to separate readers' from their money. Or have you noticed the paperback cover of "The Elusive Quest for Growth"? An old-time compass and map, patronizingly reinforcing the illusion that "explorers" read about darkest Africa... and the Amazon jungle too... Cast first stone, etc.

Easterly concludes, "Try looking at the poor Rwandans living in the MV not as anonymous and interchangeable exhibits for a “poverty trap,” but as individuals who possess rights and human dignity just like us. Then we maybe we will understand that the most impressive, knowledgeable, and motivated soldiers in the war on poverty are usually poor individuals themselves." But he's so hopelessly misrepresenting the MV or other development projects, which are usually 99% local (with a couple expatriate directors or experts or low-level volunteers or grad students etc.) At FAVL, for instance, 95% of the work on the ground in the libraries and camps is done by locals. And they, like in MV, are the ones explaining to visitors what is going on, and making sure visitors understand the purposes of the libraries and how they work. How can it be dehumaizing for a village resident who works for FAVL (or MV) to be explaining to an outsider what the project is doing in terms of reading or farming or whatever. What exactly does Easterly think is dehumanizing? Does he think a village resident is "dehumanized" when he or she sees a bunch of rich people step out of an air-conditioned bus and point at a goat sitting in a tree and take pictures?

To answer my own rhetorical question, an anecdote; When I lived in a little village in Sudan for a year back in the 1980s, one day a "development worker" came by to promote bee-keeping. He was a wild guy, with a big long beard. The NGO called a meeting, and everyone in the village came and sat around. Everyone politely listened. Afterwards, not a single person grumbled about wasting an hour. They all completely dismissed the bee-keeping as pie in the sky. But that weird khuwaja (westerner) with the BEARD... he was HILARIOUS. He was talked about for weeks. So where was the dehumanization?