Some photography from Burkina Faso

Here's a nice little collection from photographer Saidou Dicko.

Uwm Akpan caught by Publisher's Weekly!

A cute little interview... "if you have a family, it is good to forgive..."

Far far away from Uwem Akpan

We try to be good, but we can't, and occasionally we indulge in the trashiest sort of fiction... I couldn't resist buying Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. For a simple reason: my mother's nickname is Dodie. Written in 1948, it is a very self-conscious and deliberate heir to Jane Austen. Very trashy, pretty decent writing. By the end it becomes tedious. But her descriptions of the "mad" father's attempt to follow up with a sequel to his literary bestseller Jacob Wrestling is really interested and quite modernists.

Anyway, they made the novel into a movie a couple years ago, which I have no interest in watching. But if you want something a little different for night-time reading, this book is it.

New blog from folks at Under the Reading Tree

Check it out- they just started and it has a nice look and so far very interesting postings... excerpt here...

We were further encouraged when we visited a couple of schools INFORALL has been working on ’sensitizing’ about reading. We toured St. Jared’s Secondary School, attended by 250 local students, some of which are boarders from further away. While many of the students eyes glazed over when we asked them about INFORALL’s library, we met with a very enthusiastic Information Club, with a couple of dozen members. Michael, INFORALL’s librarian, has been working with these students to make them aware of the library and its resources as well as encourage them to study, learn and write together on a weekly basis.

In our discussions with the group, they asked us for funding that would allow them to publish a regular ‘magazine’ or newsletter that would feature local news, articles and other material submitted by the club’s members as well as other contributors. We couldn’t promise anything, but really appreciated their enthusiasm and are thinking we could try and find a high school in Canada that would be willing to fundraise/sponsor this small project and perhaps even enter into a semi-regular dialogue with the Information Club at St. Jared’s.

Reading newspapers in Nyala, Darfur

Wonder if there is a library in town or in the refugee camps around the town...

Photo Courtesy: USIP www.usip.org.

Workshop in Sumbrungu with Kathy Knowles

Kathy (director of Osu Children's Library Fund) was kind enough to take the time (she is tireless, really!!!) to visit the three libraries (Sumbrungu , Sherigu and Gowrie-Kunkua) up in the Bolgatanga area. I was very happy she could do that, because our Ghana librarians are definitely in need of training. In Burkina we have a great team that is constantly innovating, but the Bolga area libraries seem to be having a harder time to move forward. They are more isolated, in many ways, despite Ghana being more "connected" and wealthier than Burkina. Anyway, here's some snapshots of the workshop.

(And what is most interesting to me... really, is that now I see the "floor" that Lucas Amikiya, our Bolga area coordinator, was proposing. A kind of vinyl sheeting that sticks to the cement floor. It looks pretty decent, actually.)

Bill Easterly praises FAVL!*

*Alright, so he doesn't praise FAVL, 'cause he's never even heard of us... but what he says is what we do:

One approach to a successful aid project just is to immerse yourself in the local community, put local people in charge who are themselves highly motivated, be adaptive and flexible to respond to whatever the local people think about how they can help themselves, so that you customize the “standard project designs” to fit local circumstances. Most aid projects fail because there is nobody in the field making all these necessary adaptations and fixing unanticipated problems as they arise.

Read more of "The Secret to Successful Aid"....

Uwem Akpan, Say You’re One of Them

I have to give a talk later today on Akpan's stories, as part of a panel. thought i would indulge myself and post here. i definitely urge you to read the book, and then send it to our English-speaking libraries! A nice audio interview with Akpan is here.

Let me begin by observing that the stories in this collection are awfully saddening. They echo, in their staging of bleakness, the dystopia of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. After reading that book, my response was “grim, grim, and grim.” Uwem Akpan’s stories are even grimmer, for they are true and of the present. As anyone who has spent time living and sleeping with very poor people in Africa will confirm, Akpan’s descriptions are exact: from the windowless rooms where you sweat all night on a mat on the floor, to the clothing draped across a rope strung from ceiling to ceiling, to the sickening colors used to paint the interiors of decrepit houses with tin roofs. The darkness, dirtiness, and smelliness are so very distant from the luxury of the rooms where Akpan’s stories will be read. This distance should reignite in us a fierce desire to relearn and remember what misery is, and rededicate ourselves to the purpose of combating that misery.

I am teaching a class right now called the economics of gender in developing countries. I thought then that I would devote a few moments to exploring some of the gender dimensions to the plots and characters. Akpan’s characters, male and female, are conscious of their gendered surroundings. But they never turn into caricatures as they might under a less capable writer. Much fiction from African countries draws one of three caricatures for female characters. The first is the personality-less beauty who is the object of desire for a young man who comes of age. The young man usually has to overcome a cynical, wealthy and powerful older man who wants the girl for himself. The girl bathes by the river at least once in the novel. A second caricature is the philosophical but resigned senior wife whose husband betrays her and marries a younger scheming second wife. The third is the rebellious younger woman who flouts gender strictures and ends up a journalist in a town newspaper, much like the author herself. These very simple female characters often stand in for a didactic lesson; they never really “think” about the choices they have to make, the author makes the choices for them.

In Akpan’s stories we find women (and men) with real personalities—a little proud, a little insecure, a little cowardly. So they make real choices, sometimes choices without thinking, but rather emerging from their personalities. Akpan’s stories span five countries, and within each country where the story is set there is typically a couple of ethnic or religious groups and class strata represented in the story. The gender dimension is subordinate to the dynamics of how these other social groups drive individuals into terrible dilemmas and situations. For Akpan, and his characters, gender issues are not what drive their lives.

That said, let me point out three aspects of gender as presented in Akpan’s stories.

The first point is that gender relations in the stories are much more egalitarian than you might have thought. In An Ex-mas Feast, Mama and Baba are dysfunctionally amiable, full of bluster and threats, but with no real power over each other or even over the children. In Fattening for Gabon, the child traffickers Mama and Papa again appear as equals; evil adults, to be sure, but not bound by a gendered structure into relations of subservience. The same equality, this time for good in the face of evil, is true of Papa and Maman in My Parent’s Bedroom. Akpan portrays intimate and ordinary domestic lives where men and women very much are on the same level, even in the face of extraordinary circumstances .

The second point is that this equality between men and women emerges from apparently uncontested gender equality between brother and sister, the central characters for many of the stories. These include Maisha the child prostitute and her younger brother Jigana, in An Ex-mas Feast, Yewa and her older brother Kotchikpa in Fattening for Gabon, and the older Monique and Jean in My Parent’s Bedroom. The relationship between these siblings of different genders is the same as if they had been the same gender: they fight and care for each other as siblings, not as boys and girls.

The third point is that sometimes the nature of gender relations becomes the subject of dialogue itself; gender is not a hidden structure. The characters on the bus in Luxurious Hearses talk about gender openly. For example, one of the passengers, Emeka, the loudmouth, calls out to Madame Aniema, Tega, and Ijeoma, “Let me tell you something, you women,” as he launches into a disquisition on civilian versus military rule. The retort is quick: “What do you mean by ‘you women’”, followed by, “Yes, Mr. Man…” and then “He dey talk rike porygamous man!” In this humorous way, Akpan captures the deliberateness of men and women in negotiating public gender stereotypes.

Let me turn to another issue. The audience for Akpan’s stories is you, the people in this room. The sad fact of African publishing and reading is that the public for his fiction in Africa is a future public. The question then is how you should respond to the deliberate education (setting aside the art) offered in the stories. Should one start working as an activist, combating child trafficking? Should one graduate from the university and move to Nigeria and work promoting mutual tolerance between Muslims and Christians? Or should one join the Genocide Intervention Network?

The answers to these questions would seem like obvious affirmatives, except that recently there has been a wave of criticism against naïve activism and do-gooders who produce unintended consequences. I am thinking in particular of Mahmood Mamdani’s just-published diatribe against the Save Darfur movement, entitled Saviors and Survivors. He makes plenty of valid points, particularly about the self-indulgence of this kind of activism that is more explicitly about consciousness-raising than direct action. Should this criticism delay your involvement? Is the responsible thing to do to spend ten more years learning how to fully understand Mamdani and other such critics before you begin to act? I am somewhat sympathetic to this view, as a late-comer myself to the world of action and activism—I started Friends of African Village Libraries in 2001, and not as a twenty-something. But only somewhat sympathetic. I think that experience and knowledge are valuable traits in making the world a better place, but passion and dedication, without the burdening responsibilities of professional and family life, are also valuable traits. And I note that while the image of Save Darfur is of young people, the board of directors and the executive of the organization are people much older and with much experience. So each person can and should respond to these stories in their own way.

Let me close by saying that whatever your response, at the very least you will take Akpan’s admonition of the title seriously, and “Say You’re One of Them.”

On aid....

The issue of development assistance (aid) has been getting increasing attention lately in the popular imagination of the people in the United States. I've posted some stuff on the blog. A lot of what the pundits write is just posturing. That is, it is at a level divorced from the concrete, and the question is posed as "is it good or bad?" when the real question is "how to make aid expenditures more effective?". There is no short-term future where people earning $50,000 a year don't "help" people earning $500 a year. It is silly to make the argument that those people at the $500 a year should just "pull themslves up". So ask yourself what is the real question here of interest? For Sachs and Easterly, my cynical view is they approach the question this way: "How can I frame the question so that I sell a lot of books." There are literally hundreds of dry, technical books and articles about development aid and projects and other interventions. Why do those two become the "superstars" of the aid commentariat? Is it because they have something really interesting to say that goes beyond common sense? No, it's because they are willing to participate in the market for distorted caricatures of public intellectuals. They could stop churning out a book every two years, and go back to writing ordinary academic material. But that would not be so much fun, nor so lucrative.

That's cranky me writing there. Mellow me says Easterly and Sachs are both good reads.

Godfrey Kateregga of Kitengesa library

Kate Parry writer:
This is the first of what will I hope be many stories. In this case, Godfrey, who, as he says, was our first library scholar, and he was sponsored by the Youth Millenium Project (at least for the first year. Godfrey then went on to be a "nursery scholar" for Leigh Fox's forestry NGO, FADA, which subsequently developed a commercial arm called Fair Trade Carbon. It's all connected because Leigh got the idea of the nursery scholarship scheme from our library scholarship one - and the association continues because Leigh is using some of our new plot of land for his nursery beds, and Godfrey is tending them until he goes to university. I'm attaching a recent photo of Godfrey with some of his plants.

MY BIOGRAPHY

My name is Godfrey Kateregga, who have a dream from childhood to be a doctor, I am a worker in ``FAIR TRADE CARBON UGANDA LIMITED``. I was a student of Kitengeesa comprehensive secondary school from 2002 up to 2005. I have been a student of Masaka senior secondary school from 2006 to 2008. In 2004, I was chosen to be the first library scholar at Kitengesa community library. This scholarship was given to me through professor Kate Parry by a group of people called the ``YOUTH MILLENIUM PROECT ( YMP)``. I was given this chance just because I was a good behaving boy moreover I was always disturbed by school fees as my family was not able to raise all that much at that level. This was a joyful chance to me because I studied comfortably my form three and four. When I finished my form four in 2005 then I had to leave the scholarship just because the school had no advanced level which I was to join that time. I had passed very well and fortunately I was chosen by Leigh Fox to be one of his workers in the Fair trade carbon company and this had to help me raise money for my advanced level. At this level, I offered all the sciences;- physics,chemistry,biology and mathematics. This was to fulfill my dream. Good enough, I studied very well and at the end of it all I passed with a possibility of being a doctor. On my stand I would like to thank the following individuals; Professor Kate Parry for bridging, mobilising and keeping in place all the activities offered by the source of knowledge, Kitengesa community library. I would also like to thank the librarian Mr.Ahimbisibwe Daniel for the wonderful supervision and training of the activities in the library which was a source of good management to me in and out of the library. I also thank very much YMP for that offer given to me. Lastly my thanks goes to the rest of the library care givers for the good work done towards my education and to the library. I am also looking forward to raise money for my university.

GODFREY KATEREGGA

Crocodile Bread crossing the border right now...

Sare Eisee, FAVL Ouaga rep., is on his way back from Bolgatanga, Ghana with 400 copies of the Dioula and French translation of Crocodile Bread. Elisee did the French translation, and helped on the Dioula. Kathy Knowles, of Osu Children's Library Fund, did another superb job in conceiving and creating the book, and also finding the funding to print so many copies- thank you OCLF!!!! The book is very cute. My kids both got a big kick out of it, and the kids in the libraries in burkina are also going to enjoy it immensely. Hope the border police don't like it too much, though.

(My apologies for the scan that cut off Kathy's name.)

Want to feel bad about humans? Read Neil Gaiman's The Eternals

I read it last night to see if appropriate for my 10 year old. I'm not a big fan of superhero stuff, but this was pretty good. Very cheeky, and very up to date. Very very far from Africa though. But, the blog rules say it's OK to indulge every now and then.

Want to feel nice about humans? Here's something that will help

Why donate to village libraries?

A Rotary friend from Canada wanted to work with FAVL, and asked how to respond to questions about the importance or urgency of other kinds of interventions, such as clean water or sanitation. His question raises all kinds of interesting issues, but rather than digress I'll go straight to the point: What is the most compelling case for supporting village libraries when there are so many other ways to have an impact on the lives of the least fortunate.

I think there are a number of components to the answer. I'll try to flesh this out over the coming weeks... here's some preliminary thoughts.

1) The social benefits vs. project cost approach
It is very clear that projects that provide deworming pills generate a huge benefit to kids (improvement in health and better school attendance) relative to cost (the pills are very cheap). It is also clear that anti-malarial bednets (that keep mosquitoes out and kill mosquitoes that land on them, by exposure to a safe insecticide) are very beneficial. So I don't have a good reason why we shouldn't spend all funds on these items and the handful of others that are hands-down winners in the category of most cost-effective way to improve general well-being for large numbers of people. For rationales for spending resources (time and money) on libraries, we have to go to the next three issues, with the following caveat. Once we get past the obvious hugely beneficial interventions, we find many projects that may have very sizable effects on well-being, but we don't know enough about long-term effects to have much confidence that we should concentrate all our eggs in those baskets. So it is a good thing to let "many projects bloom" so that we (the international donor community and the local policymaker in the poor country) learn about different projects and their effects.

2) The "who should do the intervention" issue
Deworming and bednets, and many other health interventions, have dramatic economies of scale. A Ministry of Health can implement a deworming program or a bednet program way more cost-effectively than a small $15,000 project. So these are not really appropriate projects for a small focused donor group, unless they want to give the funding to a larger organization (see point 3 below).

3) Projects that respond to donor interest and involvement will be able to maintain longer term impacts perspective

4) The "teach to fish" approach
Libraries belong in this category, like education gneerally. These kinds of projects do not produce immediate improvements in well-being. Education on the contrary almost by definition-- taking kids out of productive family activities and putting them in school -- has a negative impact on family well-being with a possible positive impact on child well-being. (see the remarkable opening sequence (in Italian with Spanish subtitles)of Padre Padrone below!)

[French] Rapport rencontre mensuelle 2 Avril 2009

From Elisee:

J’ai assisté a la rencontre mensuelle des bibliothécaires et des responsables de FAVL
Cinq points ont été débattus a cette rencontre:

I- Animation dans les bibliothécaires en prélude au camp de lecture
Il a été préconisé par Donkui d’initier une série d’animation dans les différentes bibliothèques en vue non seulement de former les gérants sur les techniques d’animation mais aussi de préparer le camp de lecture qui aura lieu en vacances scolaires (en été)
Tous ont reconnu la pertinence d’un tel projet et se disent prêts a tout mettre en œuvre pour son bon aboutissement.

II- Rédaction de rapport des rencontres par les bibliothécaires
Il a été question sur ce point d’inviter les gérants à rédiger, pour chaque rencontre mensuelle, un rapport. Ceci pour les amener a êtres attentifs à tout ce qui sera dit, également les motiver a prendre part, plus activement, aux discussions. Un rapport écrit sera pour eux un bon moyen de rappel de tous ce qui a été débattu lors de la rencontre.

III- Suggestions pour le bon fonctionnement des bibliothèques
Ici il est demandé a chaque bibliothécaire de faire des suggestions pour la bonne marche de la gestion de sa bibliothèque.
Bibata a soulever la question du délais de deux (2) semaines a respecter quant aux prêts des livres elle souhaiterai plus d’information a l’endroit des lecteurs sur les conditions de l’utilisation de la bibliothèque. Cette question visiblement, semble la mieux partager par tous les bibliothécaires
Ça a été l’occasion pour Dounko de lui rappeler que c’est à chaque bibliothécaire d’informer effectivement les nouveaux abonnés. Il a en outre recommandé la bonne lecture du manuel du bibliothécaire. Quant à moi j’ai recommandé l’écriture en grand sur les tableaux de chaque bibliothèque l’information suivante : « Tout prêt de livre ne peut excéder deux (2) semaines sous peine de sanction » Lucie quand elle a souligné le fait qu’il y ait des enfants (lecteurs) qui se montrent récalcitrants, malgré les convocations qu’il recoivent et ne suivent pas toujours ce qui leur est dit. J’ai alors indiqué que, face à un tel cas, il peut s’avérer utile de sensibiliser les parents de l’enfant pour la récupération du livre. Lucie a aussi émis le problème des lecteurs qui ne résident pas dans le village ; notamment les lycéens de villages voisin. Ceux-ci viennent prendre des livres (surtout les romans africains), et ne les ramènent pas. Pour cette raison elle a décidé de ranger ces livres. Nous lui avons conseillé de ne pas ranger ces livres mais de ne permettre que la consultation sur place. Akhoun quant a elle souhaité avoir plus de livres d’auteurs africains et la réfection du hangar de la bibliothèque de Karaba. Alidou et Ivette vont dans le même sens que Akahoun pour souhaiter plus de livres d’auteurs africains. Ivette a ensuite émis l’idée d’adresse des correspondances au chef d’établissement afin de les mettre a contribution en vue d’une récupération plus efficace des livres avant les vacances (pour éviter que les enfants ne voyagent avec les livres). Ceux-ci, dans leur école, se chargeront d’informer les élèves quant à la nécessité de ramener les livres empruntés. Alidou aussi à préconiser de faire plus d’animation dans les bibliothèques.

IV- Exécution d’un conte par un bibliothécaire
Akahoun s’était portée volontaire pour faire un conte. Son conte s’intitulait : « le mur de miel » et met en situation Leuk le lièvre, l’hyène et des génies. Bibata a aussi raconté une seconde histoire intitulée : « L’enfant abandonné » Ce récit est l’histoire d’une femme et de sa fille abandonnée par elle. Ce que j’ai retenu de ces narrations, c’est que les deux bibliothécaire, si effectivement elle faisaient les contes tel qu’elle l’on faite a cette rencontre, cela ne devrait vraiment pas intéresser les enfants car elle récitent très nonchalamment. J’ai alors insisté sur le fait que seule une façon de conter vraiment vivante pourrait captiver et intéresser les enfants. Je les ai exhortées à plus d’effort sur ce point. Dounko a aussi fait les mêmes remarques.

V Divers
Il a été question notamment des certains documents que j’ai ramenés de Ouagadougou a savoir :
Les contrats avec (les amendements) a signer,
Les fiches d’abonnement pour Boni,
L’exemple d’une fiche d’inventaire pour Dounko,
Des fiches cartonnées pour les ouvrages.

A message forwarded to FAVL... from South Sudan

Sudan is dear to my heart, and why shouldn't a network of community libraries get started there? We'll start a Ning network page soon.

Dear colleagues

I am pleased to inform you that yesterday, April 1, a public community
library was opened in Mundri town. This public library was made possible
through the generous contribution of the local community of Mundri.

The fund for the construction of Mundri Community Library was raised locally
on 20-26 September 2008. In that period of one week, Mundri Relief &
Development Association (MRDA) organised young volunteers who moved
house-to-house in Mundri and Kotobi to collect money and in-kind
contribution. The community fund raising initiative raised SDG 14,777 in
cash and SDG 6,863 in pledges. We used part of that money (SDG 3,500) to
renovate a clinic for under 5 children in Mundri PHCC and the rest to
construct and furnish the community library, which was opened yesterday. The
under five clinic was opened on October 6, 2009 and is doing very well.

I am pleased that a dedicated group of young women and men have toiled hard
and we now have in Mundri Town a centre of learning and culture for all
people. Unfortunately, we don't have enough books in the library. We bought
some books (worth SDG 1,465) but this is not enough. When we opened the
library yesterday most of the selves were empty!

Do you have any book that you could donate to Mundri Community Library? We
are looking for books for young readers - both school children and out of
school youth. We would also appreciate books for general readers. UN/NGO
publications are welcome. If you are in Juba and you would like to provide
books for Mundri Community Library please drop them to Trudy van Ommeren,
who has kindly accepted to collect books for the library. Trudy works with
ICCO as Programme Manager of Capacity Assessment and Development Programme
(CADEP). You can reach Trudy on trudyvanommeren@yahoo.co.uk or +249 126 148
560. We will arrange to transport the books from Juba to Mundri.

If you need more information about the Mundri Community Library or want to
know more about MRDA and the work we do, please contact me on the addresses
below.

I look forward to hearing from you

Kennet Korayi
Director, MRDA
PO Box 339, Juba, SUDAN