"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.

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.

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

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

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

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...

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.

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...

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.

Anecdotes about books making a difference...

From the NY Times...

Of course, it wasn’t the encyclopedia itself, or the encyclopedia alone, that may made the difference in Sonia Sotomayor’s life. More important was the value placed on learning that led her family to shell out nearly $400 for the Britannica in the first place. And, as Judge Sotomayor has made clear, credit must be given to the Nancy Drew mysteries, which inspired her, she has said, to become a lawyer, so it wasn’t only the Britannica that inspired her.

The story of the little girl reading the Britannica in her Bronx housing project is a perfect example of America’s most treasured narrative of success, treasured, precisely because, for many people, it was true.

It’s Abe Lincoln reading everything he could get his hands on, in part to compensate for his lack of formal schooling. Now it’s Sonia Sotomayor, being raised by a determined, hard-working widow (for whom a $400 encyclopedia must have represented a tremendous financial sacrifice) reading the Britannica in a neighborhood where few if any other people valued it as much as her mother did.

“The Britannica was a physical embodiment of the existence of a serious world where there was a lot to be learned beyond one’s own experience,” Randall Stross, author of the books “The Microsoft Way” and “Planet Google” (and an occasional contributor to The New York Times), said in a telephone conversation. “Just having it on the shelf was a way to remind kids of the importance of education, and it was a counterweight to all the trivial and even dangerous pursuits that surrounded them.”

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"....

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

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!)

In the other corner, wearing the blue trunks... A book about aid to Africa...

Boy if you thought the radical critique had little merit, wait until you read the other side...

Many people are talking about Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid. I haven't read it (hey, when reading Coetzee and Le Clézio, why bother with Moyo?) but many people I respect have... and their response is pretty uniformly negative. Here's David Roodman:

Last month I blogged a New York Times interview with Dambisa Moyo, whom the paper aptly dubbed the “Anti-Bono.” A youngish woman who grew up in Zambia and holds degrees from Harvard and Oxford, she launches a frontal assault on foreign assistance in her new book, Dead Aid. For her, ODA is DOA. I worried in my post about her simplistic interview answers, which implied that aid has nothing to do with microfinance even though donors helped make it what it is today. I ended carefully:

I look forward to reading her book, where perhaps she recognizes these complexities.

Well, I did, and she doesn’t.

The radical critique of good intentions....

I love reading this kind of stuff, even if not Africa related, because it forces you to ask a similar/related question (CV, this question will sound familiar to you!): Would FAVL's small low-key community libraries, largely controlled by locals (who admittedly do very little local controlling, mostly because they don't know much about what to control in their local library, because... they've never had a library before!)... back to earth Michael, return from digression please.... so, would these library support efforts be vulnerable to the radical critique somehow... is FAVL "corporatizing" village knowledge, turning village kids into fodder for the plastic-toy consuming textile factory working machine? Isn't the village, low input, sustainable, organic (well, a little), slaughtering pigs that ate your own poop and cooking them in a mud-brick oven where mud was made using donkey's poop (yes, poop is a big thing in a village- go live there!).... Michael, stop digressing... so is FAVL corporatizing the village????

Anyway, here's the article that inspired this brief reflection- fun to read in its entirely...

Muscular philanthropy--that's what Fred Hess calls the kind of Walton-Broad-Gates phalanx that has as one of its goals the charterizing (rhymes with cauterizing) of American public schools, beginning first in the urban schools where voucher efforts have been unsuccessful so far. Bill and Melinda, the darlings of the neoliberal set, are a bit queasy regarding vouchers, having the ongoing history that they do with the education establishment.

Reflections on FAVL

Kate Parry writes from Uganda:

All the news in the US at present is about the economic crisis and the financial problems that people are experiencing as a result. People here worry about money too, but their concerns are of a different order. I’ve just heard a story of a boy in a village called Tekera, not far from Kitengesa, who broke his leg and needs 1.8 million shillings ($900) to get it set properly. The family doesn’t have anything like that money, so he will probably be crippled for life. Another story: a woman in our own village (Lwannunda, near Kitengesa trading centre), who is in her sixties and responsible for several orphaned grandchildren, was given a valuable exotic cow by an international development organization that is based in the US. The cow was in calf and was expected to produce some 40 litres of milk a day, which would translate into an income of 300,000 shillings per month (c. $150) – a tidy amount in this part of the world. But the cow required a lot of grass, which had to be cut, and about 30 litres of water a day, which had to be fetched, and if the children were late coming back from school, the woman couldn’t manage it. Then the cow got sick, so the women sold her goats to pay for the medicine. The time came for the cow to give birth; the woman sold her chickens to pay for the vet to attend her. Then the cow died, and the calf, naturally, died too. The woman is now poorer than ever. Dan, the librarian for FAVL’s library at Kitengesa, told me this story as an example of why the more than $1,000,000 that this organization has pumped into our sub-county has not produced any visible sign of development.

But the Kitengesa Community Library – which has cost us about $40,000 to date, including the money we’ve put into our new building – has! (See www.kitengesalibrary.org). For one thing we have our old building, which is still in use, and the books; and the place is very active, as I’ve seen over the past few days, which I’ve spent working there. There’s also a link with the University of British Columbia, which sends a constant stream of volunteers. Besides working with NGOs such as the AIDS organization TASO, these volunteers donate money to a local committee that puts it into projects – one such project being preparing the garden for our new library (the idea is to have lots of beautiful trees and shrubs so that people will pay to have their wedding photos taken there). There is also a tree nursery on the new library land set up by FADA (Forestry for African Development Association), which employs a number of boys so that they can earn money for school fees –another result of the British Columbia connection. Then I heard a story on Saturday about a boy who is orphaned and is living with my informant’s family. There’s no spare money in the household, but the boy has apparently learned how to grow passion fruit by reading agriculture books in the library and cultivates them on land that he rents. He’s able to pay his school fees and has even bought himself a bicycle from the sale of his fruit.

There are other libraries too: I’ve just received an invitation to visit a new one that is in Ggaba, just down the road from our house in Kampala. Then on Saturday I’m visiting another new one at Budiri in, I think, Iganga District (Uganda keeps creating new districts, so it’s difficult to keep up with the geography); that one is a direct consequence of the workshop that FAVL’s Ugandan affiliate, UgCLA (Uganda Community Libraries Association – see www.ugcla.org). organized in July on how to initiate community libraries. From there I’ll move on to Busolwe, where I will talk with the library committee about the link that I’ve set up for them with two libraries in British Columbia. The Busolwe library will be receiving some CAN$3000 with which to pay a librarian and buy new books, and in return will send the British Columbian libraries information about Busolwe and library activities and will host a couple of volunteers. My friend Eric Morrow of the Maendeleo Foundation (which is dedicated to providing computer access to young Ugandans – see www.maendeleo.org ) is also coming to Busolwe that weekend to conduct a computer workshop for primary school teachers in the district, and I will be helping with that. We’ll finish on Monday afternoon, after which I’ll go to Mbale, further east and north, to visit yet another new library, or, rather, resource centre, which is being initiated in a village called Bududa. I have yet to find out what inspired that, but the organizers seem to have found out about FAVL by trolling through the Internet and so wrote to us for help. They wrote to our collaborating organizations, Under the Reading Tree and the Osu Children’s Library Fund as well, so we agreed that I should visit the place and report back so that between us we can decide what each organization can contribute. It will be great if one can help support a librarian, another provide books, while UgCLA can offer training and support.

Nor will this be all. While at Kitengesa last weekend, I was visited by a senior district administrator, a man who comes from the far west of the country, near the Congo border. He is anxious to set up a library in his own home village, and came to me for advice on how to do it. He had visited the Kitengesa Library before and had seen how active it is and how it is contributing to the development of the area. So in due course we will travel to his village together and look into how the building that he already has can be converted into an active institution for disseminating information – and UgCLA will begin to build up its membership in the Western Region.

All this constitutes a strong argument for what FAVL is doing – carrying out small scale library projects at the village level. It is important that the amounts of money be small, for then they can be absorbed without waste, on the one hand, and the projects can be emulated by local people on the other. So thank you, everyone, for your support!

Libraries and women's health

Deb Garvey writes:

This New York Times' article on fistulas (internal injuries suffered by women in developing countries who lack access to peri-natal health care), reminds us of the importance of the long-term goal of FAVL: its mission to build and support sustainable libraries for the long run.

One of FAVL's village libraries is located in Mvumi, very close to Dodoma, the setting of this disturbing article. FAVL's library model fosters long-term development and improvement of girls' lives: by stocking school books that help a child stay in school and encouraging a love of reading, we help young girls complete more education, reduce the likelihood of early marriage and the risky childbearing that follows.

Read the full article here: After a Devastating Birth Injury, Hope

Le Clézio and African literature

Alain Mabanckou sings the praises and is clearly influence by le Clézeio, but I had never read anything by him so was interested, and so I finally picked up Mondo et autres histoires from my local library (Martin Luther King, Jr, in downtown San Jose). Wonderful stories and novellas.

Le Clézio's Wikipedia entry is just fascinating, and his Nobel lecture is dedicated first and foremost to a number of African authors- Mongo Beti, Ahmadou Kourouma, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Alain Paton (Oh! So great to read Cry, the Beloved Country on my first trip to Sudan in 1985!), and Thomas Mofolo and a couple of Mauritian authors, and then a long list of authors of what we might call the Third World, some of whom I have read, others whom I am ready to add to my list! It is a wonderful lecture, and should be required reading in any non-western literature class. Here's the concluding paragraph, from the English version (yes, it is very earnest, but what did you expect Friends of African Village Libraries to like?):

For all his pessimism, Stig Dagerman’s phrase about the fundamental paradox of the writer, unsatisfied because he cannot communicate with those who are hungry—whether for nourishment or for knowledge—touches on the greatest truth. Literacy and the struggle against hunger are connected, closely interdependent. One cannot succeed without the other. Both of them require, indeed urge, us to act. So that in this third millennium, which has only just begun, no child on our shared planet, regardless of gender or language or religion, shall be abandoned to hunger or ignorance, or turned away from the feast. This child carries within him the future of our human race. In the words of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, a very long time ago, the kingdom belongs to a child.