Summer reading in rural Africa

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

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

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

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

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

Ian McEwan's Atonement

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

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

Learning to read in a classroom in Ouagadougou

The text that accompanies the video is as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Malaria is horrible for schooling even when kids not sick

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

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

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

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

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

Subject: petit rapport sur notre voyage de niankorodougou

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

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

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

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

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

Some news from Uganda

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

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

Books in Khartoum

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

First reports in from Chalula library, Tanzania

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

Thanks to ....

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

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

A book about chickens and microcredit

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

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

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

What does a volunteer in a FAVL library do?

Check out Chelsea's blog entry from her stay in the village of Bereba.

Kathy Knowles on CBC

Kathy, who as director of Osu Children's Library Fund has been a supporter and inspiration for a lot of our work at FAVL, will be profiled in a CBC story.
The story of Kathy and the Ghana libraries she initiated will be on Sounds Like Canada. This Friday at the top of the show - that is 10AM (EST). CBC radio one.
http://www.cbc.ca/soundslikecanada
People can listen live anywhere in the world on the net.....or on Sirius radio across North America ....or on the CBC Sounds Like Canada podcast http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/index.html?newsandcurrent#slc

Family literacy, storytelling at home... should we be skeptical?

It is an truism for most people like me, who work a lot helping to establish and sustain small community libraries in rural Africa, to think that the model of literacy I practice with my own children (lots of shared reading and storytelling through age 6 or 7, until they are firmly reading on their own) is going to be replicable in African villages. But it is painfully obvious that our librarians in Burkina Faso and Ghana have, most of them, a hard time doing that kind of shared reading. Most village parents have even further to go.

So do I (and FAVL) have to work a lot harder to change the librarians and the village reading culture? Or is it I (and FAVL) that needs to change?

I've been reading a nice collection of essays, edited by A. van Kleeck, S. Stahl and E. Bauer (the E stands for Eurydice, which makes me like her automatically), called On Reading Books to Children. Many of the chapters are essays by left-leaning deconstructionist types... lots of dominant paradigms being tilted at. But there point, that my model of literacy acquisition may not be the most effective model to promote, is not lost on me. I confess, though, that I am disappointed in that no alternative models are proposed. What would an alternative literacy model look like? Whenever I try to imagine alternatives, I use as a touchstone the family/convent alternative of much of Europe for so long (yes, an aunt was a nun!). So the nuclear family isn't for you, what do you do? Join a convent. Very different living arrangements. So what's the parallel for literacy? The One Laptop per Child is going to bypass book reading? Television and radio in rural areas? Does anyone honestly think that promoting these at the expense of promoting shared book reading is the right course of action?

So the answer to my earlier question: I'd love to change, but I really have no good idea of how to do it! I'm stuck in the family literacy-shared reading rut and I don't have a machete to make a new path.

Recommended reading....

I am not a book critic, just an avid reader, and over the past several days I have been re-reading Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People . It's just fantastic, in the ambiguity of the theme.... is politics really character? The writing is sharp, wonderful turns of phrase here and there, and the characters are memorable and never overbearing. Chief Nanga... simply amazing. I was in western Sudan in a small village during the time that General Omar al-Bashir in Sudan was just consolidating his power, in 1989, after a coup d'etat. The local reaction to the coup and the new military rulers was so exactly like Odili's father... wise resignation.

Uganda Community Libraries Association

The Uganda Community Libraries Association now has its own website. Visit it at www.ugcla.org

Uzo and his father - Ernest Emenyonu

A very nice short novel for children... Exactly the kind of father I would like if I grew up in a village in Africa!

Dinaw Mengestu - "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears"

Pass the PLE...

In 2005, Kate Parry did an analysis of all the books borrowed to date from the Kitengesa Community Library. There was plenty of activity, and people of many kinds were borrowing books, but there was one worrying feature: very few children were included. So the librarians, with help from friends in Kampala, organized a Children’s Reading Tent. Books were put on display, local dignitaries were invited, and a lot of speeches were made. More to the point, children from six different primary schools were invited with their teachers, and when the speeches were over, they spent the day reading, drawing, and otherwise engaged in activities to do with books. Since then, the Kitengesa Library has held a Children’s Day about once a month. A single primary school is invited each time to send a class with a teacher, and, as at the Reading Tent, the children read, draw, paint, play games, and have stories read to them. In this picture, the children are playing a game called “Pass the PLE (Primary Leaving Exam),” made by a company –Mango Tree Educational Enterprises (http://www.mangotreeuganda.org/) – that specializes in simple and inexpensive educational materials for Ugandan schools.

Another Barbara Kimenye title

Wow! "Pretty Boy" by force of circumstances leaves his parents when their shanty home is demolished, makes his way to Mombasa , the sex trade, and AIDS... and his mother dies too, from the shame. Brutally frank, nicely written. Want an insight into the real Africa? Pick up some Kimenye.

Do African community libraries have to be justified?

From a report Libraries, literacy and poverty reduction: a key to African development by Professor Kingo Mchombu, University of Namibia and Nicola Cadbury, Book Aid International

One justification: Stop adults who have gone to school from relapsing to functional illiteracy...

In sub Saharan Africa adult literacy levels are now 61% (UNDP 2005). But without regular use literacy skills can be lost within a few years. A large percentage of participants in adult literacy programmes lapse into illiteracy within just a few years if they don’t have access to follow up support and appropriate reading materials (Abadzi 2004). The Association for Literacy in Zimbabwe finds that most of their adult illiterates are lapsed literates rather than people with no educational background. Unless literate environments are created which can sustain literacy for life, then education investments will not deliver the lasting benefits required to change lives and reduce poverty.

And there is more interesting stuff:

One of the most significant challenges facing library services in reaching the poor comes from the very limited coverage of most of the library services surveyed. Because of lack of government investment they are unable to achieve anything like full coverage of the population. For instance, Kenya, with its population of 32 million and large literate population of over 15 million, has only 36 public libraries. Malawi has 10, and Uganda 30. Most library service points are located in urban areas where population is highly concentrated and there are few branches in rural areas where a greater proportion of the population live in dispersed settlements.

The Uganda survey response noted that four libraries (Buikwe, Kyabutaika, Nakaseke and Katengesa) have established collaborative arrangements with NGOs and groups to provide economic empowerment information and other community-led information-sharing activities using the library as their platform. Such initiatives are important first steps towards optimising partnership between libraries and their beneficiary communities. Really effective partnerships will happen when all sections of society are able to request and receive the information they need, while at the same time libraries are equipped to record and disseminate communities’ local knowledge.

That's right, our very own Kitengesa...

Mark your calendars- we will be at CIES in New York March 18, 2008

Kate and I will be presenting in a panel at CIES meetings... more info is here.

Complementing Formal Education: Village Libraries in Africa
March 18, 1:30-3:30
Group Number: 125
Session Time Block: 2.4
Session Type: Panel
Chair(s) Kim Parry, City University of New York

Presenter 1 A. B. K. Kasozi, National Council for Higher Education
The Uganda Higher Education System and the Lack of a Reading Culture
Presenter 2 Kate Parry, City University of New York
The Promotion of Reading in Rural African Populations
Presenter 3 Valeda Dent, Rutgers University
One Book at a Time: Libraries in Village Communities
Presenter 4 Michael Kevane, Santa Clara University
Rural Students are Doing Fine: Reading and Schooling Attitudes in Burkina Faso
Discussant 1 John Paige, Congregation of the Holy Cross

Summer reading... how much does it help?

FAVL is looking for funding to run some reading programs this coming summer, and be able to get a good idea of the effects of various summer reading programs compared with a low-cost alternative of simply giving children some books for summer reading. How much would it matter if the kids participated in a book discussion program, or some out-loud reading, in a community library, versus simply have the books? The programs gets kids to the library, where books are shareable, the book distribution gets books into kids homes, but the books are less shareable.

Turns out there is no evidence that I have been able to find of studies like this in the rural African villages that we at FAVL care about. The closest study I can find is by James Kim, an education specialist now at Harvard. Here's the abstract for one of his papers:

The Effects of a Voluntary Summer Reading Intervention on Reading Achievement: Results from a Randomized Field Trial

The effects of a voluntary summer reading intervention were assessed in a randomized field trial involving 552 students in 10 schools. In this study, fourth-grade children received 8 books to read during summer vacation, and were encouraged by their teachers to practice oral reading at home with a family member and to use comprehension strategies during independent, silent reading. Reading lessons occurred during the last month of school in June, and 8 books were mailed to students on a biweekly basis during July and August. The estimated treatment effects on a standardized test of reading achievement (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) were largest for students who reported owning fewer books at home, less fluent readers, and minority students. These findings suggest that a voluntary summer reading intervention may represent a scaleable and cost-effective policy for improving reading achievement among lower-performing students.

See also: Literature Review on the Impact of Summer Reading Clubs

Apologies to Chinua Achebe...

I tried to get my 9 year old son to read Chike and the River, Achebe's short novel for children. I read it myself, and found the writing crisp and clear (what else was I expecting) and interesting enough to keep me going. A lovely thought to hold in your mind, of a young boy's dream to cross the river. But apparently to a Goosebumps, Tintin, Harry Potter, Inkheart, Dragon Rider, etc. 9 year old, it didn't seem to cut it! What if Achebe were to write a more fantasy-oriented children's book? Let me think... On the very first page Chike's parents are killed by a nuclear-mutated spider while they are watching Godzilla on their TV set. Chike runs off to his uncle, who turns out to have a dragon stored in a bottle. The miserly trader Mr. Peter Nwana is really a powerful witch who... cuts off people's heads and turns them into gold! Mr Nwana tries to control the spider to his own nefarious ends, and Chike and his uncle save the day, and Chike teaches his uncle that dragons are really just like humans.

Young Fluent (African) Readers

Someday a bright anthropologist, sociologist or littéraire will write the Africa-based equivalent of Margaret Clark's Young Fluent Readers. I think it would be so fascinating. The little girl in our promotional video (on the webpage www.favl.org) seems like she probably would be a great candidate for inclusion in the study.