May 2010 Archives

A great africaphoto slideshow from Congo by Baudouin MOUANDA... the images of secondary school kids taking advantage of public lighting are familiar to anyone who has traveled in Africa, but they are heartbreaking nevertheless.  Look for a beautiful image of a young man hunched over a notebook reading by lantern, the warm light is beautifully rendered.

Grace Musoke, the coordinator of the Uganda Community Libraries Association, is among 35 award winners scheduled to attend the 76th IFLA General Conference and Assembly from 10-15 August 2010 in Gothenburg, Sweden. The conference them is "Open access to knowledge -- promoting sustainable progress." With all the work that she's done for UgCLA over the past two and a half years, Grace is eminently well qualified to represent us. Well done, Grace!

URLCODA (Uganda Rural Literacy and Community Development Association) is one of the most active members of UgCLA (Uganda Community Libraries Association). Its leader Willy Ngaka, has recently written to say that URLCODA has won seventh place in a photo competition organized by eLearning Africa. The photo can be seen on the eLearning Africa website: http://www.elearning-africa.com/picturevoting_home.php and will also be part of the next eLearning Africa Newsletter. Congratulations Willy and URLCODA!

Development economist's are going to think something happened to Bill Easterly... and for awhile (speaking of visual illusions) I could not train my brain to realize that there actually was not a short story in this collection by Petina Gappah about how Bill Easterly was or was not responsible for Zimbabwe's collapse.

The stories are pretty good... good not great, as they say.  Certainly for someone interested in doing research on Zimbabwe, it offers a first glimpse into the country's social and economic structures.  Especially good on elite attitudes!  I look forward to reading more form Gappah.

On Thursday, One Laptop Per Child (the nonprofit behind XO laptops) announced a partnership with Marvel to produce inexpensive tablet computers.  The founder of the project, Nicholas Negroponte, claims the tablet will likely combine the functionalities of a laptop, a Kindle, and an iPad all in one device. As Negroponte describes in the video below, the vision is a $75 slim, 9 or more inch, plastic, unbreakable tablet for children with a dual mode display both sunlit and backlit. Renderings of the proposed tablet show images of hands flipping through ebooks, typing a journal entry with a touchscreen keyboard or zooming in on Google maps. 

Someone just the other day asked me about whether young people using the libraries were "brokering" the books with the largely non-literate parents... I said it was a great issue, and one that would require an anthropologist spending some serious time in the villages... well, at least now I know who would be a great person to do that if she could undertake a "no-expenses paid" research project... The paper abstracted below is gated, but a related paper is ungated and available here.

This ethnographic study examined literacy brokering among Sudanese refugee families in Michigan. Literacy brokering occurs as individuals seek informal help with unfamiliar texts and literacy practices. Data collection involved participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and collection of artifacts over 18 months. Researcher analysis of data identified patterns through coding and theme analysis, using the literacy brokering event as the unit of analysis. Three southern Sudanese refugee families participated in the study, including four focal children (two boys and two girls) in kindergarten and first grade. Challenging current notions of brokering, results show that brokering was not merely a matter of translation and that issues of genre also were important. Most brokering events provided knowledge about the purposes for, uses of, and textual features of specific written genres. Together, these types of brokering contributed to Sudanese participants' understandings of texts, genres, and, most importantly, literacy practices in their new U.S. context. Many people acted as brokers for the refugees, including their own young children, who were just emerging into English literacy themselves. Literacy brokering allowed these children to help their parents as they simultaneously gained important literacy knowledge and skills themselves. These results add to existing knowledge about the construct of literacy brokering as well, the nature of literacy practices, and issues of family literacy.

Abstract from Perry, K.H. (2009, July/August/September). Genres, Contexts, and Literacy Practices: Literacy Brokering Among Sudanese Refugee Families. Reading Research Quarterly, 44(3), 256-276. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.44.3.2

I replicate the whole thing here, especially for our Reading West Africa students...also, the comments in her original post are worth reading.

A couple of friends, strangers, and blog readers have recently asked me for advice about buying cameras. Unfortunately, I actually know very little about non professional model cameras. But, I do know about cameras generally, so here's some advice.

General Thoughts

• You don't need a million megapixels. Anywhere from 5 - 10 will be fine - anything else is a feature you're paying for you won't need. It's fine if the camera has more megapixels than that, just don't let a sales person get you to buy a more expensive model because it has more megapixels.
• Weather sealing is very, very very important.
• Canon and Nikon are essentially the same and put out identical products. Which one most photographers use is usually based on which one their first photo teacher told them to buy. My first photo teacher happened to be sponsored by Canon, so I use Canon. So I don't use it because it's better than Nikon, just because I started with it. However, that means all subsequent advice is related to canon models because that's what I know.

SLR vs point and shoot

• At this point, there are now pas cameras that have the same optical abilities as SLRs. The two models I would recommend looking at are theCanon s90 and the Canon G11 (again with Canon caveat in mind). They do absolutely everything that a basic entry level SLR will do EXCEPT change lenses. So, unless you plan to change lenses often or extensively make use of aperture and shutter speed controls manually, these cameras are really really great and will make excellent images.
• The entry level SLR that is most similar to the s90 or the G11 but will have the ability to switch lenses and give you better manual controls is the Canon Rebel. There are a bunch of different models of the Rebel, and they're all basically the same. It's a very good camera and will do everything you need - I got started on this model and even started selling images made with this camera in 2007 before upgrading.
• After that, if you want something fancier, models like the Canon 7d are neat because they will also do video, though the audio quality is poor.
• As far as I can tell, the Canon 50d and Canon Rebel are very similar cameras with different price tags. They have the exact same size image sensors, the same number of auto focus points, etc. The Canon 5d has more ISO expansion than the rebel, but that's not necessarily a good thing if you don't know how to use it sparingly. I'd say if you want something more than the Rebel, save your money and jump from the Rebel to the 5d or the 7d.

Lenses - if you do go the SLR route

• The 50 mm fixed 1.8 or 1.4 lenses are awesome and run about $100 and $350 respectively. Much better investment than bulky cameras. They are harder to use than zoom lenses but create really great, crisp images where you can have small parts selectively in focus. They also force you as a photographer to work harder, which always results in better images.
• Other than that lens, you might want something that covers the range of about 24 mm - 70 mm or 100 mm at most. Unless you're doing breaking news or photos in violent situations, you will never need more zoom than that. Wildlife photography usually involves a zoom of at least 200 - 300 mm.
• Make sure you buy a UV filter to protect your lens from dust and scratches.
• Don't buy a polarizing filter. Good camera salesmen will try and get you to buy these when you say you're going to Africa ("It's so sunny!") but they're actually horrible because they reduce detail in the shadow areas, which means in black people's faces too.
• Use a small paint brush or soft bristled tooth brush to clean your camera.
• I also really like disposable lens cleaning tissues because then I don't worry about cleaning my lens with an already dirty cloth. Also great for keeping my glasses clean.
• Always keep your lens hood on. This is important not just to avoid sun spots in your image, but also because if you bump into something (or someone bumps into you) they hit your cheap and easily replaceable plastic lens hood and not your lens. Especially in situations where you have limited personal space or things are moving quickly, this is incredibly important.

The final thing is that which camera you buy is about a million times LESS important than how you use it. And I'm not just talking about perfect exposure here - I mean getting up close to people and not being nervous about asking for their images. It also means moving around a lot and finding unique angles rather than shooting from eye level. And the best thing that you can do to make great images is shoot with great light - early morning and late afternoon only. I don't even bother taking photos outdoors from about 10 am - 3 pm for the most part if there's an option not to.

So, readers, what kind of cameras do you use? Are you happy with them? Leave your tips and recommendations in the comments section.

I just finished reading Guy DeLisle's Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea.  I enjoyed the occasional forays into didacticism, showing us the BD artist's craft.  The book is like a short travel memoir- nothing very interesting happens, but of course that is the point, nothing interesting is allowed to happen.  So the focus has to be on the tiny details, which plays right into the hands of a good graphic artist.  Sweet, I guess.  You walk away, like DeLisle, sad for the fragile lives of everyone there.

I'm Tabasseni Doye. I am 12 years old and attend school in Dimikuy. On opening day [of the library], we were present at the ceremony. When the manager told us about free registration day, I immediately informed my parents who approved. The next day I went with my sister who is in CM2 [U.S. fifth grade]. I took out my first book and when I got home, my parents told me to take good care of the books, because they are expensive. My favorite books are books of stories and tales. When I read an interesting book, I tell the story to my mother and my sisters. My mother did not go to school; she asks me questions and I try to answer. Currently, I am very strong in reading and general knowledge from the books I've read. The library has become for me the only place of entertainment in my village. I had a 7 out of 10 average in reading and I'm 11th of 24 students. My parents encourage me to read, because those who read succeed. My friends and I often go together and our teacher is pleased with us. I taught two small children at home to read. I thank the donors. I am very happy.

"FastPencil announced their partnership with Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL) as the publisher powering the initiative that brings books and literacy programs to African villages. FAVL now has the ability to take advantage of FastPencil's end-to-end publishing platform, while providing FastPencil with the opportunity to participate in the program that is helping spread literacy throughout the world." Read more of the press release here.
 
Exciting news!  As you may know, Reading West Africa students have been in the process of publishing culturally relevant children's books featuring pictures and stories inspired from their six-week stay at FAVL libraries in Burkina Faso. We have partnered with FastPencil to publish these books and have successfully transferred the books from our previous platform, Blurb, to FP.  FastPencil offers an easy-to-use online publishing platform that's free and provides high quality printing at half the cost of other explored platforms. We are grateful to be working with such a great company!  You can view our current books on the FastPencil marketplace: http://www.fastpencil.com/users/favlafrica

A nice article was written about the partnership and book making project in PSFK.  Currently, we are working on translating these books into English and refining the book making process.  In the future, we would like to translate these books into local languages as well.

Because they make nice stamps like this one, that give your heart a warm and fuzzy feeling ;-)
(P.S. Notice the Bolgatanga postmark!  I've got a monopoly on these... can set any price I want...now hear Plankton-style muhhh-hhhhaaaa-hhhhaaa).

Over the past week I undertook a reading marathon and read volumes 2, 3 and 4 of Aya, the bande dessinée that is sweeping West Africa by storm... sympathetic characters, realistic storylines, lovely drawings.  Cannot complain. 

The coolest thing is that Abouet too has gotten bit by the library bug and apparently has set up a foundation to establish a neighborhood library in Abidjan.

From the blog vasigauke:

Naomi Benaron, a Munyori author, Wins the 2010 Bellwether Prize ($25 000)

Naomi Benaron, whose short story, "The Geology of Ghosts", recently appeared on Munyori Literary Journal, is the winner of the 2010 Bellwether Prize, worth $25 000. 00, for her novel manuscript Running the Rift, which is set in Rwanda. The Bellwether Prize of fiction, coordinated by Barbara Kingsolver, supports literature of social justice, and Naomi Benaron, whose works are set in Africa, particularly in Rwanda, is a perfect fit. And she is not new to literary awards; her debut collection of short stories, Love Letters from a Fat Man, won 2006 G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Fiction.I have read and enjoyed her work, including the manuscript of Running the Rift.

Barbara Kingsolver called the manuscript "culturally rich and completely engrossing. It engages the reader with complex political questions about ethnic animosity in Rwanda and so many other issues relevant to North American readers. For one, it conveys the impossibility of remaining neutral within a climate of broad moral compromise--even for purportedly apolitical institutions like the Olympics."

For more details, visit the Bellwether Prize website.

I'm a big fan of visual illusions, mostly because of how easily they offer a lesson in humility.  This one takes the cake.  No matter how long I try to make my brain see through the illusion, it can't, even though my rational brain orders my visual brain to see it correctly.

FAVL rep in Ouagadougou Bawaya Élisée SARE lets us know that SANOU Dounko, extraordinary animateur, is on his way to Pobe-Mengao to spend some time at the newest FAVL library.  One thing that makes Dounko's job easier is the good people all over who send FAVL stickers- kids love them when coming to the library!  Thanks!

Aujourd'hui j'ai fais partir Dounko Pobé pour quatres jours.  Il ira visiter travailler avec Hamidou, et faire des animations a la bibliothèque.  Il retourne le dimanche.

My colleague Alain Sissao got to interview one of my favorite writers down at UCLA the other week.  I'm so jealous, but at least I got to see the video Alain made of their chat.

Now I randomly notice that Mabanckou has a children's book...

Présentation de l'éditeur " J'ai écrit cette histoire de mon enfance parce que, même devenu adulte, je suis resté cet enfant qui court après sa Soeur-Etoile. Et c'est peut-être aussi pour cela que je suis devenu un écrivain. " Alain Mabanckou.

available at an exaggerated price on amazon.fr...

Last summer three volunteers (Lauren, Holly and Ricky) spent several weeks in Chalula, and came back with some great photos of reading and drawing activities in the library.  Nice work!

People in Burkina have probably never seen this... amazing footage...  Have to bring my iPad and show it in the village... not...

Mother's Day sometimes can be bittersweet.  Mine was fine, ahem, I'm not a mother, but did have four mothers (wife, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and mother of sister-in-law!) in tow for brunch at Santa Clara, and did talk to my mother on the phone.  Well, on the phone our conversation turned to Joyce Carol Oates' story, that we had both read. I.D., in The New Yorker. We both appreciated the story, but we disagreed over the language.  I thought Oates hadn't really been able to immerse me in the story; it felt like a sociological exercise.  Not the usual Oates "voice".  My mother disagreed, and found herself still thinking about the story more than a month after it was published. 

"For an eiii-dee," they were saying. "We need to see Lisette Mulvey." This was unexpected. In second-period class, at 9:40 A.M., on some damn Monday in some damn winter month she'd lost track of, when even the year--a "new" year--seemed weird to her, like a movie set in a faraway galaxy.

I encourage you to read the story. 

FAVL friend and PCV volunteer Emilie Crofton:

It was a crazy race.  A mining company organized everything so there was obviously SOOO much money thrown around...crazy. In the men's race there were nearly 90 guys total. Top prize was like 400,000 cfa or something like that! Plus every single participant received 5,000cfa!

For the girls race, there were about 22 girls total. I SMOKED them....I couldn't even SEE the second place girl! It was so cool. It wasn't a lot though. I was told it was 18K but it was only something like 5K! But still... I won SOOOO much. First, I won a new bike! Its obviously not a great one, my PC bike is still much better. But I think its valued at like 30,000 to 35,000cfa! THEN I got this really nice bright yellow biking jersey. THEN, the first place prize...for a FIVE K race was 50,000 cfa! But THEN a bunch of rich people kept adding to the prize money pot for girls. One guy donated an extra 50,000 cfa, another 25,000 and on and on. By the end I had won 140,000cfa! WOOO HOO.

My plan is to sell the bike and hopefully have a total of about 170,000cfa and ALL of it will go toward the library. Books books books!
Today was such a cool day :)

At current exchange rate total "winnings" were about $300.  Good job Emilie.

I won't get on my soapbox about illegality (something we are thinking about a lot in my San Jose neighborhood, for reasons somewhat related to Colombia, go figure), but I totally agree with Anton Mockus, the mayor of Bogota who famously had mimes as traffic cops to change social norms about routine traffic scofflaws.  He's running for President of Colombia now, and here's a video (in Spanish).  Someday this kind of shake-it-up grassroots peaceful people's movement is going to hit West Africa, and it will be very exciting.   (BTW, he and Enrique Peñalosa, Bogota's other mayor, apparently were big library supporters.)
 

I had the pleasure of talking with Santa Clara University student and Reading West Africa program Alum, Louise O'Rourke, about her experiences studying abroad in Burkina Faso.  If you have ten minutes to spare, you can listen to the interview here:

RWA interview.m4a

Excuse the background noise!

On Twitter, I happened upon a link to a wonderful blog written by author, Mitali Perkins, called "Mitali's fire escape! A safe place to chat about books between cultures".  Her most recent post lists five children's books about microfinance.  The list included these two books set in Uganda and Ghana:

Last December FAVL's affiliate, the Uganda Community Libraries Association (UgCLA), made an agreement with a New York-based funding organization called Pockets of Change (POC): POC would fund two workshops and the distribution of a packet of children's books to ten different libraries. The first workshop was held in January, and the participants discussed how they might use the books, watched and practiced reading aloud to children, considered ways of encouraging children to read by themselves, and heard about programs for involving adults in their children's reading (including the Kitengesa Community Library's Family Literacy Project and the Uganda Rural Community Development Association's Intergenerational Literacy Program). They also heard how they could apply to receive one of the packets. Eighteen proposals were received, and the Board of Pockets of Change chose the winners by the middle of April.

As it happened, the United States Embassy in Kampala received a visit in the last week of April from Valerie Wonder, a librarian at the Seattle Public Library and an expert in early childhood literacy. So the Embassy asked UgCLA to nominate up to thirty people to attend a workshop facilitated by Valerie on April 28. We nominated all those who had written proposals as well as some of the people who had helped us in the January workshop, and the Embassy allowed us to use the final workshop session to announce the winners, distribute the books, and  brief the librarians on the records that we would need from them.  It was a wonderful workshop, and I've received a number of appreciative messages from the participants. I've also visited one of the winning libraries (the Bugiri Community Library) this week: the packet of 84 books has doubled this library's stock, and when I arrived, the room was full of children busily reading.

The Kitengesa Community Library, the one library directly managed by FAVL in Uganda, is also one of the winners.  The packet will not double Kitengesa's stock, but it will replace many of the books that have been read to pieces over the years and will provide for the 150 or so primary school children who are now coming to the library every week.

My friend, Professor John Abdul Kargbo at Fourah Bay College In Freetown, wrote an interesting article on public library programming for young adults in Sierra Leone...

"Among the varied types of library users and potential clientele in Sierra Leone, as in most developing countries, young adults are the most easily and often neglected in terms of collection development and the provision of services in many library settings. The philosophy of public librarians in any community is to attempt, through books, to take each individual, whatever his reading level, and develop him to his full potential as a reader and widening interest and deepening his interest and understanding. This goal could not be reached easily by shelving books alone but accomplished through direct contact with young adults." (Public Library Programming for the Young Adult Reader: The Sierra Leone Experience)

Kargbo gives a brief overview of the Sierra Leone Library Board, its programs aimed at involving young adults in the library world, as well as the problems. As of 1958, the SLLB was set to serve the following functions as stated in the Government white paper on educational development:

1. To support and reinforce programs of adult and fundamental education.
2. To provide effective services for children and young people, including requisite services for schools.
3. To provide much needed information and reference services.
4. To promote and stimulate reading for pleasure and recreation.
5. To provide, where needed, adequate services for special groups, that is women and girls, language groups...

(SLLB annual report 1959/1962)

Almost 50 years and a civil war later, SLLB is still trying to meet it's basic functions.  There has been a recent push, however, to expand the services and programs of SLLB...  

"The SLLB presently has regional and branch libraries in most provincial towns like Bo, Kenema, Bonthe, Kailahun, Kabala and Kissy, Greater Freetown, that cater for people from all walks of life. In addition to the provision of book and non-book materials, the library allows organized visits by schools, organizes book displays and quiz competition for secondary school pupils, mounts exhibition, displays and allows its foyer and conference room to be used for public occasions. All these are moves to encourage young adults and other interested library clientele to use the library as membership is free."

Membership is no longer free, however SLLB is in the process of opening more libraries in all 12 districts by a date TBD this year.  Upon visiting all of the SLLB libraries during my trip to Sierra Leone, the library programming and book collections were lackluster although most of the libraries were being used by young adults working on homework.  A lot of the programming described in the article, like book discussions, book clubs, poetry readings, drama, etc. are not being continued in the libraries as hoped, perhaps due to lack of resources and librarian leadership.  The Director of the Information Resource Center at the U.S. Embassy, James Taylor, has been making an effort to jump start library activities around the country by hosting movie nights, etc.  Taylor told me he is hoping to 'wet the appetites' of town members for such programs.      

Kargbo finishes his article with a great line.. "The fact is that the school library serves the school, while the public library serves the community; and there is every reason in designing programs to meet the needs of young adult clientele as the SLLB is bent on achieving its goal of 'service for all without distinction'."

I agree and think a push to revitalize library activities within the existing libraries is necessary...

You can read more of John Kargbo's article here:
Public Library Programming for the Young Adult Reader.pdf

Despite the expansion and services SLLB offers (or hopes to offer), there are still millions of people without access to libraries or books in Swit Salone.   As you may recall from earlier posts, there is only one fully functioning library located rurally: the Mapaki Community Library managed by local NGO cdpeace.