A student in Dimikuy library enjoying the book, and you can get your own copy here (in English and in French)!
September 2010 Archives
Generous "friend of african village libraries" (i.e. FAVLer) Louisa Ecelbarger from Rockville, Maryland donated $500 last week. Thanks for the support to the libraries in Burkina Faso and Ghana!
Reading West Africa students participated in the Dimikuy community library (established to honor the memory of Steve Cisler) summer reading camp.
Over the summer break, FAVL implemented 3 two-week summer reading camps at its three Ghanaian rural libraries (Gowrie-Kunkua, Sumbrungu, Sherigu). Each camp gave 20-30 students the opportunity to improve their reading skills through an intensive curriculum focused on advancing reading ability and comprehension. The photo above depicts FAVL volunteer Francesca LeBaron, reading with a group of students at the Gowrie-Kunkua Community Library.
Last weekend RWA professor and professional photographer David Pace was at a show of African masks at the Dallas Museum of Art. As coincidence would have it two of the masks on display were from renound mask-maker Jacouba Bonde.
Bonde works out of his shop in the small village of Boni, Burkina Faso not far from FAVL's village library.
David was in Dallas for the opening of his own exhibit highlighting photo's from Burkina Faso.
David says he and the curator were equally surprised at the coincidence and that the exhibition was "fantastic." He took the two snapshots of Bonde's masks you see above.
The comedic film « Taafe Fanga (Skirt Power) » is centered around cosmogony and mythology in 18th century Dogon, Mali. The women, tired of the men's arrogance, capture the powerful Albarga mask and threaten the men into taking over traditional women's roles.
RWA assistant Monique reviews the film:
" TAAFE FANGA is a very interesting film that I just watched. It talks about a problem that concerns me, the roles of women. While watching it I thought that this film allowed men to better understand the behaviors toward women that they wouldn't want to be subjected to themselves. And the film is very funny!"
La comédie « Taafe Fanga » est structurée autour de la cosmogonie et mythologie au Dogon, Mali, pendant le 18eme siècle. Les femmes, fatiguées de l'arrogance des hommes, capturent le masque puissant 'Albarga', et forcent les homme a prendre la relève des travails traditionnels de la femme.
Monique, l'assistante avec RWA, fait une critique du film :
« TAAFE FANGA est un film qui est très intéressant et que j'ai vu. Il parle d'un problème qui me concerne ; celui de la condition des femmes. En le regardant je me suis dit qu'il permettra aux hommes de comprendre qu'ils ont des comportements envers les femmes qu'ils n'aimeront pas subir eux-mêmes. Et, c'est un film vraiment très drôle ! »
FAVL volunteer Emilie Crofton, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in the
Aya de Youpougon is a comic book series written by Marguerite Abouet and illustrated by Clement Oubrerie. The series follows 19-year old Aya and a number of other characters living in Youpougon, a neighborhood in
The vast majority of people I've noticed reading or checking out the Aya books are young teens, but I've see quite a few adults sneak more than a few peeks.
Can daily life in Youpougon really be such an exciting read? Apparently so. To me it's just like the popularity of reality shows in the
I must admit that I place myself in the "I Love Aya" Fan Club. My mother has very kindly bought all five Aya comic books and sent it to the Pobe library. Each time a new Aya arrived I made sure I was the first person to read it before handing it over to the library.
What's great about the series is that, yes, it follows the every day lives of young Cote Ivorians, but within the mundane Abouet finds a way to tackle difficult and sometimes controversial issues including HIV/AIDS, peer pressure, drugs, teen pregnancy, interracial relationships and homosexuality.
Aya's popularity continues to grow from the Pobé library and beyond; a movie is even supposedly in the works. Pobé's readers, including myself, anxiously wait to find out what troubles Aya and her friends get into next...
"Tri...co...lor....TRICOLOR ! »
Seeing the smile radiate from Salimata's face after she was able to read the difficult word in front of her was priceless. It's not every day one has the opportunity to stay in an African village and help improve students' reading levels. But thanks to a number of reading camps funded by the Lisle Foundation, experiences like the one above were frequent occurrences this summer.
Charley Casler and Emilie Crofton, two volunteers with Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL), spent a week in the village of Boni, helping to run one of seven FAVL summer reading camps in Burkina Faso, W. Africa. The camp took place in Boni's library, which was set up and managed by FAVL in 2009.
The reading camp in Boni gave 26 male and female students between the ages of 11 and 13 the opportunity to improve their reading skills, play games, and learn about their local library. Through group work, individual reading and peer tutoring, students spent the week enhancing their reading skills with daily activities such as story telling, writing and illustrating short books, and vocabulary exercises.
Charley and Emilie read books aloud to the campers, introduced them to comic books and showed them fun word games like crossword puzzles and charades. They also led small group discussions on how to respect the library as a public place and properly care for books to ensure that they last as long as possible.
"It was interesting to learn what the kids thought about their library and see how they viewed it," said Charley. "Most of them understood the importance of respecting the community space and taking care of the books for the benefit of everyone in the village."
When the students weren't doing reading activities, they were busy singing and dancing, doing puzzles, drawing and creating colorful paper masks. One thing was clear to Charley and Emilie: the children had a blast.
"You could tell the students were thrilled to be there. With Burkina's overcrowded classrooms and poor education system, students don't get a lot of one-on-one reading time," said Emilie. "The campers were so excited and attentive during every session. It was a nice feeling to see young kids having so much fun reading."
The volunteers also said that helping out with the camp was a great intercultural experience.
"We were teaching the children a lot of new things but the reality is that they taught us just as much," said Emilie. "Through story telling we learned a lot about their traditions and cultural heritage. We learned all about their way of life."
Boni is a small village of about 2,000 people located in the west of Burkina Faso. The village is rich with art and culture and is known for its talented sculptors and mask-makers. (Charley and Emilie couldn't leave Boni without having bought a couple of painted masks.)
Charley and Emilie said the experience of working the camp was also an eye opener.
"There were a few kids who really didn't know how to read at all, even writing the alphabet was a challenge for them," said Charley. "FAVL's summer reading camp was really a great opportunity to work closely with the children and work on their weaknesses."
Being actively involved gave the volunteers many ideas for improvement at next year's camp in order to further maximize its productivity, efficiency and most importantly, improve the students' reading levels. By the end of the week, Charley and Emilie were encouraged by what they had seen, even while realizing that the reading level of many of the children was lower than they had anticipated.
"There is no denying that these reading camps were a great experience for the kids and an effective means of promoting literacy at the village level," said Charley. "I think that after this week we have an even better idea of what we need to focus on at future camps, especially reviewing and reinforcing the basic foundations of reading, which unfortunately some of the students haven't mastered by the age of 12 or 13: the alphabet, phonetics, as well as the basic components of books and storytelling."
Seeing the smile radiate from Salimata's face after she was able to read the difficult word in front of her was priceless. It's not every day one has the opportunity to stay in an African village and help improve students' reading levels. But thanks to a number of reading camps funded by the Lisle Foundation, experiences like the one above were frequent occurrences this summer.
Charley Casler and Emilie Crofton, two volunteers with Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL), spent a week in the village of Boni, helping to run one of seven FAVL summer reading camps in Burkina Faso, W. Africa. The camp took place in Boni's library, which was set up and managed by FAVL in 2009.
The reading camp in Boni gave 26 male and female students between the ages of 11 and 13 the opportunity to improve their reading skills, play games, and learn about their local library. Through group work, individual reading and peer tutoring, students spent the week enhancing their reading skills with daily activities such as story telling, writing and illustrating short books, and vocabulary exercises.
Charley and Emilie read books aloud to the campers, introduced them to comic books and showed them fun word games like crossword puzzles and charades. They also led small group discussions on how to respect the library as a public place and properly care for books to ensure that they last as long as possible.
"It was interesting to learn what the kids thought about their library and see how they viewed it," said Charley. "Most of them understood the importance of respecting the community space and taking care of the books for the benefit of everyone in the village."
When the students weren't doing reading activities, they were busy singing and dancing, doing puzzles, drawing and creating colorful paper masks. One thing was clear to Charley and Emilie: the children had a blast.
"You could tell the students were thrilled to be there. With Burkina's overcrowded classrooms and poor education system, students don't get a lot of one-on-one reading time," said Emilie. "The campers were so excited and attentive during every session. It was a nice feeling to see young kids having so much fun reading."
The volunteers also said that helping out with the camp was a great intercultural experience.
"We were teaching the children a lot of new things but the reality is that they taught us just as much," said Emilie. "Through story telling we learned a lot about their traditions and cultural heritage. We learned all about their way of life."
Boni is a small village of about 2,000 people located in the west of Burkina Faso. The village is rich with art and culture and is known for its talented sculptors and mask-makers. (Charley and Emilie couldn't leave Boni without having bought a couple of painted masks.)
Charley and Emilie said the experience of working the camp was also an eye opener.
"There were a few kids who really didn't know how to read at all, even writing the alphabet was a challenge for them," said Charley. "FAVL's summer reading camp was really a great opportunity to work closely with the children and work on their weaknesses."
Being actively involved gave the volunteers many ideas for improvement at next year's camp in order to further maximize its productivity, efficiency and most importantly, improve the students' reading levels. By the end of the week, Charley and Emilie were encouraged by what they had seen, even while realizing that the reading level of many of the children was lower than they had anticipated.
"There is no denying that these reading camps were a great experience for the kids and an effective means of promoting literacy at the village level," said Charley. "I think that after this week we have an even better idea of what we need to focus on at future camps, especially reviewing and reinforcing the basic foundations of reading, which unfortunately some of the students haven't mastered by the age of 12 or 13: the alphabet, phonetics, as well as the basic components of books and storytelling."
"Originating from the initiative of a group from the community or an aid agency, their birth is followed by a year or two of rapid growth and a good deal of local publicity and attention. This is followed by a period of slow decline, accompanied by theft, the departure of the initiators, loss of interest among staff and users - the library still exists but signs of life are barely discernible. Sometimes this period continues indefinitely, but often a final stage is reached when all remaining books are removed, stolen, or damaged beyond repair and the premises and staff are allocated to another activity"
(Diana Rosenberg quoted by Mostert, 2001).Mostert, B.J. African Public Library Systems: A Literature Survey. In: LIBRES. Vol. 11, Issue 1, March 31, 2001, Chapter 3. 16 p.
(Diana Rosenberg quoted by Mostert, 2001).Mostert, B.J. African Public Library Systems: A Literature Survey. In: LIBRES. Vol. 11, Issue 1, March 31, 2001, Chapter 3. 16 p.
As part of Burkina Faso's 50th anniversary independence celebrations, I got to hear a man I admire very much, Burkina Faso's first lawyer, and a real cultural intellectual and historian of Burkina, Frederic Pacere Titinga. He gave a great talk (well, almost a song) about Dim Delobsom.... funny thing is the two of us are probably the only people who know as much as we know.... so I'm looking forward to talking more with him this week and next...
I was at a regional conference in Ziniare, part of the 50th anniversary of independence celebrations. I had to take my picture with this guy... Salif, I think his name was (we wrote it down somewhere... I'm going to invite him to the village libraries!).
Happy anniversary, independent Africa!
Happy anniversary, independent Africa!
FAVL and Peace Corps volunteers Emilie and Charlie just returned from a week with the summer reading camps in Boni village. We had a good debriefing this afternoon here in Ouagadougou; look for updates and photos from them in the coming week. FAVL volunteers Francesca and Nico, and Ghana regional coordinator Lucas have wound up (or down!) what seems like an eternity of six weeks of reading camps in Ghana.... they are coming to Ouagadougou on Sunday, so we'll have a giant camp debrief, joining Burkina and Ghana. Shivers!
The RWA students are all settled into their Ouagadougou routine... today we hard first discussion of photo book assignments... color books, alphabet books, shape books, counting books... will be lots of fun.
The RWA students are all settled into their Ouagadougou routine... today we hard first discussion of photo book assignments... color books, alphabet books, shape books, counting books... will be lots of fun.
I'm in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, for the month of September, with the Reading West Africa program. Had a nice short meeting today with Amidou Konfe, the new librarian of Pobe library. He had just spent the week in Sara village, assisting, and learning from, the summer reading camp. He had been very impressed by the kids showing up Monday morning in their matching camp t-shirts. The first day, he said, was a little hard, as everyone realized the reading levels of the kids was lower than expected. But they worked hard all week, he said, and really managed to give lots of kids a huge boost in their reading abilities. He was very impressed with the books of Fatou Keita, and saw that the kids were too. He's ready now to implement something similar in Pobe next summer.
FAVL board member Magi Diego writes:
So, I'm in Texas for 3 days to train our sales team... and Jim, one of the sales team, meets me in the elevator. I barely know him (we have to make sure we know each other) and he says "there is something I've been wanting to give you". Coming from our sales team, I thought it would be a big kick in the rear or something. He whips out his wallet, I'm perplexed. He pulls out a check for $1,000 made out to FAVL and hands it to me. So, I nearly pass out and he tells me: "I heard you speak at our sales kick off in January." This was when I thanked everyone who donated to the Trend Micro Give and Match where we raised ~$600 and my company matched it. He said he had been inspired, and learned more about FAVL and decided he wanted to donate! He was just waiting for his first big commission check to come in. So, I still am about ready to pass out. I thank him profusely!!!!And I echo that. Jim and all the people at Trend Micro, you guys are great, and thanks to you there's a little library in a village in Burkina Faso where kids can come read at night because they have solar power. And by the way, what are kids reading? Emilie, a Peace Corps volunteer who started the library in Pobe, was chatting with me and casually mentioned that young adults in Pobe have been reading Aya hundreds of times... they can't get enough of it.
The surprise ending was that Christoph Schlingensief (who I had never heard of, myself being neither German nor avant-garde) was the Fitzcarraldo of Burkina Faso, but didn't get too far... or was the whole thing an elaborate joke? Read article here- plus illustration of the design of the savannah opera house...
In the African savannah, a good half-hour drive from the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, Christoph Schlingensief felt at home. It is a place surrounded by green fields, granite cliffs and gnarly baobab trees.
"When I was doing so badly, I told my wife, when things get really tough, we can come here with a suitcase full of pain pills," Schlingensief said in February of his African paradise. "I have the feeling that here I can give myself over to nature, to the motion of this world, without the pressure of the life I led in Berlin."
This was the place Schlingensief had chosen to build what he called an opera village. The village was to include an opera house, but also a school for theater and music, performance spaces and a clinic.
Now, after his death on August 21, Schlingensief's family is doing everything to make sure his vision becomes a reality. In his obituary, they requested that donations be made toward the opera village, instead of flowers or wreaths.
Part of the deal for allowing him to play World of Warcraft and Starcraft was he had to read some Africa-related stuff... this wasn;t the best thing to start with, but it was OK.
Read the full entry here- worth it!
August 28, 2010
Today started early as I promised my kids during the second week I would go to the forest with them on Saturday. Looking back these past two weeks went by faster than I can remember. It also means I have only one more camp to run, as the second camp finished yesterday. In the second camp, I decided to focus on doing sound workshops and completing the research component, as the basics in terms of the schedule and division of labour where already laid upon from the first two weeks. This camp I had 19 kids, 9 girls and 10 boys, although one of them wasn't there for most of the time. This student was unable to fully attend because the salary of one of the fathers got stolen. I have found that each household can contain as many as 50 people as the family extends as to how many wives the father has or sometimes many families come together to from a household. Interesting story from Bernard was that the father gathered the entire household and 'laid' a curse of sickness on the one who stole the money. The meaning of this curse is that the first person to get sick was the one who stole the money. When one child got sick, the father and everyone in that household looked down upon this boy, but the mother blamed Safia, one of the girls attending the camp. Then Safia and the boy had to come by and meet with the father every day to talk things over. I haven't gotten this part straight though and don't know how the problem is going to be resolved but I thought the whole witchery was interesting. I have heard many stories having to do with witches and spells, giving way to a country where 'free will' isn't the norm.
Oddly, while I this trip to Chile I read for the The New Yorker's 20 under 40, and the three I read last night were all about children. ZZ Packer's story Dayward is a chilling chronicle of slave escape. Much more gruesome than Harriette Robinet. But still capable of evoking the sentiment of "the best in us". The reassurance of the children as they reach their aunt's house. More ambiguous is Twins, by C.E. Morgan. Great little vignette of the bittersweet world of the child, and the growing realizations and disappointments that the child mind starts to apprehend. The moments where the early brain clamors for identity and belonging. And finally The Kid by Salvatore Scibona, a story that felt forced and topical. A boy is left behind in the airport, deliberately, by his army father, after already having been abandoned by his mother. A metaphor for whole world regions abandoned as the United States throws its power here and there, willy nilly, with no real accounting of the enormous toll of the dislocations caused? Not for us to tally, but just to witness?
