June 2011 Archives

Last night FAVL Treasurer and I, and our friend Martine Sinkondo, put "sealing dots" on 1150 newsletters.  Nothing like 3 hours of transparent sealing dots on your fingers... wasn't there a Beatles song about that? You feel good when it's over.  Deb took the newsletters to Post Office, so you, dear FAVL reader, should have a copy soon.  Read it and share, and please donate to help us continue our activities.

I was reading an interesting article earlier this week:

Gregory Mann, "What was the Indigénat? The 'Empire of Law' in French West Africa", The Journal of African History (2009), 50:331-353

Basically descriptive.  The indigénat was the French colonial practice in West Africa of saying that any French person in authority (including particularly the White Fathers) could punish the native subjects for pretty much anything they wanted to.  The whole citizen and subject thing.  I guess like the implicit code of conduct in the U.S. South?  I don't know enough about how Southern law, formal and in practice, rally worked.  But that's what I imagine at least.

Part of me wishes that my discipline (Economics) would enable me to write (and understand?) sentences like this:

"Rather than traversing an analytical terrain of which agency and structure mark the coordinates and law the terra firma, or invoking the indigénat as anti-structure, I place it at the center of an analysis of the 'colonial situation', not as the luminous essence of colonial ideology but as its inverse, a kind of black hole that represents a center of gravity into which it is difficult to peer but which defines the space around it." 

Yikes!

My one tiny issue with Mann's article is that in a couple places he remarks that the record is hidden on the indigénat, that it wasn't much discussed in it's practice.  My reading of the colonial archives from Burkina, however, is that cases of abuse of indigénat were always coming up in the colonial record. 

Incidentally, my casual impression is that the French colonial authorities left a very poor library infrastructure and reading culture, compared with the British.  But I have never seen it studied/measured.

Le samedi 25 juin s'est tenu à Ouaga dans la salle de conférence de siège du Corps de la Paix l'atelier camp de lecture FAVL. Commencé a 9h00 mn, Elisée Sare, représentant national de FAVL, a souhaité la bienvenue a toutes et tous, ensuite donner la satisfaction de nous trouver ensemble pour un cause commune. Puis se fait la présentation des participants sur un tour de table. Il a part donné ce que sait que FAVL, ce qui fait, et ses objectifs. Emilie donna le début proprement de l'atelier par l'introduction du programme. Ce fut Donkoui Koura, coordonateur régional de FAVL, qui a brassé l'historique des camps de lecture depuis 2008 jusqu'à nos jours. A savoir l'année 2008, 20 élèves du CM1 ont eu 2 semaines de camp de lecture, puis tous les élèves du CM1 dans les écoles ou se trouvent les bibliothèques. Compte tenu des moyens, 25 élèves ont été pris par camp en 2011. Il a par ailleurs souhaité courage aux volontaires dans leur soutien qu'ils éprouvent pour nos camps.
Alidou Boué, gérant animateur de FAVL, a expliqué le guide des camps de lecteurs aux volontaires.
Dounko Sanou, animateur, a bon tous expliqué le guide d'activités et les activités qui réussirent dans les villages avec les enfants. Les volontaires ont à leurs tours donnés quelques activités qui pourraient apporter un plus, comme Flash Word, etc.
Passé cette partie du programme, nous avons eu une session de lecture et discussion en groupes sur le livre avec pour titre « L'arbre de lollie .» Apres la lecture et discussion en group, un parlage ensemble de chaque groupe a été partagé avec tous le monde. Une explication du programme de déroulement d'un camp a suivi la lecture du livre et discussion. Une pause de déjeuner a permis aux participants de manger et faire un petite pause.
Les travaux ont repris avec l'intervention d'Allison Wallace, volontaire Corps de la Paix a Bereba par l'explication des procédures d'apprentissage pour les lecteurs niveau fort, bas et moyens. Des questions ont été posé par un plus de compréhensions par ces collègues. Enfin, les volontaires des village pour les camp a été fait en ceci a mit fin a l'atelier aux environs de 16h.

Le rapporteur,

SANOU Dounko
Animateur

After months of organization and planning, yesterday evening the entire FAVL Burkina staff breathed a huge sigh of relief: the mayors' forum was over and it was a success!

FAVL is working on slowly transitioning library management to rural council. The goal is for mayors' offices to take over librarians' salaries and general library maintenance. This is not something that can be done overnight and the forum was FAVL's first step into this transition.
The forum, which was held on June 25th in Houndé, brought together all the mayors of villages where FAVL libraries are located. During the first half, we discussed FAVL and its role and importance in each community. The second half focused on FAVL's current situation and shared possible strategies for a successful transition. We split up the mayors into small groups where they debated amongst themselves first and then we'd come together to discuss as a group.
 
Everyone was happy and impressed with how the workshop went. While some of the mayors may have arrived late, every library was represented by either the mayor himself or one of his representatives. They were lively, engaged and actively participated in the discussions. We were also grateful that they took the issue both seriously and realistically. They didn't just say "Oh yes, yes no problem" or "No, no, no. There's no money." We discussed the issues, the realities, the challenges and addressed possible solutions.
All the mayors agreed that while it will take time, this transition is important and necessary. They decided that 2 ½ to 3 years is a realistic time for the transition to succeed.
 
We're hoping to hold another meeting with the mayors next year in 2012. In the meantime the mayors said that they will:
-    Discuss with the rest of rural council on what took place at the forum
-    Work on incorporating part of the librarian salary into next year's budget
-    Write grants and ask for financial help from their partners
-    Work to increase library membership (they said that all students should be members)
-    Meet with other village councils (ex. APE, the local school parents' group) to discuss possible solutions
-    2 mayors vowed that even if they could not get part of the librarians' salary into the 2012 budget, they would make a contribution to their library.

This is actually the first-ever solicited book review on the FAVL blog.  I got a free copy of the book, but no payment.  Stephen Davie lives in Djibo, northern Burkina Faso, and knows Charley and Emilie, FAVL's two Peace Corps volunteers. So I guess he's been reading the blog, and when his new book came out he sent along an email asking if I had noticed it, and then was kind enough to have the publisher, Anderson Press, send a copy.

The book is a good adventure story, with high appeal for the 10-14 year old boy crowd.  Elliot liked it just fine (of course, he's lived in Ouagadougou).  I thought it was good too.  Very nicely written.  Davies has excellent grammar, plotting, style.  And I enjoyed all the references to Burkina.

So definitely recommendable to anyone with Sahel experience and young readers in the household.

A very short plot summary is de rigueur: Jake Knight is son of British Ambassador.  he's the lead, but his sister Kas has a big role too. They are kidnapped in Burkina. Lot's of adventures and interesting characters.  There is a strong social justice component.  No dystopia here, just a lot of earnest fun and hope. 

Personally, I'd rather have had the Burkinabè outlaw Yacouba Sor character be the central character, and ditch the expatriate children altogether.  I'm hoping Steve will perhaps venture out into something along those lines?  There's little market for that, I suppose.  But then, what a fun adventure, to create and lead the market for adventure fiction in the Sahel... doing what Alexander McCall Smith did for the African detective novel.

A journalist wants to talk with me about the new capital city the authorities in South Sudan are planning, once they become independent on July 9, 2011.  I'm pretty skeptical.  These would be my talking points, though I hardly claim to be an urban economics specialist.

1- construction generally is an easy opening for corruption, because the true costs of projects are impossible for citizens and civil society to monitor, and bidding can be rigged.  Buying everyone in South Sudan a bicycle, by contrast, is pretty easy to figure out: 5 million people times $100 = $500 million.
2- South Sudan probably has more need for decentralization than centralization.  Centralisation- a huge capital city/Juba conurbation, will likely produce unstable regime dynamics and difficulty to control hinterlands (i.e. against armed militais like LRA)
3- a planned city like this is likely very regressive- the significant beneficiaries are the already wealthy top 25% of South Sudan, with the bottom 75% seeing few spillovers.
4- GOSS should concentrate on basic infrastructure- electric power, water distribution- and allow private sector to build.  GOSS should be happy to live/work in very modest accommodations.
5-Village libraries, ah, there's the real secret to development....

Sena Agawu and Emily Costello, two high school students, organized read-a-thons to benefit FAVL.  here's their summary of their work.  Thanks Sena and Emily!!!!

For our senior project, we took our love of reading, and the suggestion from the FAVL website, and held a read-a-thon in a local elementary school for six 3rd and 4th grade classrooms. It was a long and complex process simply to prepare to present in the classes. We needed permission from the superintendent of the State College, Pennsylvania school district, from the principal of Radio Park Elementary, and from the individual teachers themselves. We attended many meetings and conferences, during which we were required to present the ideas and goals of our project. We also wrote countless emails to the principal, librarian, and six teachers we were working with. Two instrumental figures in our project were our mothers and our English teacher, Mr. Goldfine, who was also our project advisor.

Throughout this process, we learned many necessary tools to help us organize fundraisers in the future, and we learned exactly how much work goes into an involved project such as this one.

Presenting in the classrooms was the highlight of our project and went better than we could have hoped. It was uplifting to see how excited the kids were about reading, and helping kids their own age in Africa have access to books. Our presentation coincided with their Africa unit in school, which gave them a better understanding of where the money they raised was going. We gave them handouts downloaded from the FAVL website to record the books they read, as well as sign up sheets for their sponsors' use. The teachers themselves were very supportive and we could not have succeeded without their help. On the last day of the read-a-thon, we fried plantains and made Kelewele, a native dish of Ghana, for the kids and teachers to enjoy. We praised the children who participated for their hard work, and collected the money, over 700 dollars!

Overall, it was a very rewarding and successful senior project, and we were glad we could share our love of reading with kids in our own school district, as well as across the ocean in Africa!

more pics...

Kate Parry writes:

What have libraries to do with sanitary towels? UgCLA and AFRIpads


In January 2011 we at UgCLA invited AFRIpads to our first national conference. Our theme was "Libraries for Health", and Sonia and her colleague made a presentation about feminine hygiene and offered a program whereby those libraries that were interested could act as local distributors of AFRIpads, selling them at a small profit so as to raise revenue for their own library activities. The managers of our member libraries - who are mostly men - were absolutely fascinated: "I didn't know [about the girls' problems]" several of them told me later. Since then five libraries have purchased AFRIpads and are selling them to girls and women in their communities at a subsidized price of 4,000 shillings (a little more than $1.50) a packet, keeping 500 shillings (about 20 cents), and then using the balance to purchase more pads.  In the months since the "Libraries for Health" conference these five libraries have purchased nearly 900 kits and demand continues to grow.  This program has simultaneously enabled the participating libraries to generate a small revenue for their programs, while also making their libraries access points for local women and girls to cost-effective, feminine protection.   Sonia believes that the only reason why more libraries haven't come forward is that it's difficult for them to find the capital to purchase the initial stock.

But so far so good. We at UgCLA have always believed that community libraries in Africa are as much about development as they are about books, and this is a practical way of demonstrating the point. Thank you AFRIpads!

The article cites no research or evidence on the impact of school libraries compared with "full-day" teachers.  Remarkable actually that a large-scale randomized experiment has not been run where one period a day students spend in quiet free reading time in the library, with helpful guidance about reading choices from a librarian.  My prior is that 2-3 years of that "treatment" would show that library reading time generates better reading scores and more "knowledge" than in-class time, which has to be marginally effective in its 7th hour, and that the variable costs are probably similar if not lower (libraries do have significant fixed costs, but the irony of the article - validated by our local experience here in San Jose- is that the public loves spending money on library infrastructure, while school officials love cutting library variable costs).

The schools superintendent in Lancaster, Pa., said he had to eliminate 15 of the district's 20 librarians to save full-day kindergarten classes. In the Salem-Keizer school district in Oregon, all 48 elementary and middle school librarians would lose their jobs under a budget proposal that faces a vote next week. In Illinois's School District 90, which spans several rural and suburban communities in the southern part of the state, parent volunteers have been running the libraries in the district's seven schools since September, in what the schools superintendent, Todd Koehl, described as "a last-ditch effort" to avoid closing their doors. And in New York City, half of the secondary schools appear to be in violation of a state regulation requiring them to have a librarian on staff, with the city currently employing 365 licensed librarians. "The dilemma that schools will face is whether to cut a teacher who has been working with kids all day long in a classroom or cut teachers who are working in a support capacity, like librarians," the city's chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, said in an interview. In New York, as in districts across the country, many school officials said they had little choice but to eliminate librarians, having already reduced administrative staff, frozen wages, shed extracurricular activities and trimmed spending on supplies. Technological advances are also changing some officials' view of librarians: as more classrooms are equipped with laptops, tablets or e-readers, Mr. Polakow-Suransky noted, students can often do research from their desks that previously might have required a library visit. "It's the way of the future," he said.

"The way of the future"?  He needs to visit Martin Luther King, Jr. library in San Jose, or Joyce Ellington Branch library to see how nicely libraries fit into the future.

We just wrapped up a day-long training here in Ouaga with the FAVL staff and a group of 12 Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV's).  It was a wonderfully productive workshop at which we discussed the history and structure of FAVL's literacy camps, FAVL's activities, methods for working with low-level readers and plans for this summer's camps.  We had some great discussions about strategies and activities that PCV's use at their sites before we broke up into groups for a lesson planning session with one of the books we'll be using at the camps. "Un Arbre pour Lolli," by Fatou Keïta, tells the story of a young HIV+ girl's struggle to gain acceptance from her classmates and will allow us to integrate Life Skills into our reading lessons.  Later this summer the PCV's will team up with FAVL staff and local teachers to run a camp at each of FAVL's Burkina libraries.

Etaient présents : 13 Lecteurs, le Coordonnateur, l'Animateur et les gérants. (liste jointe en annexe)  Présidée par le Coordonnateur Régional, l'ordre du jour de la séance a porté sur les points suivants :
              
Recueil des avis des lecteurs sur la bibliothèque.
Suggestions et recommandations des lecteurs
Divers

Avant d'aborder l'ordre  du jour, le Coordonnateur, président de la séance, a d'abord remercié
les lecteurs pour leur  présence effective et  l'importance qu'ils ont accordée à cette rencontre.  Ensuite une présentation d'usage a été demandée  à tous les participants  qui n'ont pas hésité de  décliner leur identité. Après avoir rappelé brièvement les objectifs poursuivis par les bibliothèques de FAVL en général et  celle de BEREBA en particulier, la parole a été donnée à chacun.  Les lecteurs se sont  présentés à tour de rôle.

En ce qui concerne le premier point,les lecteurs ont donné leurs avis sur la bibliothèque.  Il ressort que la rencontre initiée avec les lecteurs est à saluer car c'est le cadre approprié pour poser les problèmes. Au nombre des avis, on peut retenir ceux-ci :
Tous les lecteurs estiment être satisfaits de l'existence de la bibliothèque.
Leur niveau de culture en français a évolué.
La bibliothèque leur rend des services énormes et joue un rôle important dans la vie des élèves et étudiants.
Notre vocabulaire s'enrichit au fur et à mesure que nous lisons.
Les romans sont chers, grâce à la bibliothèque nous les avons à notre disposition à un coût dérisoire.
Nos jeunes frères sont en entrain de prendre les habitudes de lecture, ce qui est formidable.
Notre culture générale s'améliore nous permettant de prendre part à des débats, de faire des dissertations.

Cependant des imperfections subsistent :
Le manque de romans africains.
Manque et insuffisance des romains au programme scolaire.
Manque de manuels en anglais (livres disponibles volumineux et niveau très élevé)
Manque de lumière pour les études de nuit.
Délais de deux (2) semaines de prêt est trop court pour les élèves de 3ème qui n'ont pas assez de temps.
Manque de documents en allemand car le CEG est érigé en lycée départemental de BEREBA, l'allemand y est enseigné.
Le manque d'annales de mathématiques, de sciences de la vie et de la terre (SVT)
Le non respect des heures d'ouvertures par les gérants.
Les retards des gérants.

Ensuite des questions ont été posées. On retient la question  suivante :
Pourquoi on interdit la sortie de certains livres ?
A  cette question, la gérante a fait comprendre  aux lecteurs que les nouveaux livres font d'abord l'objet d'une exposition sur les étagères pliables avant d'être autorisés pour la sortie.  Pour le cas de certains livres, la cherté, les exemplaires uniques très sollicités  sont protégés pour la consultation sur place. Cela permet à chacun d'en profiter.

Le deuxième point de l'ordre du jour a porté sur les suggestions et recommandations des lecteurs.  Ce sont :
Le respect des heures d'ouvertures  par les gérants et éviter tout retard.
La considération des lecteurs par les gérants.
La régularisation de la lumière et changer les horaires pour permettre les études de nuit à la bibliothèque.
Le renouvellement du stock des romans africains.
La dotation de la bibliothèque des livres au programme
Dotation en annales de Maths et de SVT de 3ème  

Pour nous permettre de renforcer le niveau.
La dotation en livres d'anglais scolaires et élémentaires.
Dotation en documents d'allemand.
Le prolongement du délai de prêt des romans pour les élèves de 3ème.

A la fin  gérants et animateurs ont procédé à une séance de sensibilisation sur l'entretien des livres. Il a été demandé aux lecteurs de :
Sensibiliser leurs camarades pour la lecture
Aider à entretenir les livres
Aider à la recherche des livres perdus ou en retard
Sensibiliser à la technique d'ouverture des pages du livre

Les lecteurs ont promis de travailler en collaboration avec les gérants pour la bonne marche de la bibliothèque. Un lecteur a déploré le fait que certains lecteurs écrivent ou soulignent des mots ou phrases dans les romans. Cette pratique est à bannir. Par conséquent ils promettent de sensibiliser les autres.

En divers, le coordonnateur a invité les lecteurs à faire des écrits  pour alimenter le journal « Echos des bibliothèques » qui paraîtra  bientôt.
La prochaine rencontre est prévue dans deux (2) semaines et les lecteurs proposent un samedi soir. C'est aux environs de 11h30mn que la rencontre a pris fin après  les remerciements et encouragements  des lecteurs et qu'une attention particulière sera accordée aux doléances.
                                
LE COORDONNATEUR REGIONAL   
KOURA DONKOUI

FAVL is hosting this weekend a workshop with 10 Peace Corps volunteers who will be working on summer reading camps. 

Then next week FAVL is hosting and leading a workshop for six mayors from the localities where FAVL has libraries.  Often the mayors are not much involved with library functioning, and we are initiating a series of programs to get mayors more involved, so they can lead their rural councils to adopt formal policies of "incorporation" of libraries into the ordinary functioning of the rural municipality. 

Rural councils and mayors were first elected in 2006 in Burkina Faso in a process of administrative decentralization (from the inherited French prefecture system.  There should be new local elections in 2011, but there is talk of postponing this. That would be a bad thing. Local democracy thrives where peaceful transitions become embedded in the ordinary fabric of civic life.

HT: Bill Sundstrom!

I just got back from a whistle-stop tour of the northern villages, which allowed me to say some final goodbyes to friends in Béléhédé as well as to get a first look at their new library.  Peace Corps has been requesting permission from the U.S. Embassy for months now for me to visit my former community in order to see the library that I've spent much of my Peace Corps service working on and to say goodbye to the village that welcomed me into their community as a Girls Education and Empowerment Volunteer two years ago.  The embassy finally gave the go-ahead and I couldn't have been more thrilled by the chance to see my old friends and site one last time before heading home next week.

I left early yesterday morning with my friend Marita, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, and François, our FAVL driver who in another life would have been a NASCAR legend.  We arrived in Béléhédé in the early afternoon and were greeted by Alou, the librarian, and a libraryful of children and adults coloring, reading, and playing scrabble.  While the library isn't even completely renovated yet, it is already operational and drawing enthusiastic crowds.  I was thrilled to hear from my friend Pahitiba that she had checked out a resource manual on HIV/AIDS and has been showing it to all of the women who come into the community health clinic where she works.  I also spied out on a table a copy of one of the chilrden's books that we'll be using at this summer's reading camps.  It is encouraging to know that some of the kids will be familiar with it when Dounko and crew arrive in August.

Outside under the shade of a large tree a group of adults, on break from work at the elementary school and health clinic which neighbor the library on either side, were playing scrabble.  Alou had been asking me for a couple of weeks to send up a dictionary and when I handed him the one I'd brought with me he told me it would be of great use in their competitions - hopefully they'll also share it from time to time with students studying for exams....

After seeing the library and unloading a few boxes of new books and maps from the car, we walked around the village so I could greet old friends and former neighbors before heading on to Pobé.  As we had so much to do and so many people to see in Béléhédé, we unfortunately didn't arrive at Emilie's old site until the sun was setting.  Before the light faded we got to take a quick tour, look through the account books, and chat with Hamidou, the librarian, who gave us a rundown of his plans for a Cultural Room and Activity Space.  Apologizing for the darkness, he hinted at how much the library would appreciate a solar panel in order to remain open later in the evenings -  a wonderful idea which will hopefully see the light of day once we aren't quite so constricted by the budget.

Exhausted after an eventful day, we spent the night with one of Emilie's friends who graciously opened his home for us.  I won't have many more nights under such an unadulterated expanse of stars, so I jumped at the opportunity to sleep outside in the courtyard.  Tired though I was, it took a while to fall asleep as I looked up and thought back over the past two years of my life here in Burkina.  My favorite part of the day in Béléhédé used to be the hour before sleep when I would lie out on a mat in my courtyard, staring up at the stars and the moon and trying to feel the force of gravity holding me in place as I eventually drifted off.  It was a strange and wonderful feeling to be back in almost the same spot, having come full circle - twice.

First thing this morning we headed back to Ouaga in time for a planning session for tomorrow's Summer Camps Workshop and our meeting in Houndé next week with the mayors, during which we will discuss the transition of responsibilities of the libraries from FAVL to the local government.  Still many miles to go....

Next Library Conference was a great experience for me. I learned many things, and I met the world here.  Denmark is a beautiful country, and I appreciated the openness and solidarity of the Danish I met during my stay.  I met some nice people and very open, despite the difference. I learned a lot from them. And I hope I shared the best I know about libraries in Burkina Faso, my country.  I have visited many libraries in Denmark. I loved the fact that these libraries are the focus of their concern the needs of their community.

I liked how libraries are decorated especially youth space. I am very interested in the fact that a library should be a place attractive to users and the community.  I appreciate being able to work with the panel: Building Your Community, which was an opportunity to share one of my biggest projects this year with different people, and have their views on the issue I especially learned.

I truly believe that the organizers have done an excellent job, they were open since the early
registration until the end of the conference. They assisted me whenever I needed them. I take my hat off to Lotte and Jacob, and all those who organized this conference. I would especially like to thank the organizers for their support but also sponsors that allowed us to come here thanks to the scholarship.  I go to my country with a lot of new ideas. I will share with my colleagues what I have learned to make our libraries more user-friendly and more efficient

Elisée


 

VOXPOPS & IMPRESSIONS FROM THE CONFERENCE! from Jacob Dalsager on Vimeo.

I haven't put up a post in quite a while, which I'll blame on my vacation to Senegal.  I just got back from the trip, which took a four day voyage by bus from Dakar to Ouagadougou.  Overall it was a great experience and I got to pack in lots of time at the beach and eat as much seafood as possible before heading back to landlocked Burkina.  While I unfortunately didn't make it to any libraries, I did check out a few bookstores including one at an Americanesque mall in Dakar.  

You can find the updates for several of the libraries here.

FAVL received some wonderful new books from Kathy Knowles of Osu Children's Library Fund.  We sent them off the Ghana for the libraries in Bolgatanga area.  But one foto struck me- the orange cap belongs to our wonderful FAVL/RWA driver Francois.  See Kathy's complete catalog here.

Believe it or not I am reading this for the first time and enjoying the style quite a lot.  I'm no heavy duty analyst, for that I turn to others.  I just finished "the complete gentleman" part, and found this excellent blog Gukira that provides some context and reflection.  An extract from the complete blog entry:

My favorite narrative sequence in The Palm-Wine Drinkard is about the "complete gentleman." Briefly, a "complete gentleman" visits a market and, while there, attracts the attention of the town beauty, a young woman who has refused to marry because she finds all other men lacking. Infatuated with him, she decides to follow him home, despite his repeated warnings that she should turn back. On the way home, he begins to shed parts of himself, returning his borrowed accoutrements, including clothing, limbs, and skin. Fully denuded, the "complete gentleman" is revealed to be a Skull. He imprisons the young woman in a community of Skulls and renders her dumb by tying a cowrie shell around her neck. The narrator rescues her. Of course.

The tale of the deceptively beautiful young man is fairly common in African folktales. And it is striking that it's often men, not women, whose beauty is considered deceptive. One could stage an encounter between urban and rural forms of masculinity here, and, following an East African vein, relate this sequence to that between Lawino and the absent Clementine. Interesting tangent. Will not pursue.

Two questions: what does it mean that a "complete gentleman" is composed of a series of discrete, borrowed parts? And, what does it mean, especially within Afro-modernity, that the "real gentleman" is a silencing Skull?

(I should confess that the African fetishization of "the gentleman," and our point of reference is invariably "the colonial gentleman," irritates me to no end. That we continue to valorize this figure and aspire to it is really quite silly.)

In disassembling the "complete gentleman," Tutuola makes visible the various elements that, cumulatively, create the gentleman, elements that, when disaggregated, function as fetishes, a term that has the same suturing effect as Afro-modernity. It sutures the anthropological-religious element with the psychic-capitalist.

Summer is here, which means I have a lot more time for thinking and reading.  I just finished a wonderful short children's book (4th grade level), Ride the Red Cycle, by Harriette Robinet, published in 1980, with illustrations by David Brown.  The writing is perfect, and the story straightforward: a disabled boy wants to prove he can do something by himself. 

The boy, Jerome, is double marginalized: African-American and disabled.  (Being 11 is also not too easy!)  What is nice about Robinet is the first marginalization is never mentioned.  Of course, that is one of Robinet's gifts, as an African-American writer who writes about the lives of African-American children in the United States the way anyone writes about the lives of children anywhere: as about their lives, and not overtly about the sociology of the larger world they live in.  The second marginalization is matter-of-factly presented as the subject of the story.  This is the way life is, the story says.  You are who you make yourself to be.  Robinet has an eye for detail and truthful observation that I love, e.g., when she observes the siblings who cannot resist hurting each other, verbally and physically.  (Do I see that everyday with Elliot and Sukie and their friends? Yes!)  Wonderful children, like Jerome, have their flaws too.

The book got me thinking about marginalization and libraries.  One of the major social functions of libraries, very difficult to measure, is to give access to alternative identities to the marginalized, who are often trapped in identities and communities that reinforce marginalization.  Hearing inspiring stories, envisioning alternative lives... these are the things that books do cheaply.  Sure, movies and songs do the same thing.  (I often wonder what it would be like to be a white Southerner growing up racist and parochial, and coming across My Morning Jacket.)  But books do that mind-expanding possibility much better, because all the work is in your mind.  Or so I think!  Whenever I come into one of the libraries in Burkina Faso and Ghana, which are well-stocked with African fiction and fiction from many other regions of the world, I always think about that one person in the village who never fit in, who always harbored doubts about local identity, and who found, with a shock, a character in a book who was just what they thought they themselves were: brave, different, and fully human.  Can you tell I'm a Reinaldo Arenas fan?

Anyway, Ride the Red Cycle is on its way to one of the Ghana libraries with two wonderful volunteers who will be there this summer.

By the way, Robinet has been a wonderful FAVL supporter for many years. 

David Pace had another photo essay published in Lens Culture magazine featuring photos of the Friday night dance in Bereba.




 

These are from recent librarian reports:

In Kunkua, a mini reading camp was held in March.  Students also participated in a storybook reading competition. Winners were Aganelaa Awinbila, age 13, Awine Awinpoka, age 11, and Agnes Salifu, age 17.  Kids played Lida, snakes and ladders, and freeze tag (wow, freeze tag definitely an import by the American volunteers).  Unfortunately the library solar panel was stolen off the roof.  The local library committee had extensive meetings and plans to have the panel replaced. The chair of the library committee, Adua Donatus, sent a formal letter of thanks to FAVL donors for continuing support!

Sherigu, as previously noted, benefited from a new electric connection that allows night lighting.  During the day, though, kids are playing free stag (that's right... hmmm... could that possible be freeze tag?!)  They are also playing Seven Up in Sherigu and other libraries.  Seven kids stand with their eyes closed, other kids come and tag them, and the kids have to guess who tagged them. If they guess correctly, they are placed.  These fun games, by the way, are an essential complement to reading. The attention span of younger children is 15 minute chunks, so varying reading with games is the exact right way to encourage reading and turn it into a pleasure rather than a chore. As they gradually read more, their attention span develops and they are more capable of getting "lost" in a book.  In Sherigu students were also playing "yese" where children line up and try to spell words.  Each child says a letter of the word, in turn.  If they miss the correct letter, the other children yell "yese", out!  The remaining children in line continue to try to spell words.  Kids in Sherigu also play hangman.

In Sumbrungu, the librarian has been highlighting the poor and deteriorated state of the furniture in the library.  The tables and benches are worn and old.  There is little money for repairs.  The librarian (Darius Asanga) wonders whether the FAVL/CESRUD partnership is working well.  [Aside from MK: it is working well, but donations are down from previous years.]  Sumbrungu also faces the problem of having Politechnic students (a vocational college) taking ove rthe library, especially in the evneings, and shushing the children, who are naturally more boisterous.  In March the library was closed for much of the month due to construction of women's center.

Came across this great blog by Katherine Alfredo, from her research stay in Bongo are (just north of Bolgatanga) during 2009.  An except:

As you can see, Bongo has a lot of fluoride! Way more than was expected. The shading is just an interpolation of the data points. I sampled eight of the capped wells, none of which produced unusually high numbers, and so it is safe to say they are not tapping into any separate aquifer. So, this is just scratching the surface of all the information and data that we gathered, but I thought it would be nice to show you all (if anyone is still reading our blog that is) the fruits of our labor. In total we tested 286 wells (but visited more including the capped and newly drilled ones), all by bicycle, over the area. Now the difficulty is to bring these maps (I made one for each governance in the district) to the community members and try to explain why they have capped wells when other areas have higher levels of fluoride but still have access to their water. It should be interesting!

Bringing Books to Life - Running Child Friendly Libraries

A new guide - Running Child Friendly Libraries - has been published by Book Aid International. The guide aims to introduce librarians to ideas to make libraries friendlier places for children, and has grown out of a project with Kenya and Tanzania National Librray Services to help develop children's services.

http://www.bookaid.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/BBTL_Running_child_friendly_libraries.pdf : http://www.bookaid.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/BBTL_Running_child_friendly_libraries.pdf

It is the third guide in Book Aid International's 'Bringing Books to Life' series. It follows on from two guides aimed at teachers and librarians in schools - 'Starting and Managing a Book Collection' and 'Using Books in the Classroom'. These are available from their website, http://www.bookaid.org/our-work/publications/ : http://www.bookaid.org/our-work/publications/.

The introduction explains:

'Sometimes as an adult it is easy to forget what it is like to be a child. As you read this guide, we want you to step into a child's shoes, and think about what would make you, if you were a child, want to visit a library. What would attract you through those library doors?

As a children's librarian, you have a vital role in making the library an enticing place where children are encouraged to develop a love of reading and a thirst for knowledge. By offering a welcoming and friendly library, the right books and a range of book-related activities, you can help provide children with the start they need in life.'

From the NY Times:

A new meningococcal vaccine, just introduced in West Africa, has produced very encouraging results, according to the public-private partnership coordinating its distribution. This year's meningitis season is almost over, and there have been only four confirmed cases of meningitis A in Burkina Faso, the first country to offer the shot to all citizens under 30 (above, a child was vaccinated there). Three infections were in people from Togo, where the vaccine is not used; they had crossed the border for care. The fourth was in a Burkinan who was not vaccinated.

That's Burkinbè, not Burkinan!  Jeez.  At least it wasn't Burkinista.

So my library-related thought... wouldn;t it be great if Gates Foundation had a small grant of $2,000 and we would create a picture book about the vaccine and meningitis and global health?  Sweet.  Any Gates people reading this?  Make it so!

Bonsoir a tous,
Je m'en vais ce soir au Danemark pour participer a la conférence international de NEXT Library a Aarhus entre le 19 et le 21 juin. Je suis en effet invité à présenter quelque chose avec quatre autres récipiendaires de la bourse sur le thème "Building Community." Je vais parler du travail de FAVL avec les communautés, durant tout le processus d'établissement et de fonctionnement d'une bibliothèque rurale; pour finir avec la perspective de l'implication des maires dans la gestion des bibliothèques.  
Je sens que ce serait une belle aventure. Je rencontrais beaucoup de professionnelle avec qui j'échangerai sur la question des bibliothèques. J'espère pouvoir revenir avec un carnet d'adresses qui certainement bénéficierait à nos bibliothèques.

Elisée


Good evening everyone,
I am leaving tonight for Denmark to participate in the International NEXT Library Conference in Aarhus from June 19th through June 21st. I have been invited to present along with four others grant recipients on the theme "Building Community." I'll talk about FAVL's work with communities throughout the process of establishment and operation of a rural library and ending with the prospect of the involvement of mayors in the management of the libraries.
I feel that this will be a great adventure. I will meet a lot of professionals with whom I can exchange and share library issues with. I hope to return with a list of contacts that will benefit our libraries.

Elisée

Kate Parry writes:

UgCLA has had a partnership for over a year now with a small New York-based organization called Pockets of Change (POB), which distributes grants to projects that are small enough for a small amount of money to make a difference. Last year POB gave UgCLA the funds to distribute a packet of children's books worth $200 to each of ten libraries. This year it has just decided to distribute a further six packets, together with $100 to each recipient library for program implementation. The libraries were selected on the basis of proposals that they submitted, the major criterion for selection being how great the need for the books seemed to be. I will be visiting each of the six to deliver the packets and funds and to discuss the program. The libraries in question are Sida Community and Ewadri Primary School in the Northwest, Bunalwenhi, Christian Community Foundation Bududa and Six Communities Busia, all in the East, and Zinunula Omunaku Educational Center in the Central Region. POB is also giving UgCLA $500 to cover the cost of visits.

In addition, Hawk Children's Fund (HCF), of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, has recently sent us $7000 to cover the cost of four Health Reading Camps to be held in August. For these camps we shall select our strongest libraries, because if the camps are successful HCF will use them as a basis for seeking much larger funding next year. The camps will take place in August and will last only a week, because the school holidays are too short for longer and parents may object to losing so much of their children's labor. Each participating library will receive a packet of books focusing on health - especially HIV-AIDS - and the children will discuss some of these books with the camp facilitators; but they will also have opportunities to read other books (on more cheerful subjects!), and there will be plenty of games and good food - and the food, too, will be a subject for discussion.

Grace Musoke, UgCLA's coordinator, has recently won a grant for UgCLA from Book Aid International (the grant is not confirmed yet, but we have been told that the final stage is merely a formality). The grant includes two shipments of books with a budget to arrange for their distribution. Our plan is to ask a member library that has sufficient space to host a workshop to which other libraries can send representatives; together the librarians will sort out the books, choose which ones they want for their own libraries, and discuss how they will use them. Better still, the grant also includes 10,000 pounds (sterling) to be distributed to ten libraries for refurbishing buildings and/or buying furniture and books. We have yet to decide how we will select the recipients since our practice of soliciting proposals is not entirely satisfactory; we are too likely to wind up selecting the libraries whose managers have the best English!

Grace, alas, will shortly be leaving UgCLA, having found a better-paying job elsewhere. But she is determined to remain attached to the organization and will play an active role in training her successor. She will also continue to look after UgCLA's website for the next few months. We are most grateful to her for this help and for all the good work she has done for us since she joined us in 2008.

If you have 13 year old boys, then the new movie by J.J. Abrams Super 8 is definitely the movie for them.  I took Elliot and his friends last weekend, and they absolutely loved it.  What was most interesting to me was that they all said they were scared.  This is a group that has seen hundreds of movies in their short lives (my generation never tires of relating how we only saw a few movies a year, in the era before video, DVD, Internet!).  So the movie was a nice introduction to real suspense... I enjoyed it too, even if it was pretty standard kid movie fare... except.... I just couldn't stand the gratuitous male-centric attitude.  The mothers are absent; the one girl is there almost literally to be saved by the boy (while she is hanging upside down).  I don't know... why?  I think of Joss Whedon, where girls and female characters are infused throughout, no real difference in the genders (OK of course there are, but not in terms of centrality etc...)

I apologize, as the following has absolutely nothing to do with FAVL, reading, nor libraries, let alone anything remotely educational. Just a little humorous excerpt about my first visit to a hair salon in Burkina Faso:

Asides from having my host sister braid my hair once during my first months of training back in 2008, I had yet to get my hair done in this country. There are a lot of reasons for this, the main ones probably being the fact that it's 100 degrees 360 days of the year, I sweat 24/7 and I could give a rat's butt what my hair looks like. But I decided to use the wedding of a fellow volunteer, a good friend of mine, and her fiancée Olivier as reason to try a style called "flastuce" that I frequently see and like on Burkinabe women. Sitting in the styling chair, I was nervous. So many factors made this experience horrific:
-The first words out of the stylist's mouth were that she had never worked on a "white person" before and had no experience with my kind of hair (though to give her credit, most stylists in the States don't know what do either with my thick, frizzy, biracial hair).
- I have hair that comes down well below my shoulders but because she had never worked with my kind of hair, she told me that she couldn't do the hair style without using hair extensions.
 - Hair extensions wouldn't have been that big an issue, except for the fact that the only color she had was black. In fact, looking at my choices, the lightest color she had was called "midnight black." Not so great when you have light brown/dirty blond hair.
-  I quickly discovered the color of the hair extensions wouldn't matter, however, because she began to use about 1 lb of dark brown hair gel often used on black, African-American hair, to ensure that the twists remained glued to my head. For the next two days, anytime I touched my hair, thick, dark brown globs of gel came off onto my fingers, staining everything from my clothes to my bed sheets. Fortunately/Unfortunately, she used so much of the dark-colored gel that you couldn't even tell I had black extensions in my hair.

Voici un excellent rapport de KOURA Ivette et KOURA Zomizou, bibliothécaires à Béréba, qu'ils ont amené durant le moi de mai.


Les 19, 20, 24 et 27 mai nous avons fait les activités suivantes :
1)    -      Sensibilisation sur l'hygiène
        -    Discussion sur l'entretien des livres
        -    Dessin
        -    Jeux de domino et de puzzle
2)    Charades et Devinettes
3)    Formation des mots
4)    Lecture de bandes-dessinées avec 75 enfants

Les deux dernières activités on été animées avec les livres suivants :
-Livres de langage CE1 ; un livre qui est très riche en exercices pour mieux former les enfants en français.
- Kouka « La rançon de la corruption » une bande-dessinée adapter pour apprendre à lire les bandes dessinées aux enfants et connaitre ce qu'est la corruption et ses conséquences.

Quand aux deux premières activités, nous avons utilisé nos propres techniques à travers les questions/réponses pour faire connaitre aux enfants ce qu'est la propreté et comment les saletés peuvent nuire à l'homme. Exemple : les maladies telles que la diarrhée.
Montrer aux enfants que quand on est salle on ne peut pas bien entretenir un livre.
Faire connaitre aux enfants comment tourner les pages d'un livre ; comment l'entretenir même pendant les vacances.
 
Pour distraire les enfants nous avons fait les dessins, charades et devinettes.

La formation des mots a fait savoir aux enfants qu'un mot pouvait être formé a partir d'un autre mot en utilisant les syllabes.
 
La lecture de bande-dessinés a permit aux enfants de connaitre comment on lit la bande dessinée, connaitre ce que c'est que la corruption, qui est nuisible pour la réussite et qui est punie par notre pays.
 
Nous pensons que les voix et les moyens que nous avons utilisés pour animer ces séances ont été bons. Car 7 filles de l'école de Sibalo qui ont participées a une de séances le 19 mai pour la première fois ont trouvé qu'il est vraiment intéressant de venir a la bibliothèque.
 
KOURA Zomizou et KOURA Ivette

The Peace Corps transit house has a huge take-a-book/leave-a-book library but you have to spend a lot of time digging through the trashy romance novels before finding a good read. Well, I did some digging and was lucky to come across Uzodinma Iweala's award-winning Beasts of No Nation.

The novel follows Agu, a young boy forced to become a child soldier in an unnamed West African country. In a sort of Pidgen English, Agu describes his horrifying experiences of war, murder, mutilation, rape, cannibalism, starvation and thirst.
 From the depiction of a drugged-up Agu chopping up a woman and her child into bits with his machete to the rape scenes of Agu by his Commander, Iweala gets straight to the point, writing in a raw, crude and explicit style. Iweala hides no details but that's exactly what makes readers understand (well, at least try to understand) the horrors that the narrator goes through.
The scene of Agu's first kill is particularly moving yet disturbing at the same time: "...I am bringing the machete up and down and up and down hearing KPWUDA KPWUDA every time and seeing just pink while I am hearing the laughing KEHI, KEHI, KEHI all around me...Commandant is saying it is like falling in love."

I've read several novels and autobiographies on child soldiers (favorite being Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) and I'm always struck by the fact that no matter how gruesome, violent or animal-like the soldiers become, no matter how many women and girls they rape, no matter how many men they mutilate with machetes, I'm always sympathizing with them. Despite their brutality you never forget they are innocent children, forced into a horrible situation.
 
Even though he commits unthinkable crimes, Agu fights to remember his previous self and the good son he once was. The novel shifts between the present day's war-torn atrocities and Agu's past life of living peacefully with his family: his love of books, his childhood friends, his village, his school-teacher father and his religious mother. It is by living through his memories that Agu tries to convince himself that he is not a "bad boy."

Why write a novel on something so horrific? As the Nigerian-American, Harvard-educated author says in an interview in the back of the book:
"I wrote and write about violence because of a desire to understand what makes people kill, rape and destroy. I wrote and write about violence because of a fear that one day I might be on either the delivering or receiving end of aggression. I wrote and write about violence because there is something fascinating and inspiring about the human ability to cope with and prevail over the worst of circumstances. In short, I wrote and write about violence because of a desire to understand my own and other people's humanness."

Through small grants available with Peace Corps, we've been able to buy educational children's books by African authors to use during the FAVL reading camps this summer; one grant to buy 25 copies of a book on HIV/Aids and the other to buy 25 copies of a book on maternal health.

We've purchased 25 copies of "Un arbre pour Lollie" (A Tree for Lollie) by the renowned Fatou Keïta; a hardcover with bright colorful pictures. The young narrator Aïcha tells the story of her best friend in school, Lollie. Everyone likes Lollie but when they discover she has Aids she's shunned from her classmates. One day nurses come to the school to educate the students about the disease. At the end the students come to accept Lollie, no longer afraid of her. When Lollie dies, the students plant a "Flame Tree" on school grounds in her memory.

Guess someone read my earlier blog post, and here is the answer... full story on BBC here.

Elite forces loyal to Burkina Faso's leader Blaise Compaore have for the first time intervened against rioting army mutineers. The troops fired shots and encircled the mutineers at their military base in the second city of Bobo Dioulasso. Their intervention comes after several days of looting and shooting by the mutineers in the commercial centre.

I'm sad to announce that the Reading West Africa program, that FAVL implements as partner with Santa Clara University, has had to be suspended due to the continuing civil unrest and mutinies by armed forces.  The RWA program is an amazing experience for university students, and we are very proud of the work of cohorts 2009 and 2010 (which you can see here) and we had a great group planning to go in 2011.  We hope very much that we can renew the program in 2012.

Here are some of my thoughts on the situation in Burkina Faso.

English has no word to describe a situation where element of the armed forces leave their barracks, shoot into the air, loot macaroni from the Lebanese grocery store, and return to the barracks as if nothing had happened.  Mutiny, insubordination... not quite right.  And then the merchants, who not only get looted (It's the cell phone kiosks too..) but lose several days of earnings because everyone shuts down and cowers inside, and then lose more over the long term because people start saving instead of spending, get really pissed, so they go and demonstrate and burn a car down in front of the governor's office. Retaliatory demonstration.  What on earth do we call all this?  Civil unrest does not embrace the full dynamic.

I keep thinking that on an armed forces base, somebody has the keys to the armory.  Either they are opening the armory, or the soldiers are forcing it open.  Then, there is a commander: either he stands with his pistol in front of the armory or he doesn't.  General Sangoulé Lamizana, who took over as President of Burkina Faso in 1966 following real civilian and opposition unrest (as the first president Maurice Yameogo tried to install a one-party state) proudly declared in his memoir that he was promoted in the French army while serving in Vietnam because, as his commander there remarked, "You are the only one not afraid to shoot."  What's going on here is a case of commanders being afraid to shoot their mutinying underlings.

So is that a good thing, to not shoot?  And why are they not shooting?  We know that the higher-ups are not afraid.  President Compaoré, it is well known, assumed the presidency when his own men shot and killed his best friend and co-coup leader, Thomas Sankara, back in 1987.  And then his own men killed journalist Norbert Zongo and three companions, in 1998.  Are they now afraid of the consequences, then, rather than the act?  What makes them hesitate?  Is it perhaps the end of impunity?  Does Compaoré fear the International Criminal Court should his retaliation provoke a small civil war and his loyalist forces commit war crimes?

Of concern to most Burkinbè citizens is the classic "My lawyer has the evidence and will publish upon my death" scenario.  There is, perhaps, so much corruption up and down the military hierarchy, and so much secrecy, that nobody knows what might unravel as killings go up the chain.  Too many people can be implicated.  So the situation is going to fester and worsen.

I've been pretty disappointed in the Burkina Faso press, which is churning out opinions and commentary but zero investigative reporting.  I want names and acts for those doing this.  The U.S. press likewise sadly deficient.  U.S. military has been advising these same Burkinabè commanders for the past several years.  So off the record they should be able to tell a good reporter what is happening.  Is anyone asking?  Is our military not capable of exercising soft power here?  Is this a case of the same people who brought us the School for the Americas now undermining a reasonably stable country?  When elephants are on the move, the villagers say, best to stay inside.  A related question I have, is whether African peacekeeping, by providing sizable opportunities for corruption by the brass higher up, is provoking the exact instability is was supposed to contain.  Lane and Tornell called it the "voracity effect."