August 2011 Archives

From Benard Akulga, Sherigu librarian:

A reading tree is a tree drawn on the wall of the library. This tree has no leaves on it . Papers are cut out into leaves form. The leaves are in different sizes normally small, medium and large.  When a child finished reading a book, a leaf is made with his/her name and title of the book read on the leaf. Small leaves are easy books, Medium for medium books and large leaves are for hard books.

HONEST TREE: Is the name given to our tree. It is believed that all reading must be completed/ finished by reading before taking a leaf. If a child is not fair to him/her self then the leaf will fall off from the tree or the tree shed that particular leaf.

David Pace has won the 2011 Daylight / CDS Photo Work-in-Process Prize for his Friday Night series.  From the website:

In recognition of a mutual interest in documentary and fine art photography, Daylight Magazine and the Center for Documentary Studies started an international competition in spring 2010, the Daylight/CDS Photo Awards, to honor and promote talented and committed photographers, both emerging and established.

The full panel of jurors will choose one First Prize Winner. Each Guest Juror will also select one photographer to receive a Juror's Pick Prize and write a short statement about why he or she choose the work. 

The First Prize Winner will be featured in print in Daylight Magazine and CDS's newsmagazine Document, as well as in Daylight and CDS online galleries and be part of a group exhibition at the Center for Documentary Studies.

Congratulations David!

Image: From Friday Night. Photograph by David Pace, 2011

Kate Parry writes:

In January last year the Uganda Community Libraries Association's then coordinator, Grace Musoke, went to a conference in Tanzania sponsored by Book Aid International (and organized, incidentally, by our good friend Sarah Switzer). There she met Karen Sharkey, BAI's program officer, and at Karen's suggestion wrote a proposal to enable ten of UgCLA's member libraries to improve their facilities and provide better services for children. Last month we received final confirmation that the proposal had been accepted, and when Karen visited us on July 27, Kayaga Mulindwa and I discussed with her the final details of how the grant would work.  (UgCLA of course is closely affiliated with FAVL.)

Under this project ten libraries will receive a book donation of some 700-odd books each, to be delivered in two batches; and each will  receive a grant of about 1000 pounds (yes, pounds, not dollars), to be used for "refurbishment" - which includes purchasing furniture and local books as well as repainting and repairing the building. UgCLA's Board has identified some forty libraries that could benefit from this (we excluded those that have no building to refurbish and also those that have recently received substantial benefits through UgCLA), and we have been urging those that have not paid their subscriptions for this year to pay up so that we can invite them to compete. The competition will be on the basis of written proposals, and with BAI's support we are organizing a two-day workshop in the middle of September for the representatives of all those libraries that are eligible. Our aim is to have them write the proposals while they are there, and we have prepared a "Proposal writing guide" to help them do so. The workshop will be held at the Kabubbu Community Library and will be facilitated by the Kabubbu librarian, Augustine Napagi, UgCLA's coordinator, Brenda Musasizi, and Espen Stranger-Johanessen, who is a volunteer who worked with UgCLA in 2008 and has now returned to help us again. We are extremely grateful to Espen for offering us this help.

The first batch of books is expected at the end of October. The National Library of Uganda will store them for us until we can arrange for a team of volunteers to sort them out into packets for each library and the libraries can pick them up. The winners will be announced at UgCLA's National Conference in January.

We are all very excited about this project, especially since, if we do it right, there's a good chance that the funders, Pearson Longman, will extend the grant for two more years to cover twenty more libraries. So, thank you Grace!

Kate Parry writes:

Four members of the Uganda Community Libraries Association (UgCLA) hosted Health Reading Camps from August 15 to August 19 this year: twenty children of between twelve and fourteen years old were invited to each camp and looked after by three facilitators, one the librarian, the second a teacher, and the third a health worker. The camps followed a defined curriculum with a range of activities: both reading aloud and silent reading, of course, but also games, drama, lots of discussion, and counseling sessions. The children also got a good lunch every day, and the curriculum provided for discussion of the lunch's nutritional properties.

 The camps were a new venture for us, so we did extensive preparation. Brenda Musasizi, UgCLA's coordinator, and I bought a set of children's books about health for each library, mainly storybooks about the HIV/AIDS and its effects, with titles like I will Miss Mr. Kizito, Monde the Courageous Girl, Just Me and My Brother, and I'm Positive: Botswana's Beauty Queen (the books came mostly from Fountain Publishers Junior Living Youth series and Heinemann's Junior African Writers Series). We also bought games equipment for each library--a football, a volley ball, skipping ropes, and indoor games such as Snakes and Ladders (with an HIV twist--you land on a snake and pick up a card which tells you what risky thing you have done), a quiz game based on Uganda's Primary Leaving Exam, dominoes, and sets of letters for word-making games; the indoor games were supplied by Mango Tree Educational Publishers, a long-standing supporter of UgCLA. We took all this equipment, together with flipcharts, marker pens, etc., to one of the host libraries (the Caezaria Public Library Complex in Buikwe District), for a workshop on August 8. Each host library sent at least one of its facilitators to the workshop, and together we went over the curriculum and discussed methods of evaluating and reporting on the project before we finally distributed the goodies.

The formal reports haven't come in yet, but the informal conversations that I had with the camps' facilitators have been most encouraging. Enoch Magala, from the Mpolyabigere Community Library in Numutumba District sent an e-mail at the end of the first day:
Hello Brenda and all friends,
greetings from Mpolyabigere! we managed to have on this first day all the 20 participants although with delayz on reporting!! we managed to have our chicken today and we have two participants who are fasting and they will carry their meal home to break their fast!!!

see you tomorow!!!
that is our news!!! its fun!!!!

At Kitengesa, the librarian Dan Ahimbisibwe told me the participants had so many questions that they had to adjust the curriculum to fit in a special time for them; and although people were a little late showing up on the first day (it was raining), the following days they always arrived early. The Caezaria and URLCODA libraries were similarly positive.

The funder for this project was the Hawk Children's Fund at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore (UMES). My correspondent there has asked me for extensive evaluation so that he can use it (if it's positive, of course) to raise more funds for an expansion of the project to more libraries next year. So we have given each library detailed instructions about evaluation procedures (including a before and after test for the participants and reading report forms for the participants to fill in on each book read) and are awaiting the results. Meanwhile, I'm attaching a picture of the beginning of the second day of the camp at Kitengesa.

Amikiya Lucas Aligire write from Ghana:

I have just finished my rounds with the Regional Librarian from the Ghana Library Board Bolgatanga, Mr. John Ayeseya. I made the rounds with him and CESRUD board member George Akundikeya. The day started at 11AM and ended up at Sumbrungu at 3pm.  We started at Sherigu community library camp and met the kids at game time and after which was lunch time and also time for the afternoon camp. The regional librarian had the opportunity to interact with some of the campers and advise them to always make good use of the books in the library by reading always.

He signed the visitor book at all the three libraries he visitor and was so impressed about camp activities and asked the teachers to be committed to their work in helping the campers. George Akundikeya who was visiting the camps a second time was also happy about the activities of the camps and asked everyone involved to be serious and hardworking so that this Summer Reading programme will extent to other parts of the Region.

In each of the libraries the regional librarian spent some time observing, interacting, and moving round the libraries looking at the books kids are reading and the kind of books in the library. In Sherigu he notice that  some of the roofing sheets were older and asked the librarian if they are not leaking for "books never move with water."

He said that he would wish that the programme be organized all the time and everywhere in the region to improve the reading standard. He said that he is always behind us and will support in the way he can to the improvement of the community libraries.

The librarians of each library explained to the regional librarian and his driver on the activities carried out in each day. for exampe the Reading tree where a kid get a leave upon complete reading a book. Games time where we have monkey monkey lion, Football in sherigu and other games. This among others where stated base on the schedule which is posted in some of the library. He sawactivities like individual reading, football closing ceremony for the morning group and teaching of vowel and consonants.  It was a lovely day.

I have attached some pictures of the visit to the camps.

By The Regional Coordinator (Amikiya Lucas Aligire)

Former FAVL volunteer Lauren Bizzari writes in:

I loved Wife of the Gods so much I couldn't help but pre-order 4 copies of Kwei Quartey's new installment a month ago. It just came out in late July, don't know if you've had a chance to read it yet, but it's quick and I think you'd find it interesting. I didn't enjoy the plot quite as much this time (a little more predictable I thought), and I was kind of sad that the book was so "American" in style again. But, the story line touches on the poverty in Northern Ghana. Specifically, the huge numbers of street children/teens in Accra who left the North seeking a "better life" in the city. I'm shipping these copies to Sumbrungu, and if the librarians/Lucas get a chance to read them I think they will enjoy it and have a lot to say.

"Chanda's Secrets" is a heartfelt young adult novel by Canadian Allan Stratton. The book focuses on all aspects of HIV/AIDS but more importantly on the stigma surrounding the virus. It's the story of Chanda, a young woman who witnesses friends and members of her family die off one by one from AIDS, though no one in her village wants to acknowledge it. When her own mother gets sick, Chanda is forced to make some very adult and very difficult decisions. "Mama said I should save my anger to fight in justice. Well, I know what's unjust. The ignorance about AIDS. The shame. The stigma. The silence." Based in an unnamed Sub-Saharan African country, this is one of those universal books that any young adult, whether living in a rural African village or in a bustling American city, would appreciate and be affected by.

I'm sorry but with gold prices going crazy high, I just don't understand why the Treasury doesn't sell off maybe $1 billion to fund like 100,000 community libraries in Africa for 5 years... If we all agreed to do that if gold went up to $1900, we'd be exactly the same well-being as we are today, but there would be 500 readers in 100,000 communities ... 50 million people!  Better off... by all standards of being better off.*  Heck, 50 million readers in Africa would make us better off than 500,000 oz of gold, no?  That's 100 people per measly ounce.  (The U.S. holds like more than 150 million oz.)

*All religions and creeds and moral codes say reading 50 books is better than zero, even if Danielle Steele.

An excellent discussion in the comments, over at the wonderful literary blog The Moookse and the Gripes, of a recent The New Yorker story by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi: "Gilgul" I confess that, like the blogger and many of the comments, I found the story also quite "blah" but was intrigued, and wondered whether there was not a deeper layer that I wasn't appreciating.  Not sure there was.  But the discussion it provoked was first-rate....

Deb Garvey, FAVL Treasurer, writes in:

I had a wonderful, all-afternoon visit August 18 with long-time FAVL supporters Harriette and McLouis Robinet in Oak Park, outside my hometown of Chicago. We discussed the role of FAVL libraries in fostering literacy and educational advancement in underserved African villages. The Robinets are committed to helping provide library access to others, especially youth, partially to counteract the official discrimination and barriers they faced in using public and even university libraries in their youth and young adulthood in Washington, DC and Louisiana.

The Robinets are a truly wonderful, socially engaged couple with a deep love of God and and an urge to respond to the needs of others less fortunate than themselves. They're especially excited about three FAVL initiatives: publishing culturally-relevant books in local languages through the efforts of the undergraduates in our Reading West Africa study-abroad program; installation of solar panels that enable villagers and youths to use libraries in the evening; and our thriving partnership with Peace Corps volunteers in Burkina Faso who work so diligently to implement literacy programs, research studies and summer reading camps in several village libraries, in addition to founding three FAVL-affiliated libraries!

MK: And I should add I really liked Forty Acres and a Mule and Harriette Robinet's other books!

On the flight back from the IFLA conference in Puerto Rico, the American Way magazine fell into my lap... actually not such a bad magazine.  After failing at Sodoku, I found a one page article on the last page, by Carlton Stowers, remembering his youth in Ballinger, Texas, and the importance of having the Carnegie Library.  On Carnegie, Stowers writes" "But Lordy, do I owe him-- as do millions of others who first developed their habit of reading with visiting to public libraries names in his honor."  Nice nostalgic reflection.

See also this reflection on the life of one library user.

For the past three months, I've been playing with a women's basketball team here in Burkina. The team was put together last minute and no one really expected much from us. Well, we made it all the way to the National Championship game! On Saturday night we played on live TV at the Palais des Sports in Ouaga 2000. The arena is like no other; even the Minister of Sports said (twice) that it felt like we were in another country. (Though the politics, the hour-long speeches by ministers and sponsor officials and the delay of game due to rain leaking onto the floor, quickly reminded me that were indeed in Burkina Faso). Our team lost. Okay, we got our butts kicked by XX points. (Sorry folks, being embarrassed on national TV was enough for me...no need to put the final score on the internet for all to see!). I was really pissed after the game but our wonderful coach quickly had us all laughing and enjoying the moment. Overall, the experience was great and definitely not something I was expecting to be a part of!

Read the story at RFI.

KOURA Donkoui was recently in Ghana to see how the summer reading camps were going in Sumbrungu, Sherigu and Kunkua. He writes:

Au nord du Ghana, les élèves de ces localités ci dessus citées ne sont pas en reste des activités de vacances organisés par FAVL. Qui nie l'importance de la lecture dans toute éducation ? La réponse est non ! Ils sont tenus par les enseignants très expérimentés qui ne savent pas perdre du temps. De la lecture aux jeux en passant par le dessin, les enfants aiment bien ce qu'ils appellent « reading camp ». Tout cela a été rendu possible par les sponsors de FAVL et toutes les communautés des trois bibliothèques. Chers donateurs, vos efforts sont appréciés à travers le monde. N'hésitez pas un instant à penser a ces milliers d'enfants qui ont soif d'apprendre.
A Sherigu : Une attention particulière pour les enfants !
Les enseignants de Sherigu sont particulièrement attentifs aux préoccupations des enfants. Ils prennent le temps après la lecture individuelle pour comprendre si les enfants ont compris, suivi d'explication des mots difficiles. Quelle belle initiative ! Tous les enfants n'apprennent pas a la même vitesse ni de la même manière. Vous pouvez voir certains enfants coucher sur des nattes. Par contre d'autre sur des chaises, banc...très bon travail !
Kunkua : Les stratégies de la compréhension
Beaucoup d'enfants lisent sans une attention particulière. Pour le faire, les enseignants leur donnent des rudiments sur les stratégies de compréhension du conte. Ils consistent à faire un schéma mettant au centre le personnage principal et en énumérant les principales actions par les verbes sentir, faire, dire, agir etc. Cela résume le conte en quelques minutes. Apres la lecture de chaque livre, les enfants sont invites a présenter le conte ou l'histoire sous ce schéma. Quelle culture de l'attention !

While in Puerto Rico I picked up a book my brother must have read when he spent a year abroad in Senegal: Heremakhonon by Maryse Condé.  Unfortunately a translation into English (apparently she went on to marry Richard Philcox, the translator- wow!), but the experimental fiction, with shifts from description to interior monologue, and lots left unsaid, is really interesting.  She does seem very naive though. It's a "disappointed by complex inscrutable Africa and I still don't know who I am" story, in some ways very similar to Claire Denis' film Chocolat.  Worth reading if you are interested in African literature. There is a more literary review by Nandini Dhar here.

Sidwaya publishes a nice article about farmers experiment with dry rice in Burkina Faso.  Newspapers remain an important source of knowledge for citizens, but they are trememndously difficult to get on a regular basis in the village libraries.  What caught my eye though about the story was the accompanying photo.  2011, and the back-breaking manual labor, for growing rice, is incredible.

Et les paysans ne se laissent pas conter. Ils accourent tous vers cette spéculation à merveille. Les régions du Centre, du Nord et du Sahel, considérées comme les terres les plus arides du pays que le projet avait écartées parce que jugées zones moins favorables à la production du riz, ont pourtant commencé leur expérimentation, cette campagne agricole. Selon la directrice régionale de l'Agriculture du Centre Yvette Tiendrébéogo, sa zone a reçu à cet effet, 2,35 tonnes de semences de RPS de types FKR45N et FKR43. Là aussi, la stratégie est la même pour convaincre les plus sceptiques. Le champ-école de 1000 m2 de Bazoulé, localité située à 35 km à l'Ouest de Ouagadougou, regroupe 25 producteurs. « La parcelle a été subdivisée en quatre parties.

Deux sont exploitées par les paysans comme ils l'entendent et les autres font l'objet de pratiques technologiques, c'est-à-dire de fumure organique, de NPK et d'urée. En fin de saison, on comparera les résultats », a souligné le point focal du projet RPS de la région du Centre, Daouda Kaboré. En effet, en ce début d'août, les plants connaissent une bonne levée et la différence est déjà nette. Après deux mois seulement d'activités dans le champ-école, le vieux Harouna Kaboré a vite opéré son choix : « J'ai cultivé du riz de bas-fonds en Côte d'Ivoire. Mais, produire du riz sur une telle surface, c'est la première fois que je le fais.

Mais, je suis déjà conquis ». A Komki Ipala, une commune rurale, à quelque 40 km de Ouagadougou où plus d'une dizaine de producteurs s'essaient individuellement à la culture du RPS, Hamidou Nikiéma n'est pas en reste : « Ce n'est que le début. L'année prochaine, si on gagne plus de semences, on augmentera les surfaces ». Cet enthousiasme des producteurs réjouit la directrice régionale de l'Agriculture et de l'Hydraulique du Centre, Yvette Tiendrébéogo, qui estime que la nouvelle variété vient à point nommé, car l'aménagement des bas-fonds coûte cher. « En plus, les rendements des céréales comme le mil, le maïs et le sorgho sont devenus infimes », a-t-elle ajouté. Depuis les manifestations contre la vie chère qu'a connues également le Burkina Faso en 2008, des mesures spéciales ont été prises pour accroître la production nationale de céréales notamment du riz.

Read the full article here.

Camp feedback and photos from Kristin, a volunteer who helped at the FAVL reading camp in Dimikuy:

"Overall I think the camp went great. The FAVL staff was incredible and very helpful and worked fantastically with the kids. I really appreciated the organization and structure and I think the kids also really enjoyed the activities.
My suggestion would be to maybe prepare the facilitators a bit more for the health sessions because some of the information they distributed was a little misleading or lacking. Also for the group that we had (low level) both of the books were far to difficult for the kids. These students were still learning there alphabet and syllables. They also didn't understand french all that well so the topics just went over their heads.
I also think it would be beneficial to promote working in small groups because most of the time the facilitators wanted to work as a large group and quite a few students got lost in the mix.
But as i said overall i thought it was extremely successful and would definitely recommend having PC volunteers work these camps in the future.
Also, If it is at all possible i really believe that volunteers would enjoy/benefit from being able to purchase the books the student from Santa Clara make. I'm not sure if this is feasible but if you could look into it i think it would be a great way to fundraiser and promote volunteers doing literacy camps in their own villages.
Thanks for letting me be a part of this great camp!
Kristin"

I'm looking forward to reading it.

Le paysage littéraire burkinabè vient de s'enrichir avec la parution de la nouvelle œuvre de Lazare Tiga Sankara. « Le retour des morts » est un recueil de trois nouvelles publié aux éditions Céprodif. Après la parution de son roman « l'aventures de Patindé » aux éditions l'harmattan, Lazare Tiga Sankara revient sur la scène littéraire avec un recueil de trois nouvelles intitulé « le retour des morts ». A travers cette œuvre, l'auteur fait voyager les lecteurs dans l'univers presque indescriptibles des morts. « Le retour des morts » est elle une réplique à Birango Diop pour qui « les morts ne sont pas morts » ? Négatif.

Illiteracy is the "malaria" of the mind - Kosi Kedem

Mr Kosi Kedem, Chairman of Ghana Library Board, on Tuesday [21 June]  bemoaned the country's fallen illiteracy standards and noted that it had persisted and become the 'malaria' of the mind.

He said because "Efforts made were half-heartedly and haphazardly implemented, illiteracy, just like malaria has stubbornly refused to be eliminated."

Mr Kedem said these at the launch of the 10th Book Fair in Accra on the theme: "Enhancing Literacy Through Libraries, a Reading Nation is a Winning Nation".

He said in the nation's anxiety to design appropriate educational system coupled with the many reforms "We have abandoned what used to be regarded as the well-tested basic fundamentals of education of reading, writing and arithmetic and the three Hs- Head, Heart and Hand."

The fair will showcase Ghana's and India's cultural heritage, especially in the literacy sphere and in addition provide an opportunity for the book industry to display their new editions and marketplace for trading of rights among stakeholders.

A platform would also be created for dialogue with policy makers to find solutions to enhance the reading culture especially among school-going children, address issues that relate to books and their impact on national development.

Mr Kedem said some cynics strongly held the view that African Governments had neglected the UN Education for all Programme because of the fear that a literate and enlightened population would have the capacity and ability to hold them to account.

He regretted that about 50 per cent of primary school graduates could barely read or write and only 10 per cent of them had access to university education, which had compelled the universities to institute remedial classes in English for their first year undergraduates.

"A disciplined society is that which can record, read and implement its laws more correctly. A nation that cannot read or write is seriously handicapped. Such a nation will not only lack development but will be dominated and exploited by a nation which can read and, therefore have access to current, relevant and accurate information," he said.

The Ghana Library Board Chairman said libraries played a supportive and complementary role as well as a support tool in the formal acquisition of reading skills.




However, he noted that the unique role of the libraries, especially public libraries were to increase reading proliferation and add value to reading by serving as a free and open access to information and knowledge without discrimination and also internalise and cultivate the habit of voluntary and independent reading.

Mr Kedem suggested that public, static and mobile libraries be funded and strengthened to provide good and readily available materials to their clientele in a conducive and friendly atmosphere.

He said book writers, publishers, printers and distributors should be supported by the State through the Book Development Council to produce cheap and affordable but qualitative reading materials.

Mr Asare Yamoah, President of Ghana Book and Publishers Association, said this year's launch scheduled for November 1-6 would focus on India due to the success of the book industry adding that the relationship with India dates back to the 1970's.

He said the next phase of the partnership would be to encourage the transfer of technology and information through project partnerships, and setting up of satellite print sites in Ghana and parts of Africa, and called on the Book Development Council to reposition itself at the centre of the project to ensure direct governmental involvement.

Mr Mahama Ayariga, Deputy Minister of Education, in a speech read on his behalf, said it was the desire of government to see the industry grow adding that government would provide the needed support to make the citizenry an enlightened one.

He commended organisers of the fair for their conscious efforts at increasing literacy rates despite the numerous challenges in the sector.

Mr Ramesh Guatam, Second Secretary, India High Commission in Ghana, said India was delighted to be part of the fair to share ideas on how their industry had succeeded.

He said more than 50 stakeholders from the Indian Book Industry would participate in the fair and gave the assurance that the High Commission would give all the needed support for the success of the fair.

Professor Atukwei Okai, a renowned writer and poet, suggested that the Ghana Library Board should make an effort to buy at least 2,000 copies of all published books in the country, to stock libraries and help improve the learning skills of Ghanaians.

The Ghana International Book Fair promised to offer a unique opportunity for stakeholders in the book industry and other related sectors of the economy to network and trade.

This is expected to attract publishers, writers, printers, booksellers, librarians, students, educationists and literary agents.

Source:  GNA

This collection of short stories was first published in 1982, and definitely reads a little dated when you know that a new South Africa was born in 1994.  But still, Gordimer's writing flows smoothly, and she is quite comfortable writing in a range of voices. You can understand why she won the Nobel Prize.  What I like is that all of the stories have the feeling of being something that she heard, that is, that someone told her.  The are stories feel like they were told, verbally.  She captures that nicely. 

Reading these stories reminds me of her novel Burger's Daughter, one of the really great novels of the 20th century.

While in Québec, I was able to attend the wedding of one of my close friends from college. The wedding was beautiful and a lot of fun. Christine and Doug, the bride and groom, have always been incredibly kind and generous and have donated quite a bit to FAVL. A wedding is the perfect opportunity to be spoiled and receive all kinds of gifts. Though, when I arrived to the reception the first thing  I saw was a large table with FAVL posters and individual cards describing FAVL, the work it does, and asked guests for donations. Later Christine told me that she and Doug would be sending FAVL a check with the donations received. To me, this action only exemplifies the newlyweds' generosity. To Christine and Doug, CONGRATULATIONS and thank you so much for all your support!

 










A few of the old Lady Gaiters basketball team (Christine in white); the FAVL table at the wedding; Christine and Doug

It's kind of a long rambling post, and I'm not really sure what the main argument is, but lots of fascinating details about reading culture in Zimbabwe... though the absence of any sort of politics in the posting I find somewhat strange... why has reading culture declined in Zimbabwe?  Gosh I wonder why!!

In the wake of celebrations that once again a Zimbabwean author, NoViolet Bulawayo, has won the Caine Prize for African Writing, a revived Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF) will be taking place in Harare at the end of July (25th-30th). The theme of the Book Fair will be 'Books for Africa's Development'. Last week, a well-attended event at the Book Café in Harare debated the past and future for the ZIBF, and ended up discussing the question, 'what is the point of books in contemporary Zimbabwe?' The theme of this year's ZIBF gives some clues as to dominant thinking on the answer: books are for development. But what do books contribute to development, and how will books in Zimbabwe help to ensure that 'things can only get better'?

....

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the ZIBF was the premier book fair for all book deals within Africa - not only between Southern African publishers and the rest of the world, but also between publishers within Africa itself. At last week's meeting, Stringer stated that he does not think that it can ever regain that status - not because other states have stepped in to fill the vacuum that was created during Zimbabwe's 'difficult decade' of the 2000s, but because big trade fairs have been made obsolete by technological change. Publishers no longer need to meet in person in order to have conference meetings, to exchange contracts or to look at proofs. All of these things can be done electronically, via Skype and pdf documents emailed between negotiators. There is some truth to this observation. However, Frankfurt Book Fair is still as vibrant as ever, suggesting that publishers do still feel the need to gather together in a trade fair setting.

....

Nonetheless, Stinger's point about technological change was quickly picked by other commentators. One speaker suggested that the 'moment of the book' had passed; soon it would be obsolete. But Zimunya spoke lyrically about the vital importance of books in rural communities with negligible internet access, where development projects depended upon a textual support, and where more literate members of the community could easily share the material with others. Books, qua object, have practical benefits over all other forms of communicating information. And, as Brian Jones commented, 'In London there were iPads and Kindles all over, but they are still are a rare sight in Zimbabwe and I don't foresee printed books disappearing from Zimbabwe anytime soon.'

....

Zimbabweans display a changed attitude towards reading, after their hard decade. It is strange now to recall the days in the 1980s when Dambudzo Marechera sat in Africa Unity Square day after day, writing obsessively and magnificently, and insisting that those around him engage with 'difficult' prose. Reading still takes place, of course: this is, after all, the most literate nation in Africa.[3] Newspapers are read avidly; twitter feeds clutter Zimbabwe's cyberspace; Wikipedia provides a quick fix of information. But reading is not given time. Even in the world of literature, short stories, such as NoViolet Bulawayo's Caine Prize-winning 'Hitting Budapest', predominate over novels.

The crisis of books is seen everywhere. Bookshops are hard to find; and when you do find them, they disappoint. An African film-maker based in Kuwadzana, a high density suburb just outside Harare, told me that he used to enjoy reading contemporary fiction and works on film criticism, which he could find in Kingston's, the state-owned bookshop and stationers. Indeed, a visit to Kingston's was once rated in the top 40 things to do in Harare by Lonely Planet travellers.[4] But now, he said, 'There are no books; and if there are any there, they are just text books and manuals funded by NGOs.'

This point was reiterated by Irene Staunton of Weaver Press at the ZIBF event at the Book Café (a café, incidentally, that was once a book shop with a café attached, but where now, as Eugene Ulman, who made an influential film about the café, commented: 'You'd be hard pressed to find a book at the Book Café'). Staunton pointed out that publishers are struggling because people no longer expect to pay for books. Books are conceptualised as something that NGOs provide for free, to schools, communities and project participants, as part of a 'package' with an instrumentalist purpose. Books are for training, not for leisure. And they are certainly not for enhancing a society's imagination.

At every turn, an instrumentalist attitude to books and reading predominates. The novelist Zimunya's robust and moving defence of the importance of books in rural areas was describing the importance of training manuals, not of novels. Meanwhile, at the University of Zimbabwe, the world's academic journals are freely available to the undergraduates, thanks to gratis subscriptions to JSTOR and to the journals of significant publishers such as Cambridge University Press and Taylor and Francis. Africa Journals Online provides three free downloads per month to anyone accessing their pages with a Zimbabwe-based IP address.[5] And yet, university lecturers complain to me that their students are simply not making use of collections such as JSTOR, even when the technical support would allow them to do so. Undergraduates - and even some teaching staff - tend to seek affirmation from canonical texts rather than to engage with a wide range of positions. Reading tends to be focused on data mining rather than tracing the development of ideas and the conversations between academics. A revolution in resource availability has not led to a revolution in academic engagement or the blossoming of ideas.

Despite the high literacy rates, people no longer seem to love books in Zimbabwe. One publisher told me that, 'Parents don't read to their children any more. Children encounter books at school and those experiences with books are often bad ones.' And, she added, in a culture that is highly oriented towards kinship, community and patronage networks, community activities are valued above the solitary and individual act of reading. Undoubtedly, the avid - often social - reading of newspapers, along with the urban ubiquity of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, maintain a text-oriented and literate culture. But book-reading is in decline.

So if you are in Puerto Rico for the conference, how about meeting at a small cafe/restaurant called Pelayo (just a short walk from Condado hotels) for late breakfast coffee and sandwiches the day the conference begins- August 13?  I'll be there at 9:30am.  Please let me know if you can make it- mkevane@scu.edu.  We can talk about African library issues!

Pelayo
Categories: Spanish, Basque 
Calle Luisa #64
Condado
San Juan, PR 00907
(787) 724-0999
    Mon-Sun 7 am - 10 pm
http://www.yelp.com/biz/pelayo-san-juan#query:cafe

From Lucas Amikiya:  This is the day's report from the me the coordinator. We have just ended our visit at Sherigu. I made the visit with Mr George Akundikiya the CESRUD Director of the Libraries and we spent about 45 minutes in each library. On our visits met both libraries learning phonics (boss E at Gowrie).

At Kunkua the library committee Chairman visited the camps to see how the camps were going on. He said that he had wanted to be at the camps on the first day but was not able to make it. He said thank FAVL/CESRUD board so much for their efforts to bring good a progamme this year again and would wish that all plans put together to make this programme a yearly one.  

At Sherigu, everything was Ok and teaching and learning was on. There was no problem and no complaint. I am sad to say that we shall be losing Benard Akulga the librarian may before the end of the camps or after the camps. He officially wrote to me the coordinator after a discussion with me a letter confirming that he has an admission to the Teacher Training Collage.

We were not able to go to Sumbrungu because the Vice President of Ghana was in  Bolgatanga town and George and other people were going to meet him for a discussion on the developmental issues in the Upper East Region.

I am also left alone because Niko my teacher friend who was assisting me has left to attend school at the University of Cape Coast. He will not be coming back until after the Camps.  I miss his assistance. Darius was called to his house around 4:00Pm to take his Uncle to the hospital and he left without ending the camp with permission from me.

FAVL/CESRUD coordinator Lucas Amikiya sent me a few items concerning the reading camps, funded this year again by the Chen Yat-Sen Foundation. 

On Friday a group of people from Tongo in the Talensi Nabdam's district were at the Gowrie Kunkua community to learn some traditional farming and decided to visited the camp at Kunkua and were impressed about the program and requested that camps be organized in their area next academic year.

On Monday of this week, a parent and a headteacher of a beneficiary school visited the Kunkua library to see how the camps were going on, and how his students were doing at the camp. He promised to support the staff and the organizer of the camps in the way he could.

Over at Sherigu, a parent visited the camp to see how things were going and the find out how many books his child had read so far. He said that the child was in class five last year and took part in the camp and improved upon his reading ability. He was able to give a record of how many books the boy read last year: 48 books.

More kids keep coming every day from other schools to plead for us to add their names to the camps. Some this students e.g. from Sumbrungu were attending private school in Bolga, and so were not in local schools and so were not eligible to be selected for the camps..

I am pretty sure I got this Scrabble set at a garage sale, and remember thinking that nobody would ever use it... so I am delighted!  More fotos at Lauren's photostream here.

From the Summer 2009 issue of The ALAN Review, a  journal published by the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English, an interesting short piece by Vivian Yenika-Agbaw, with great help for teachers who want to incorporate Africa reading into their classrooms....

Of the eighty-eight medals awarded between 1922 and 2009, none has gone to an author whose story is set in continental Africa. However, three honor books have African settings: Harold Courlander and George Herzog's The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African Stories (1947/74), Nancy Farmer's The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm (1994), and A Girl Named Disaster (1996). The first of the three honor books is a collection of folktales, the second is a science fiction young adult novel,and the third is a realistic fiction novel. 

Ce soir 9 juillet 2011 nous avons eu le privilège d'effectuer une visite guidée sur la médiathèque municipale de la commune de  Ouagadougou.

C'est un grand bâtiment composé de :
-  une salle de lecture pour enfants dénommée « espace jeunes » comportant divers documents (bandes dessinées, romans ...) ;
- une salle de lecture pour adultes composée de divers documents ;
- un magasin de rangement des documents ;
- une vidéothèque où seront classés les casettes, les CDROM... ;
- une salle d'informatique avec plusieurs ordinateurs ;
- une salle de formation ;
- des bureaux pour les agents de l'administration
- une cafétéria.
Pour ce qui concerne son fonctionnement, la médiathèque est au stade de rangement. Le matériel et les différents documents sont amenés de l'ancien bâtiment par lots. Mais les autorités veillent sur ces travaux  pour rendre ce joyau fonctionnel le plus rapidement possible. Pour preuve le maire de la commune passe régulièrement pour suivre l'avancement des travaux. Il a déjà autorisé une consultation sur place pour les usagers.
Une permanence est assurée tous les jours ouvrables de 8heures à 17heures. Cependant les conditions d'accès et de diffusion sont en étude à la mairie centrale.  Notons pour terminer que c'est Mme OUATTARA qui est la directrice générale de la médiathèque municipale de Ouagadougou.

Pour FAVL

Pr SISSAO Alain Joseph, Maitre de Recherche (Directeur Adjoint Chargé des Programmes INSS/CNRST, spécialiste des recherches sur les bibliothèques et des recherches sur la lecture. alainsis@gmail.com

At an extremely enjoyable weekend at San Jose family camp, in the beautiful mountains just outside of Yosemite, after hiking, running, swimming and ping-pong, I enjoyed reading/skimming the Vernor Vinge novel A Fire Upon the Deep.  One thing I love about Vinge, and appreciate as a San Jose resident, is the central character of Pham Nuwen.  Multiculturalism at its best- just taken for granted.

Another thing... I liked a central idea of the tines world, that selective breeding to create the right types (the pilgrim, the mathematician, the commander) was the "source" of development... A whole branch in economics/psychology now thinks that people need to be nudged about to make them better persons and make better decisions, and I find myself having two thoughts about that: mind-management has a long history, from the great religions to the great social movements of the mass communications era, and outcomes when small changes are scaled seems hardly predictable, and rapid development seems to have happened in many places in the world without anyone being nudged anywhere, so why think that the nudging is critical?

But Vinge's novel is great, though at 610 pages I think I've exhausted my interest in the Singularity and space opera etc. "No más, no más!"

Over my too-brief holiday in Canada, I read two books on a related theme: what happens to humans when most other humans disappear? 

The first, Vernor Vinge's Marooned in Realtime, is a traditional sci-fi novel.  Quite good, introducing Vinge's great concepts of being "bobbled" (in a little bubble outside of time) and also, apparently, the Singularity (when humans cross a threshold of suddenly understanding and manipulating the basic forces of the universe, and so basically turn into something else, or in Vinge's case, simply disappear (for everyone except those who had been bobbled).  That is, they move into a different plane, no longer observable to those left behind in the same way that a squirrel cannot really "be aware" of us humans.  Unfortunately, those marooned in realtime still have the same adventure and detective stories as we've always had... and final battle scenes where the bad guys' gloating is their downfall!  But still, a fun read.

The other book was less successful, though perhaps more ambitious.  Michaela Roessner's Vanishing Point.  I somehow became aware of it because it is set in San Jose, at the Winchester Mystery House!, where the survivors wake up one day to find most of the people of the world have just disappeared.  Roessner focuses on 30 years later, as different social groups form in the empty Bay Area (the Orinda people specialize in solar power and wine-making!).  Lots of complex psychology for the main character, a young woman.  Reminded me of the excellent Into the Forest by Jean Hegland.  The downside, for an older reader like me, is the second half of the book turns into a long-drawn out battle scene as the social groups start fighting.  Elliot would like it if somehow I could convince him to read a book I recommended.  (So far only Persepolis has worked.)  A nice set of reader comments is available at Goodreads.

I loved this installation piece by Ragnar Kjartansson.  A description is here:

A self-described radical post-romantic, the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson traveled westbound towards the Rocky Mountains in search of the epic. Working primarily as a performance artist, Kjartansson is known for his spectacular and humorous stagings of extreme character types, from the knight and rock outcast to the lonely crooner. In Banff the artist sought to create a cacophonic folk-country music video in the guise of a Davy Crockett-clad outlaw. Drawing on the nostalgic representations of nature found in sources as varied as paintings by Caspar David Friedrich and the cover of the Supertramp album Even In The Quietest Moments, his work is a dramatized engagement with Canada's frontier.

The End -- Rocky Mountains is a five-channel video installation synched together as a single disfigured country music arrangement in the chord of G. Produced with the support of The Banff Centre for the Icelandic Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, the piece was developed by Kjartansson in collaboration with Icelandic musician Davíð Þór Jónsson at The Centre in February 2009.

This video from the Vienna Biennale does not do it justice:

My understanding from Paul Collier is that a civil war costs a typical African country $65 billion in direct and indirect costs.  Let's assume a large country, with 65 million people (Burkina Faso only has 15 million people).  So the cost of a civil war is $1,000 per person.  Let's say the probability of civil war is 10% in the next ten years.  So the expected cost of war is $100... that is, a society should be willing to pay to reduce the probability of experiencing this cost, and pay up to $100 if the probability of war can be reduced to zero..

Now, how many books have to be read to prevent a civil war outbreak?  Research not yet undertaken might suggest the answer is six per year... i.e. six good novels (Kourouma's Allah n'est pas obligé etc) lowers the likelihood of civil war to only 7% in the next ten years   I have have to put a wink icon here ;-)

Reading has to be promoted, though, by a reasonable community library and librarian.  These, in FAVL's experience, cost about $3,000 a a year and generate about (let's guess) 1,000 books read by the target young adults.  So let's say 150 young adults get their reading done at a cost of $20 per year per person. The present value of ten years of that stream of costs is certainly higher than $30 (the benefit of reducing the probability of war).

So sounds like libraries are pretty expensive!  But wait... the benefit of $30 is received by each person in the whole 65 million population, and the reading only has to happen for the young adults who are the ones who go to war (and more often just the young men).  So the total country library cost is far far lower than the total country benefit.  Suppose that youth are a quarter of the poopulation.  So the cost is only $5 per person.  The present value of that over ten year is now close to the benefit produced by the library.

So the question then is: How much does reading a lot reduce the likelihood of civil war?  If only we had the research!

From the comments in the blog The Mookse and the Gripes:

Jeffrey Eugenides' story "Asleep in the Lord" addresses "the varieties of religious experience", to borrow a phrase from William James. It's rich, provocative, interesting, and not simple. The story appears in a New Yorker issue explicitly devoted to 'starting out'. The three fiction pieces deal with the difficulties we have in our twenties: one story is of a vet who was court martialed for his activities during war-time, and another is of a young female college teaching assistant who loses her way when she loses her grant money. While Mitchell, Eugenides' main character, is clearly starting out, whether he is lost or not is not as clear to the reader. The answer to that is also bound to be influenced by the reader's own religious life, so opinions about the story and its ending are likely to be widely, even wildly, divergent.

I notice a theme regarding money and religion. Mitchell has started out on his world tour with a "newly minted degree in religious studies". 'Newly minted' would be a cliched phrase, except that it introduces this money thread in the story. There is a recession, and Mitchell decides to postpone looking for a job. Jobless, he decides to try to travel around the world. We must deduce that Mitchell is financially very comfortable.

Once in Calcutta, Mitchell has enough money to give small sums to the poor, buy a beautiful cross to wear, and buy a train ticket to Benares without thinking twice when he is ready to move on.

Against the omipresent poverty of Calcutta, two competing religious figures appear in the story: Mother Teresa and Baghwan Shree Rajneesh, both charismatic, both attracting devotees from around the world, and both attracting donors and their money. One of Baghwan's followers sharply questions whether Mother Teresa cultivated Pinochet for financial gain, echoing questions others have raised, among them Christopher Hitchens, as to whether Mother Teresa raised vast sums of money from people like the Duvaliers of Haiti. The secondary question (which Eugenides does not explicitly raise) is whether the ultimate purpose of the money was less for easing the pain of dying patients than for opening center after center in her own name, thus building up a saintly world-wide reputation.

Eugenides makes very clear that the "hospital" does not have enough drugs, does not have enough doctors, nor does it have enough trained staff to train the volunteers. One wonders what has happened to the money.

In contrast, there is Baghwan Shree Rajneesh, who actually ended up on a commune in the United States, living a life amid a huge collection of cars, and who administered his religious guidance in part in "drive-bys". In fact, after building a huge following in both India and the United States, Baghwan and his followers were accused ij the united States of criminal conduct. Baghwan is a peripheral figure in this story, but his appearance here casts the shadow of the possibility of the misuse of power and money by religious charismatics. Eugenides leaves it to the reader to think all of this through, and there may well be many readers who do not reach these same conclusions.

A second theme in this story has to do with pain. Eugenides takes great care to provoke us with not only the possibility that some of the patients are in horrible and untreated pain, but that the untrained volunteers, although meaning well, cause some patients even more pain. Surely Mitchell's head massages were well intended and gave some relief. But when he and the senior volunteer move a patient without using a stretcher in order to give him a bath, the patient is almost catatonic with pain. Mitchell wonders if dousing the patient with water from the bucket is causing him even more pain.

Read Betsy's full comments here.