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« NOTA BENE: COMPARISONS | Main | ROOSTER 2007 »

February 20, 2007

CAMEL BOOK DRIVE NEEDS BOOKS

Masha Hamilton writes in to remind us about the Camel Book Drive, which is desperately seeking donations.  We're taking a book down to the post office this week and hope you'll do the same.

Though The Camel Bookmobile (HarperCollins, April 2007) is a novel, the camel-borne library actually exists. It operates in Kenya’s isolated Northeastern Province near the unstable border with Somalia. It brings books to a semi-nomadic people who live with drought, famine and chonic poverty. The books are spread out on grass mats beneath an acacia tree, and the library patrons, often barefoot, sometimes joined by goats or donkeys, gather with great excitement to choose their books until the next visit. I visited the region and walked the bush with the camel library, and you can see pictures and a short video.

But of course, the bush is hard on books and the traveling library needs more. The books they have are written in either English or Swahili, both of which are taught in school. (The native language of many of the library’s patrons is Somali, but if you click on the video, you can see the younger children singing a song in English in their “classroom” under an acacia.) The librarians in the Northeast Province who travel with the camel bookmobile told me children’s storybooks are most popular, general fiction is also high on the list, and much interest is shown in nonfiction books covering topics ranging from astronomy to geography to history. The librarians also said patrons especially love it when a book is inscribed with a note from the sender. It helps them feel connected to places only barely imagined.

Posted by TEV at 12:25 AM in Words Fail |

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