I'm a student at Pratt Institute's School of Information and Library Science, and I have been working as a librarian trainee at Brooklyn Public Library since I began my studies in August 2006. l hope to finish in December 2008 upon completion of an independent study and a practicum addressing the Lubuto Library Project.
Last August, the Head of Collection Development at Brooklyn Public Library, Barbara Genco, attended the IFLA (The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) conference in Durban, South Africa where she met Jane Kinney Meyers, Lubuto Library Project's founder. Barbara returned from the conference and gave me information on Lubuto and put me in touch with Jane because she knew I had lived in Harare, Zimbabwe and had an interest in Africa. Jane Kinney Meyers and I began exchanging emails and having phone meetings on Lubuto's progress and future as a non-governmental organization. After discussion on my site visit and work at Lubuto, I applied for and received the Nasser Sharify Fellowship for International Librarianship and prepared for my stay in Lusaka, Zambia.
I met with Jane at Lubuto's headquarters in Washington, D.C. and visited the site where donated books are stored and processed according to Lubuto's classification system before they're shipped to Zambia. I selected a few books to pack in my suitcase and share with the children at Lubuto myself: Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe, Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales, and I Live in Brooklyn by Mari Takabayashi. During my three months as a children's librarian, I read Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters to children at the Brownsville branch library in Brooklyn and everyone really enjoyed it. I chose I Live in Brooklyn for an obvious reason, however trite it may seem. Nelson Mandela's selected stories happened to coincide with his 90th birthday, too (I had no idea.) The last detail before my visit was, of course, to ship myself to Zambia, and here I am.
Doris Lessing, recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature, penned African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe, which was first published in 1992, an insightful non-fiction account of her experiences in Zimbabwe. It chronicles a country born with incredible obstacles struggling to find its balance. I decided to read it in light of the recent political turmoil and my own reflections on the country in 2003. I had the serendipitous fortune of discovering passages addressing books and libraries and children in Africa reflecting Lubuto's purpose and my personal goals, as well as providing a bit of inspiration:
'I have spoken to many different kinds of audiences in many countries, some of them, as we put it, disadvantaged. This is not the first time I say to young people who will never reach university that there are ways of learning open to them, and no one can stop them learning if they want to learn. With a library and perhaps some sympathetic adult to advise them, there is nothing in the world they cannot study. A good library...is a treasure house, and we take it for granted. It is possible to pick up a book, perhaps by chance, when you are a child, and find in it a world existing parallel to the one you live in, full of amazements and surprises and delights; you can pursue any interest through different countries and cultures, diving back into history and forward into the future; you can exhaust one interest and then find another, or, turning over books, chance on a subject you had never suspected existed-and follow that, with no idea when you begin where it will lead. With a library you are free, not confined by certainly temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one-but no one at all-can tell you what to read and when and how. '
Later in the book, she describes a library in need:
'There are rejects from better libraries, and among them might be books the children would enjoy, but no attempt is made to differentiate between them. Perhaps the idea is, better any books than none at all. But there is such a hunger for books, for advice about books, in this country...Books remain as influential as they ever were, in countries like Zimbabwe. It is not possible to exaggerate the influence of books, even one book. Dambudzo Marechera, author of House of Hunger, described how...he found a thrown-out Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia. It changed his life.'
I identified these passages with what solutions to these problems I already knew Lubuto had addressed:
1. Lubuto provides an organized collection of books filtered through a collection development plan rather than the disorganized piles of discards from the Western world that Africa often receives.
2. Lubuto provides access to books and information for vulnerable children, some of whom live on the streets and without the luxury of school.
3. Lubuto provides guidance by volunteers and staff, on-hand to assist with book selection and read-alouds, in addition helping liaise content to children with insufficient literacy skills.
Now I can identify them with my own personal interaction with the Lubuto Library patrons, rendering the passages all too true.
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