Eager children scramble for them in Zimbabwe. Camels carry them through remotest Kenya. They are impossible to buy from a legitimate seller in Sierra Leone. They have solved problems, launched businesses and careers, created dreams, fired imaginations, changed lives and saved lives. They are taken for granted in Britain, but 113-million children worldwide do not have access to them.
Books are not a luxury but a necessity. They open up new worlds and provide opportunities. Without them, modern education is near-impossible. In many African classrooms, one book is shared between six, a dozen or even a hundred children. While guests on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs are asked which book they could not live without, there are many African people who die having never turned a page.
Book Aid International exists because books matter. They are an essential tool in any nation’s growth.
Each year, Book Aid International donates more than half-a-million books and journals to some of the poorest countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa — where half the people live on less than $1 a day — but also in Palestine and tsunami-hit Sri Lanka. Far from a cultural indulgence, the charity’s goal is long-term eradication of ignorance, poverty and dependence.
”To be outrageous,” said Michael Morpurgo, the former Children’s Laureate, ”I think Book Aid International is even more necessary than aid for famines. I don’t see how you’re going to stop the cycle of famine and war unless you improve knowledge and understanding.
”To present food without books is a stop-gap; books are the basic tools of survival. It’s going to take generations, but we’d better start now because we cannot have one part of the world that isn’t fulfilling the aspirations of its people intellectually, physically and commercially.”
One step back
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to sign their names, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund. About 113-million children — two-thirds of them girls — do not go to school. And as more countries pursue the UN’s Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education, two steps forward can mean one step back.
In Uganda, for example, as school enrolment grew from 2,5-million pupils in 1997 to 7,7-million last year, resources were stretched and quality compromised. Books are shared between many — not surprising when, in some countries, a book costs a month’s wages.
Masialeti Simenda, chief librarian of the Zambia Library Service, one of Book Aid International’s partners, said: ”Most people in Zambia don’t have access to books. There is a misconception that people in urban areas can afford them, but imagine a family which cannot even afford three meals a day. Literacy was at 80%, but the situation is becoming worse; it is now 55% to 60%, because of the limited places in school.’
Book Aid International has given him hope. He gives an example of what the charity can achieve: ”There was a security guard who didn’t do well at high school and his friends used to laugh at him. He used Book Aid International books and did O-levels, then got a certificate and diploma in library studies. Now he wants to study for a degree. It’s an amazing example.”
Ellen Namhila, director of the Namibia Library and Information Service, also finds grounds for optimism: ”For 90% of the population, the reading and writing culture is not there and the demand to seek information is not there. We would normally only be able to provide 30 books per school, but now with Book Aid International it’s 300 or more per school each year.
”The books this charity is donating to Africa are not put on shelves to gather dust. You can see by the wear and tear that these books are continually used.’
Donations
A donation of just £1,50 (about R16) is what it takes to a send a book to one of the world’s poorest countries. But Book Aid International, founded in 1954, needs public donations more than ever.
Major United Kingdom publishers donate most of the books it provides and at present it receives a grant from the government, but the money from statutory sources is dwindling. The charity was a member of the Make Poverty History campaign and is endorsed by authors including Alexander McCall Smith and Benjamin Zephaniah.
In the warehouse at the charity’s headquarters in south London, crates marked for Nigeria, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe and others sit ready for delivery. They contain books of all types: Tales from Africa, Macbeth, ABC of Sexually Transmitted Infections, Sherlock Holmes, Library Alive!, Administrative Law, Criminal Law, Wuthering Heights, Bob the Builder and, of course, Harry Potter. Book Aid International works closely with library services in 18 countries to ensure the books are targeted to their needs.
Gertrude Mulindwa, director of the National Library of Uganda, says: ”There is a small community library 50km west of the capital, Kampala, where we send Book Aid International books. We went out on a visit and found a group of midwives reading Where There Is No Doctor, a very practical guide on health situations. They had come to share a book which was making a difference.”
The charity also runs workshops to train librarians and teachers, invests in books in local languages, supports reading-promotion projects and aids the growth of indigenous publishers and booksellers as well as trade between African nations.
Mulindwa says: ”In April, there was a workshop for the training of teachers to encourage children to read. It is already yielding results — one library is overwhelmed by the number of children coming to use it.”
Books saving lives
The message that books can save lives has never been more pertinent than in the era of HIV/Aids, and one of Book Aid’s most popular titles is The Aids Handbook. Professor Kingo Mchombu, of Namibia University, who worked with Book Aid International in Namibia and Tanzania, explains: ”Many of the public health problems are ultimately information problems. Without information, people are ruled by superstition. There are still many people in Africa who think that Aids comes from witchcraft or is a punishment from God for sins committed.
”Without education, there is no development, and without books there is no education. I’ve never heard of a country that has been able to develop without an educated population.”
Book Aid International and its partners glimpse an Africa not of famine, poverty and war but of hope. The charity’s image of the continent is not the one of misery and starvation but of children crowding into libraries, hands outstretched for books, desperate for learning and self-improvement.
Richard Crabbe, a Ghanaian who has worked extensively with Book Aid International, says his mother never had the chance to go to school but made sure that her children always had the books they needed. He now works for the World Bank in Washington, DC.
”Books opened the world to me,” he says. ”I grew up in a home where, on your birthday, you got a book or an ice cream … Looking back, I can see how books shaped my life. I have seen the faces of children light up because they have seen a book, something they can call their own, something they can identify with.”
The aid ethos is that to feed a child a fish is good, but to teach them to fish is ultimately far better. Book Aid International’s director, Sara Harrity, says: ”We’re about much longer-term capacity, building for people to realise their own potential and provide their own resources … It is certainly not a quick fix.
”I’d like to say to readers, think what having books — being able to read whatever they like, whenever they like — has meant for them and where it has got them.
”Think about how you can sit down with an inanimate object, a book, and go through it; and at the end of it you’re rather different, having your eyes opened to things, understanding things differently. I think that’s extraordinarily powerful and I want everyone to have that chance.” — Guardian Unlimited Â