Clive's visit to Eritrea, Day 4

> Photo: breaking the bread at our traditional Eritrean dinner

Today we’re in Asmara where Beth is running a workshop on the targeting and distribution of books. I’m here to listen and learn, but Beth and the participants who include our colleagues Gebrenegus at the Ministry of Education and Michael at the British Council, three secondary school librarians who work on the distribution of the Book Aid International books, the Chair of the Library and Information Association of Eritrea, and three curriculum development officers from the Ministry, work hard for the whole day. The workshop covers the targeting and distribution cycle focussing on needs assessment, deciding priorities, selecting and promoting stock, and monitoring and evaluation. There is heated debate on whether we should give priority to books for primary or secondary libraries. After more than an hour’s debate, primary wins the day by a small margin, but the arguments continue over lunch.

> Photo: Beth Murphy's presentation on reading promotion

The other hot topic was the issue of weeding books which are no longer or may never have been used. Where books are in short supply librarians find it difficult to throw out books which may find a reader one day, and they don’t want a library with very few books on the shelves. But others strongly press the case that having unread and out-of-date books puts readers off. By promoting good books, even if there are not that many, readers will be attracted to and use the library. Beth suggests that promoting the books and making the libraries more attractive will bring in a wider spectrum of the community. She points to a display of big books for children in the Dembe Sembel School in Asmara and the display of CD Roms in the British Council as examples of good promotion. The workshop ends with a session on monitoring and evaluation and, of course, an evaluation of the workshop itself which is very positive. I’m hugely impressed by the commitment of the participants and the high level of the discussion, and the professionalism and skill with which Beth has prepared and run the day. After the workshop we have a brief meeting with the new Minister of Education, Semere Russom, a former diplomat and Mayor of Asmara. The Minister gives us an outline of the problems facing Eritrea in building an education system from scratch and thanks Book Aid International for the contribution it has made to overcoming the shortage of books in the country. He will comment on the existing agreement and we will work with officials to agree a new partnership with the Ministry as quickly as possible. We are struck again by the commitment of people from the top down to libraries and reading as a central element of education at all levels.

> Photo: Beth Murphy in conversation with workshop participants

In the evening Mesfin Habtetsion of the British Council hosts a traditional Eritrean meal for us, and colleagues from the Ministry and the Library Association at a wonderful restaurant in a converted house decorated with an extraordinary collection of artefacts from all over the country covering the walls. We talk widely about the country, it’s history and traditions, and the challenges it faces in developing its education system.

A traditional Eritrean fermented honey beer accompanies the meal and a shot of white coffee liquor sends us off into the night after another exhausting, but very satisfying day. Tomorrow is a holiday and we’re planning to watch part of the Meskel festival and make a quick trip down to the coast down what is apparently a spectacular drive, dropping 2,800 meters in less than 100km.

Clive's visit to Eritrea day 3

Today we set off later, heading south to Decemhare and Mendefera. It's a much shorter trip than yesterday without the precipitous drop in altitude. It takes us through varying landscapes with dry plains with huge rocks, craggy hills and windy roads, and then across to some of Eritrea's most fertile land where the staple grain teff is grown along with mangoes, citrus and other fruit and vegetables.

We visit a range of libraries, nine in all ranging from public to school to community. At Zagre Junior School on the outskirts of Decemhare the library is packed with students during the break. A small girl, who prefers not to give her name or to have her photo taken, is reading Heidi and assures me that it is a wonderful story about somebody foreign. She and her friend like reading books about children. There is, though, a shortage of books at the elementary level.
At Decemhare Secondary School, the librarian tells us that "the BAI books are very useful, with nothing out of the range of the students. Teachers and students use the books, especially the fiction and subject material. We are very grateful to Book Aid for sending us the books".

The public libraries which we visit are being used by students either using the text books which are available here to keep up with their school work, or reading for information or pleasure. At Mendefera, we learn that the public library as well as nine community libraries in the area are being run by the Youth Association. We visit two of the community libraries and meet with Hager Genzay. An extraordinarily articulate and determined young man, he tells us how they re-opened the public library after it had been closed for three years, and planned to build twelve more libraries, nine of which have been completed. Two of the remaining three are urgently needed and he is sure they will find a way to get them operational soon - they have managed to get three new libraries opened in the past year. Responsibility for the public library services has been given to the Youth Association as they are seen as having the drive and commitment to ensure that things get done. With under-35s forming 85% of the population their energy is much needed, and Hager shows why the government has decided to give youth its chance.

> Photo: Hager Genzay

As we go back towards Asmara, we visit one last community library. Then we stop off for a much needed beer to watch the sun go down over the huge plains which make you believe you can see all the way to Sudan hundreds of kilometres away, talking to our Eritrean colleagues, Gebrenegus and Michael, who have done so much for the libraries, education and reading and have an unshakeable belief in the future of its people and their potential. It is a great privilege to be making a contribution to their work.

> Photo: Gebrenegus and the librarian at Derwarwa Community Library

Eritrea Day 2 - Clive's journey continues

Today fulfilled all our expectations - offering us a chance to see the beauty of the Eritrean countryside and also to see the very positive impact that our books are having on readers.

It offered an improvement on yesterday's frantic pace by quite a long way. At seven Beth and I, accompanied by Micahel and Gebrnegus set off in the cool of a high altitude morning. Asmara sits at about 7,500 ft above sea level - for the two hour trip to Keren. You drop some 5,000 feet in 100 km, and it is one of those drives with breathtaking scenery which you take in during moments when you're not holding your breath as you round yet another hairpin bend wondering whether there might be something coming the other way. The heat also rises with every meter dropped and every minute that passes.

Keren, when you finally reach it, is small town, nestling in a ring of imposing hills. The scene of crucial battles, a little known battle in the Second World War which led to the fall of Eritrea and Ethiopia, and a famous battle which provided the springboard for the victory of the Eritreans in their war of liberation. Keren is of tremendous historical significance, and history is much on our minds and in the conversation as we travel. After lunch we stop briefly at the British cemetry outside the town.

Again we visit a range of libraries, all of them with many well used copies of books sent by Book Aid International and we are made to feel extremely welcome everywhere. Beth is able to talk in some detail to the librarians about what is really useful to them and their readers, and where the gaps are. There is a huge range, from the Islamic School where they are in the middle of a move from Arabic as the language of instruction to English in order, as the Director Mr Mohammed puts it, to reach international standards; to the Keren public library whose librarian, Aster Berhe provides a wonderful service for students and general readers, a children's reading programme on Saturdays, and special programmes for disabled people, to a secondary school highly used with extremely well kept statistics on the use made of its books.

> Photo: young reader enjoying a story book at the Islamic school

Another secondary school has plans to expand to include an outdoor section with concerete tables and benches for the hot summer months when the temperature rises to 46C. A community library has set up three readers' clubs with 20 members each, with two or three people reading a book and discussing it with the group as a way of making best use of few copies. In the late afternoon we end up at the agricultural college which, like all the technical colleges in the country, is preparing to accept a huge new intake in January following a reorganisation of technical education. They have an excellent library and, as they show us around the premises, they take us to see the vineyards set up under the Brothers of de la Salle; you can, of course, buy some of the fruits of their labours and we all come away with at least one bottle and some cactus jam.

> Photo: Beth Murphy, Book Aid International librarian

with Aster Berhe at Keren Public Library

We wind our way back up to Asmara, reaching the hotel after 8.00, with emails to catch up on, blogs to write and pictures to transfer. But a great day demonstrating once again the tremendous work being done by so many committed people to make the education system, supported by a dynamic library service, work despite huge obstacles.

Photos from Eritrea

Gebrenegus Berhane from the Eritrean Ministry of Education takes a look at the book collection in the library at Sana Secondary School.
Readers at Bana Junior School, Eritrea

Clive's Eritrean journey

Beth Murphy and I have just spent a busy day with our partners, the British Council and Ministry of Education in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. We arrived yesterday after a long overnight flight via Cairo which allowed for very little sleep and a 4am arrival. After a few hours rest we had a walk around the incredible and well preserved if somewhat decayed, art deco city centre, and a wonderful welcome at a traditional coffee ceremony with the family of a colleague. Then an early night in anticipation of a very busy day, though the combination of too much coffee and the excitement of a new place made sleep difficult.

We started our first day with a briefing at the British Council with the acting Director Mefsin Habtetsion and our main contact Michael Tekie who is in charge of the very impressive management and librarian training programmes run by the Council, and will be accompanying us on our visits to the various schools and institutions in the course of the week. Part of the training for the librarians is in the Library Information Management System which has been developed by the British Council in Eritrea for use in school and community libraries. We were fortunate that a training programme was in progress and we were introduced to the class, learning the system and the computer skills need to operate it. On being told who we were, one of the participants, a secondary school teacher, said “we are proud of Book Aid who send us new books”, a great endorsement for our work so early in the visit.

A key part of the tour was, of course, to see the Book Aid International shipment which has recently arrived in Asmara and is being sorted for distribution by Kisseri Mehreteab. It is a huge task with over 14,000 books in the shipment. As Michael said, “the book famine in Eritrea has been minimized because of Book Aid International”. But without our local partners, the books would never reach their readers.

During the day, accompanied by Gebrenegus Berhane who is in charge of libraries at the Ministry of Education, we visited a range of libraries at a junior school, a secondary school, a technical college and the nursing college. We were struck by how well organised all the libraries were, although there is not heavy usage at present as the schools have just opened for the new academic year. It is clear that there is still a great need for more books, especially in the sciences and English language. One striking thing about the schools is that there is now parity between the number of girls and boys at secondary level, a new development since Book Aid International’s last visit three years ago. And teachers we talked to all said that girls were doing better in their studies than boys, a familiar story to people coming from the UK, but especially encouraging in the African context.

Between school visits we managed to squeeze in meetings with John Stops, the recently arrived VSO Country Director and the British Ambassador. VSO are involved in a major education programme with 39 volunteers placed in schools and other institutions, and we discussed the possibility of developing wider co-operation between ourselves, VSO and the Ministry. Nick Ashbury, the Ambassador, was helpful in briefing us on the situation in Eritrea and the position of NGOs. It can be a difficult environment, but Book Aid International has good relations with the Ministry of Education and we expect that there will be no problem in extending our partnership agreement.

It has been an exhausting, but hugely informative day. It is my first visit to see what happens to some of the hundreds of thousands of books I see every day in the Camberwell warehouse, and to meet the key people who make sure that at this end, the right book gets to the right person. In Eritrea, at least, they seem to be doing a wonderful job. Tomorrow we go to Keren and Hagaz, two hours to the north of Asmara. More libraries and another interesting day awaits us.

Barbara's trip to Kenya

Dear colleagues,

Here I am at last! It has been only a week since Rob and I arrived in Kenya and it already feels like I’ve been here forever. I had forgotten how time in Africa runs at its own pace: days are so full of life, excitement and colours that somehow they seem much longer.

We started our visits in Nairobi, where our first stop has been the Kenya National Library Service Headquarters, on the top of a green hill in the upper part of town. The new director, Irene, wasn’t there because she was bringing a new motorcycle mobile library upcountry. She is definitely on the move! There were Book Aid International’s cases lying everywhere, and librarians were busy processing the books to get them ready for readers in local branches all across the country.

The Nairobi Provincial Library besides the Headquarters has a beautiful children section with a room shaped like a theatre where on selected dates kids can go and listen to stories and watch movies, while parents are offered coffee. The librarian told us that parents say that since they started coming regularly to the library, kids have gone a long way in English and composition. Also, ‘they realize that they themselves have missed out a lot not having a library nearby when they were younger’.

There is also a VIP section with braille books and audiobooks. One of the librarians, James, who is totally blind and has worked at KNLS for 6 years, explained to us that they also have a mobile library scheme to bring Braille books to schools for totally blind and reach about 45 centres, mainly primary schools, but also secondary schools and individuals. Apparently the most popular books in Braille are fiction, Bibles, books on HIV/AIDS, on road safety, on youth problems and teenage books.

In the lawn in front of the library there are tents and tables where people can read in the light breeze and the librarians told me that students get there to study even at night after the library is closed. This is what I call keen students!

From Nairobi we headed off on the bumpy roads upcountry with the vehicles kindly offered by Kenya National Library Service. The provincial libraries we visited in Thika, Embu and Meru were always packed with students, so many that some had to sit at the little coloured tables in the kids’ sections when they couldn’t find a free spot elsewhere.

Early in the morning we started the visits to the schools that benefited from the Reading Tents Programme: kids were so excited to have visitors that the car was surrounded by hundred of smiley faces before we could even put one foot on the ground. When we interviewed them on the reading tents they attended last year, at first they were very shy in talking in front of the whole class, but after a while they started telling us so many stories they remembered that I could hardly keep track of them.

Most of the schools we visited had very few books to offer to their students; among those few, some were textbooks provided by the Government, some were old and ruined readers often unsuitable for primary school kids, and all were locked up in the head teachers’ offices, making it very intimidating for the kids to go ask to borrow them. No wonder the kids were so excited by the reading tents and the possibility to touch and play with how many colorful books they wanted!

Kids for Maua Primary School in Naivasha, for example, told us that they all enjoyed the tent very much – especially painting, drawing and a ‘potato and spoon race’ that the teachers organized for them. They said it was great to be able to choose from so many books on the floor of the tent. They told us that ever since that day, they read more than they used to! A little girl called Esther was particularly talkative and I was really moved when she told us how one book that she read at the reading tent has taught her to be nice with people suffering from HIV/AIDS. Kids are also very keen to read in English, and they asked us for books about Africa and other countries, such as Europe and even Mexico!

On Saturday, we headed south for Machakos to visit a reading tent that was running in a local school. It was the first time that I took part in a reading tent and I have to say that it was absolutely great to see the books that I normally see piled up in our warehouse coming to life in the little hands of about 250 grinning kids in their blue, green and burgundy uniforms! During the event, kids had some reading time when they could choose what to read from a pile of books casually laid on a table and it was a lot of fun to look at them going back to their desks carrying as many as they could and trying to look at them all at once. Then they drew, participated in reading and poetry and singing competitions and played out in the field. I will post a clip of a little guy reading aloud for Rob and another one of one of the songs the kids came up with for the music competitions. One of the teachers explained to us that a lot of the songs had a moral content such as the importance of literacy or HIV/AIDS awareness.

In the end, the children were fed with a hot meal and each of the 10 schools that participated was given a collection of 80 books to build a school library as they were trained to do before the reading tent took place.

On Sunday, after an unforgettable drive along breathtaking views of the Rift Valley, we reached the library at the Naivasha Maximum Security Prison. Having never visited a prison before, I was a bit nervous when we crossed the prison gate, but the most unexpected sight was waiting for me on the other side. It was a special day at the Prison: the new National Policy for HIV/AIDS was being launched and on the prison compound there was a huge ceremony with prestigious guests and kids singing for the families of the prison guards. We ended up having lunch among the entourage of the Vice President of Kenya!

In the afternoon we visited the library that is used by more of 600 inmates and many of the 200 staff. The library is part of the prison education centre which works like a traditional school, with a Principal and teachers, who are all inmates. We were able to spend a lot of time with a group of ten inmates who explained to us that Naivasha Maximum Security prison is the only penal institution in the country offering higher education and business education to inmates. There are also hands-on classes in carpentry, car-painting, metalwork etc which produce fantastic products that they showed to us.

Everybody was incredibly welcoming to us and keen to make us understand what a life changing opportunity the library had brought in their daily routine. The Chief Librarian, Joseck Anari, who is also an inmate and has been the librarian for two years, told us that most students at the school are undergoing rehabilitation through formal education, so they use the library to study for their examinations. He said that there are some very keen students who go there everyday. Bonaventure Mukhwana, the Principal, also told us that Book Aid International’s donations are “really helping eradicate illiteracy. Very many inmates arrive having very little education, but when they come in they are admitted here and they start learning”. BAI’s books are also used to stock the smaller libraries in the various buildings of the prison that host up to 400 prisoners each. Kenya National Library Service brings a box of new books to the prison library each month. Inmates asked us for English and fiction, maths and science books at secondary school level, and for economics and business studies textbooks. Vocational students read at the library too, and among others they need books on carpentry, tailoring, metalwork, and mechanics. There is also a great demand for materials on statistics, law, personnel management, IT, auditing, office administration, commerce and marketing. Bonaventure asked us for more accountancy textbooks – the only copies they have are Book Aid International donations.

We are now safely back in Nairobi, and ready to start the Fundraising Training for the East African Book Development Association members, that will keep us busy for the next three days. I will keep you posted!