Muktar and the Camels

My critique partner and friend Toni Buzzeo sent a note, "You must read this book." This book was Muktar and the Camels by Janet Graber with oil painting illustrations by Scott Mack.
Boy Reading, from the BBC Photo Journal 

of the Kenyan Camel Library

I had just met a woman from Somalia who had lived in a refugee camp in the North Eastern Province of Kenya from the time she was eight years old until she was a teenager. 
She knows about the setting of this book, an orphanage for children from nomadic Somali families. In the book, the boy Muktar is homesick for his

traveling life and the camels that are most valued by his people. And then, three camels arrive to his orphanage, but these camels are carrying library books. Janet Graber is telling a story of the Kenya National Library Service who do indeed transport books by camel in the North Eastern Province. The camels travel from the city of Garissa. Here is a Photo Journal of the Kenyan Camel Library from the BBC.

Muktar and the Camels is a Picture Book of the Day in Anastasia Suen's blog on using picture books to teach writing. It has also been named to the Smithsonian Notable Books for Children 2009

"Just a little bit magic"

You must go to this site - KidsLibs - a project to bring libraries to children in poor neighborhoods in Nairobi and also rural Laikipia in Kenya.
This is a boy outside a library in Sipili. Bikes are among items on the wish list for each of the four libraries that librarian Anne Moore has created so far.
Kids at the Mathare North center gathered with Susan Phillips to read stories, talk about the kinds of stories they liked, then created characters for their own stories which they wrote and illustrated. You can read a series of stories about Thomas and Queenventure: "Once upon a time in the city of Mombasa lived a beautiful girl named Queenventure." Read more.

You will also see poems, pin hole photography (the first photo above was created in Mathare North), and sunprints created by kids in library programs. "Just a little bit magic" was the way Susan described the pinhole photographs.
The libraries themselves are a lot of magic for Kenyan kids. Do you live near one of Kenya's kidslibs libraries? Would you write us a comment about books you like or what you like to do there?

Mleta Hadithi

A group of twelve people from Amesbury are in Amesbury's sister city, Esabalu in western Kenya this week. Some of the visitors will work on the literacy project that several of us began the last time we were in Esabalu. The project is called Mleta Hadithi, Stories are Coming.
Wilson Reading funded the design and printing of this poster. Aron Fine, a new designer with Wilson, created the poster as his first project. The words in Swahili say, Reading Begins at Home. The book pictured is For You Are a Kenyan Child by Kelly Cunnane, illustrated by Ana Juan.
In Esabalu young women who have graduated from college but don't yet have jobs take books in Swahili, Luhya, the mother tongue, and English into village homes and read to children.
I will write updates here about how the Mleta Hadithi girls are doing in the village.

Reading Stories in Kenya

Mleta wa Hadithi is what we are calling the literacy project I am working on with Amesbury for Africa. That’s Swahili for Stories are Coming. Oldest daughters of a family are being trained as Hadithi (story) girls who will read aloud from storybooks to young children in their homes.

Our friends in Esabalu recommend that the books be in Swahili and dialects of Luhya, the mother tongue for village children.

Children in Amesbury schools have held a fund raiser. They have sold bracelets that say, One Book because the purchase of a bracelet will raise funds for a book for the literacy project. Amesbury for Africa will send the money to the village for the committee to purchase storybooks.

I am thinking about languages because I am reading the Kenyan writer, Ngugi. He wrote his first novels in English, but later wrote only in his own language, Kikuyu, saying that “Africa needs back its economy, its politics, its culture, its languages…” I’ve read passionate pleas to protect and champion native languages and ensure that African children grow up learning them. The Mleta wa Hadithi are reading stories in the mother tongue because the young children don’t know English. Village children don’t study English until their third year of school. I’m glad the project will do two things then: give kids a chance to hold books in their hands and begin reading, and also to see their own language in print.

Have you grown up with two or more languages? Have you had experience with children writing their own books in a native dialect and creating their own written literature? Have you done this yourself? The elephantrag WANTS YOUR experiences and ideas. Writeon!

Kenyan Girls in NEW MOON Magazine

Three of my friends from Kenya have written for NEW MOON, a magazine for girls published in the United States. They wrote on the theme of "City Girl, Country Girl". One girl lives in a rural village, two live in Mathare, a very large slum in Nairobi. Yvonne Wanjiru's wrote, "My Life in Mathare" about this slum.

The girls write about the fact that students must pay school fees to go to secondary school. They would have to drop out after 8th grade because their families did not have money to pay these fees. Some NEW MOON readers have written to ask how they can help the girls.

These were the most beautiful letters I have ever read. The young readers of NEW MOON will change the lives of the Kenyan girls.

If you would like to help with school fees for the girls in Mathare, please contact Anne Moore who runs Community Based Libraries in Mathare; kidslibs@hotmail.com. Please see the links under "How to Help" to know about Kidslibs, Amesbury for Africa, and me.

Photo: A student in Esabalu who just got a new uniform through the Uniform Project of Amesbury for Africa. In Kenya, children must have a uniform in order to attend school. See the link for Amesbury for Africa for more information.

Photo at top: NEW MOON writer Rita and her brothers, Harrison and John