Biblioburro

Not that long ago I read "The Camel Bookmobile", a super novel by Masha Hamilton. Nowe I have come across an article by Simon Romero in the New York Times about a real bookmobile – but this one is dependent on donkeys instead.


"LA GLORIA, Colombia — In a ritual repeated nearly every weekend for the past decade here in Colombia’s war-weary Caribbean hinterland, Luis Soriano gathered his two donkeys, Alfa and Beto, in front of his home on a recent Saturday afternoon.

Sweating already under the unforgiving sun, he strapped pouches with the word “Biblioburro” painted in blue letters to the donkeys’ backs and loaded them with an eclectic cargo of books destined for people living in the small villages beyond.

“I started out with 70 books, and now I have a collection of more than 4,800,” said Mr. Soriano, 36, a primary school teacher who lives in a small house here with his wife and three children, with books piled to the ceilings.

“This began as a necessity; then it became an obligation; and after that a custom,” he explained, squinting at the hills undulating into the horizon. “Now,” he said, “it is an institution.”

A whimsical riff on the bookmobile, Mr. Soriano’s Biblioburro is a small institution: one man and two donkeys. He created it out of the simple belief that the act of taking books to people who do not have them can somehow improve this impoverished region, and perhaps Colombia.

In doing so, Mr. Soriano has emerged as the best-known resident of La Gloria, a town that feels even farther removed from the rhythms of the wider world than is Aracataca, the inspiration for the setting of the epic “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez, another of the region’s native sons...."


To read more about Mr Soriano and see more pictures, please visit The New York Times.

Masha Hamilton – “The Camel Bookmobile”

 

Excellent.
Once a fortnight, the nomadic settlement of Madidima, in Kenya receives a visit from the camel bookmobile. Kanika, a young girl who lives with her grandmother, devours the books avidly and dreams of being a teacher. Her best friend is Scarface, a child mauled by a hyena at the age of three and virtually an outcast. Among the many other fascinating characters are the American Fi Sweeney who is out to do ‘something that matters ‘ in the world and Mr Abasi, the local librarian who thinks his camel is possessed by the spirit of his mother.
The camel bookmobile has only one inflexible rule - that every book must be returned on the next fortnightly visit. And then one day, two books are stolen...
A must read....

MASHA HAMILTON worked as a foreign correspondent for five years in the Middle East. In 2004 she travelled to Afghanistan to report on the country’s reconstruction efforts. While the characters in the Camel Bookmobile are fictional, the novel was inspired by the Kenyan Camel Mobile Library, set up by the government to improve literacy in poverty-stricken areas.