Bittersweet

Birthday dinner

March 11 was my birthday, so the same evening Rebecca and I returned from our weekend excursion to Bobo/Banfora, a group of us went to Chez Simon, in downtown Ouaga to celebrate.  Chez Simon is a Lebanese restaurant with a menu ranging from Lebanese mezze to burgers, omelettes, salads and pasta.  It has both indoor and outdoor seating, and really good desserts.

Celebrating my birthday at Chez Simon

Phone found

And then the following day, my phone was found in the mail room!  I vaguely remember sitting in there for a few minutes with my laptop in search of a stong enough wifi signal to connect to the Internet. Evidently, I had my purse with me and the phone must have slipped out!  What a WONDERFUL  birthday present!

 My errant cell phone with Airtel SIM card contract

Library connections

Once I had my phone again, I lost no time, but quickly contacted the local representatives of Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL) to set up a meeting.  I was particularly interested in the summer reading camps directed at elementary school students in the 12 villages where they have established village libraries in Burkina Faso. In each village 25 lucky children are able to participate, selected through a lottery system. Though the camps the children learn to work cooperatively in a group, overcome shyness, learn about personal hygiene, good study habits, and reading for pleasure.  They are also introduced to their local library, and just have fun together.

I was also interested in the buy-in that FAVL strives to achieve in the communities they work in. They are not just interested in putting in a building with books, but making it a part of the local community, eventually getting that community to assume responsibility for the support of both the library and a librarian. I had seen both good and bad examples of this in my trip to South Africa 8 years ago, and was favorably impressed by FAVL's approach.  You can read about FAVL here: http://www.favl.org/about.html

Supplies for the children's programs at the Médiathèque Municipal

 

In addition, I managed another trip to the Médiathèque Municipale to re-establish contact with the director there, Mme. Ouattara, who was delighted to see me again and equally delighted with materials and ideas for children’s programs, the latter borrowed from the FAVL website. FAVL will also be doing a follow-up visit to the Médiathèque. 

The librarian's desk at the SIL library

My final week was an extremely slow one Internet-wise as there was some kind of lengthy Information Technology  workshop going on at the SIL Center and, small wonder, the participants were hogging all of the bandwidth. Internet access is only good between 4 - 6 am, and during the dinner hour from about 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm.  As a result, although I managed to recoup a good portion of the lost library data, little subsequent data could be added, and much remains to be done.

Ready reference materials at the library

The library catalog still needs to be put on the second computer but, as the version of Windows is XP on that compter, it needs to be upgraded to a later version (or the computer replaced!) so that move is on hold. Maybe when the new bi-lingual software is ready to be installed in September... There has also been a hitch with the SIL website, but with the IT gurus temporarily in residence, I hope this will be resolved so that the library's catalog can be eventually uploaded to the website. Unfortunately, because of my time restrictions, I will be leaving before this happens.  This is somewhat bittersweet, but an African reality—the wheels move very slowly here, but, at least they are in motion...