Library Matters

Well I thought I'd visit the Médiathèque Municipale (Public Library) Wednesday, but, to my amazement (?) it was closed for the week because of the FESPACO film festival.  Somehow this did not come as a complete surprise given the ease that public workers seem to be able to take off at any whiff of a holiday.  My hopes had been up approaching the building, as I noticed that the front door was ajar.  Upon entering, however, I puzzled over why the place seemed utterly deserted and completely closed up inside, except for piles of shoes outside one large room. As I recalled, there had been a handful of vehicles in the parking lot.  I peered inside the glass doors and saw yoga mats on the floor and legs and arms extended into the air.  Yoga class!   It looks like I'm going to have to put off my visit for another week!


As I complained in my previous post, the Internet is almost at a standstill here, and has been for several days.  It has never been exactly speedy but this is ridiculous!  Some have speculated that the added FESPACO traffic is the culprit.  Then I heard that the Internet providers were deliberately providing minimum service as a form of strike. I've also heard that a major fibre-optic cable was cut outside of Bobo-Dioulasso (the second largest city in Burkina Faso).  All I know that the problem is Ouaga-wide and not limited to the SIL center.

I am teaching Alice how to add local publications with special diacritical marks

Newly added books--the box contains recently printed local language materials for new readers

With no Internet to connect to the Library of Congress (LOC) or the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), subject cataloging get slowed down considerably, with the exception of local language materials...   I have been trying to increase the number of subject headings used here, in both English and French, so that people using the library can find the subject matter more easily.

Tuesday evening I went with two SIL-Mali évacuées to see some short FESPACO films from Mali at a smaller theatre.  Thursday, a group of us caught a Swiss film, Vol Spécial, a documentary about detention and re-patriation of illegal immigrants and declined asylum seekers in Switzerland, in its African premiere. You can imagine that the polemic surrounding the subject here which made for quite a heated debate with the filmmaker present after the showing.  Another really hot film is the Sénégalese La Pirogue, about young Africans attempting to flee by boat to Spain to escape the high unemployment in Dakar.



A group of us from SIL sit in a sparcely filled movie theatre



Friday evening, as FESPACO continued, a handful of us went to the FESPACO market.  Vendors from places as far away as Mali, Côte d'Ivoire and even Sénégal were represented selling special FESPACO merchandise, along with arts and crafts, clothing, fabric, sandals and small leather goods, jewelry, solar lights, information on solar cooking, books, etc., to filmgoers.



The FESPACO marketplace



Sunday was the last day of the film festival.  I just learned that another Sénégalese film, Aujourd'hui ["Today"] by Franco-Sénégalese filmmaker Alain Gomis, has taken the FESPACO grand prize.  It is apparently a very poetic film about a dying man reflecting on his life.

And today, Monday, the back-up system to the library computer had issues effectively shutting down that computer.  I don't know what is wrong with it, but the computer people here at the SIL center are now investigating... The electrician had just completed the wiring for setting up the new network for the to-be-installed public access library computer and now this...

Upgrading the wiring for the library's computers