Dear Friends:

It is twelve years since Mawanda Emmanuel and I founded the Kitengesa Community Library as a box of books, and it is nine years since we moved into our first building. Two years ago we moved into our new building, which has a computer center and community hall in addition to the main reading room. The building has been in a seemingly interminable state of near-completion, but it is really really nearly finished now, lacking only some window glasses, mosquito netting, and paint. Thanks to your generosity we have enough money in hand to finish the job, and we’re planning an official opening of the whole complex in January.

The physical development has been remarkable—and most impressive to the villagers—but the social and educational development that the library has brought about is, I think, more significant. In July I spent a whole week in Kitengesa, and sitting in the library was able to see much of how it is used by different sectors of the community. On the Monday of that week everything was quiet at first, with only the library scholars there sorting out books. But soon a troupe of primary school children arrived, led by one of our Canadian volunteers. They settled down on their new mats in the hall to listen to a story. Then a crowd of secondary school students came in, not for a scheduled library period but because they had some free time. They were followed by another lot of primary school children coming for more story time; and then the Women’s Group turned up to be taught how to type on the computer. Meanwhile sundry young men had established themselves at the tables and were quietly reading. One finished the Luganda story Gattimpa Gatimpule and went on to Mojo the Street Boy; another was deeply absorbed in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Later in the week I met another who was reading Alice in Wonderland (it was “very interesting,” he said), and still later one came to ask me about the difference between two editions of the same book that he was reading. The book was Great Expectations, in two simplified versions, and, interestingly enough, he was finding the supposedly

more difficult one (the one closer to Dickens’ original prose) easier and more enjoyable.

I’m telling you about these titles because they illustrate another

interesting development in the library. When we first started tracking the secondary school students’ preferences with the box of books, the genre that we called “Traditional Stories” was far and away the most popular, with “Modern Stories”—mostly stories set in present-day Africa—coming second. Now the library users’ tastes seem to have widened, particularly into the genre that we call “Classics.” Interesting, and exciting too, for I believe that we are here witnessing the growth of what Ugandans call “a reading culture.”

Of course, we can’t expect everything to be plain sailing. The increased numbers of primary school children using the library mean that our books are being rapidly read

to pieces. We’ve lost some books over the years too, so this year we’ve made a serious effort to replace both lost and damaged ones. We’ve also tried to get some more Luganda books. That was fun, because a friend of mine and I worked the street vendors along Kampala Road. Most of their books are in English, but when they learned we wanted Luganda ones they went scurrying around to look for them. They

were able to help us replace books, but, sadly, they could offer us few new titles. Now we have to look for some new titles in English.

Another difficulty we’ve encountered this year concerns the library scholars. In 2007 the government introduced “Universal Secondary Education” (USE), which means that it pays schools like Kitengesa Comprehensive Secondary School a capitation grant for every student who gets a high enough grade in the Primary Leaving Exam. Initially we decided to recruit our scholars from among those who did not receive this grant; but that proved a bad policy, because the scholars were not nearly as good as their predecessors. So now we’re recruiting from the whole student body again, and USE students receive the amount of their grant towards general education expenses. But the grant is nowhere

near enough to cover the costs of running the school, so Mr. Mawanda has asked parents, even of USE students, to make a contribution. The net result is that we, who are relieving the parents of these costs, must now pay more for each library scholar. On average (the fees differ for different years), it comes to $150 per year. So, please, if you wish to sponsor a scholar, can you send us that amount?

As you can tell, we are still dependent on your generosity, though we’re moving towards self-sufficiency. Thank you all for bringing us this far. Kate ParryHunter College, CUNY

Please make checks out to FAVL (Friends of African Village Libraries) and mail them to FAVL, P.O. Box 90533, San Jose, CA 95109-3533. Write “Kitengesa Community Library” on the memo line of the check. Thank you!

Community Library Kitengesa

Community Library Kitengesa

Dear Friends:

Itʼs that time of year again: I am back from Uganda and am eager to let you know about how things are going at Kitengesa. Our main preoccupation, this year as last, has been the construction of our new building. We built the basic structure in 2008 and in 2009 finished two rooms—the library proper, and the room that will eventually be a computer center. This year our first priority was to build toilets, and Iʼm happy to say that they are now com-plete. Afri-Pads, the company that has converted our old building into a tailoring workshop (and is employing some twenty local girls, including a couple of our former Library Scholars) has contributed to the cost. So their girls are now using and caring for one of the stalls—a great example of institutional collaboration at the local level. Otherwise our focus has been on finishing the third room, which is to be a community hall. Now the hall floor and walls are done, the verandah has a floor and ceiling, and the doors and window frames have been installed; but we still have to build steps, paint the walls, and finish the floors and windows. Only after that will we be able to turn the hall and the compound into an income-generating asset. Physical work on the computer center has been in abeyance this year. Weʼve been using the room as a meeting space—and until we finish the hall we need it badly. However, weʼre building our capacity to offer com-puter services by employing one of our most loyal library users, Julius Ssentume, as a computer assistant. Julius is a former student of our partner institution, Kitengesa Comprehensive Secondary School, and is now beginning to study part-time at Mutesa I Royal University in Masaka town. He had no computer skills to begin with, but he has been learning everything that he can from the volunteers that the University of British Columbia sends to Kitengesa so that by now he has become quite an expert. The two researchers who visited Kitengesa last year have gener-ously provided a fellowship for him so that we can afford

to employ him for three days a week, and he is already teaching typing skills on an old laptop and a few Alpha-Smarts. In a recent e-mail Julius told me how much his new job means to him: “I am very very happy because now I know I will be able to save and top up on the … tuition fees my friend decided to give me, so I think of it as a great opportunity for me.” It is also a great oppor-tunity for the library, and for all those in Kitengesa who want to become proficient with computers.

The Lwannunda Womenʼs Group, which is closely as-sociated with the library, is also flourishing. The women presented a proposal to the UN One Per Cent Fund this year, and as a result they now have 200 chairs which they can rent out to raise money for the many orphans that they care for. Gorreth, our library assistant, began facilitating a Family Literacy Project with the group last year. She took some time off in April in order to have a baby—an adorable little boy named Precious—but the group was eager to resume and is now romping through another unit based on material supplied to me by the South African Family Literacy Project. Gorreth and I, together with a Makerere student named Elizabeth Kirabo, went to Nairobi in July to make a presentation about the project at a conference

on Multilingualism and Education. It was a great experience for Gorreth and Elizabeth, it being their first international conference—well worth the hardship of traveling by bus! Dan, our chief librarian, has been fully occupied with supervising the building and looking after the Canadian volunteers, but he continues his work of promoting reading. A big step forward this year has been mak-ing arrangements for three nearby primary schools to send three classes each to the library every week during school hours. Since there are fifty children in each class, the library is now serving 450 children every week during term time. This project was given a great boost in April by the Uganda Community Libraries Association (UgCLA). A US-based funder, Pockets of Change, gave UgCLA funds to distribute a set of locally purchased childrenʼs books to ten member libraries. The distribution was based on proposals that the libraries submitted, and the Kitengesa library was one of the winners. (I am the Chairperson of UgCLA, but there was no conflict of inter-est because the Pockets of Change directors made the decisions). These books have proved immensely popular, and many of the children are now coming to the library on their own. Some of those children are featured in the photograph on this page. Thanks to your generous support, the library has become an important local institution. But we are not self-sufficient yet: we must finish the hall, and we must continue to pay salaries and buy newspapers and books. We need $5000 for the building and $3000 for recurrent expenses. Can you help us raise this money?

Kate ParryHunter College, CUNY Please make checks out to FAVL (Friends of African Village Libraries) and mail them to FAVL, P.O. Box 90533, San Jose, CA 95109-3533. Write “Kitengesa Community Library” on the memo line of the check. Thank you!

September 2010October 2011