Travel With Reason

Update  from 10 months later … we’ve done it! The Hope Library is up and running.  Click here to read more, and read below to learn the origins of the project.

[Kibera slum, Nairobi, Kenya] My second visit to Kibera, May 4 (posting this entry after mulling it over for a week). Being taken in a little deeper this time. I had been to a “drinking den” on my first visit, but my shepherd this time, Osir, takes me to another one (despite my stated focus on reconnecting with some artists I met earlier).

The half-dozen gatherees are socializing, and drinking changaa, the traditional homemade liquor of the Luo people, in a shack with a dirt floor, cardboard wall. A child who might be 2 years old sleeps nearby. (She’s at the far right in the photo below- maybe that’s her pink backpack on the wall above her?) Another boy, about 8, refills the liquor jug when needed, if mom (the proprietress) is otherwise busy.

It’s a funny dance, having the rare mzungu (white guy) in their midst. Do they want to have their photo taken, or not? Do they want to chat, or not? Sometimes it’s both at once.

One guy (in the hat, on the right, in photo above) strikes up a chat. “I love a good book. Do you like to read?” Nonchalantly, he tosses at me his current read – or rather, the ripped-out middle third. The front portion of The Parcifal Mosaic has been passed on to its lucky next reader; the final third, well, he’ll have to get to that when he can find out who has it. It’s all about sharing when it comes to books in Kibera, if it comes to that at all.

“Ludlum does the best stories, but only if you can deal with extremely complex characters. Man, he does characters like nobody can.” The others chime in enthusiastically; maybe they are reading the first third, or the last. I tell them I read 3 or 4 Ludlum stories in high school, not so much since. (Can’t focus on all those characters.)

These guys are readers. Osir, too. When I later mention some books I was reading on my travels, he asks, “do you have any that I might like?” (I wasn’t sure if either of the titles on my nightstand at the Holiday Inn would quite make the best slum reading: Briefing for a Decent into Hell, and Things Fall Apart. People, you cannot make this stuff up.)

Osir tells me Kibera has no library. (No surprise, there’s barely running water, primarily to community pumps.) The adults, with plenty of time on their hands, are more than eager to read, it’s obvious; books for kids in school are hard enough to come by, let alone those for the pure joy of reading.

I think, how sad these kids might not get to read, for example, books like Miss Pickerell on the Moon, one title that oddly sticks in my head as having provided joy and distraction in 4th grade. Sure, it’s the ludicrous, implausible tale of a grandmother exploring interplanetary travel, but who more than these kids needs the message that improbable dreams can come true?

Let me cut to the chase here – it’s midnight and I wake at 4 for an early flight. If you live in Chicago, and you have spare paperbacks lying around the house, especially kids books, let me have ‘em. I’ll be coming back later this year for work, and can load up a big suitcase and share them with folks in the slum (perhaps via Osir’s church or something). I know the argument of some people that you should go through proper channels and let the Red Cross or Unicef deal with this stuff, but obviously, it’s not quite happening. At the end of the day (and it certainly is that here), you gotta believe that small individual acts have a place, too, and can sometimes make a difference.

Hmmm … speaking of Kenyan kids with a dream, here’s an idea – bulk purchase of Audacity of Hope, anyone?

[Decoration inside home in Kibera slum, Kenya]

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