Blog Updates /

After the initial three stories, there is a point to this post, a big one. Patience. Read on.

What seem like forever ago, I was sitting on the steps of a school in a small village in Uganda on the way to Rwanda. Our bus had broken down for the second time. There was little else to do, but read and eat mandazi. As I settled in to some pop-culture book about aid in Africa, I was rapidly surrounded by a group of young teenagers intrigued by the lone mzungu. Recognizing the map of Africa on the front cover of my book, they began quizzing me: What is this book about? Is it about us? Who wrote it? Why haven’t I read it if it’s about my country?

Fast-forward to a blissful few weeks on Zanzibar, Tanzania. A young guy approached me while I was sitting on the beach reading. He looked at my book and asked, “Where is Rwanda?” Soon after I explained the jest of the book, “What’s genocide?”

Now, for a third, and last, example. There’s a famous book called the Aboke Girls. It’s about a group of young girls abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Apac, Uganda. I was hanging out with a group of politicians/school teachers in the district’s main village, Apac, and I took out the book. After passing it around, most confessed that they had never even read it. Some of these great people were actually related to the girls who were taken. We handed them the book and we made them promise to distribute it in their classrooms/communities (my apologies to the author). More shocking, I realized after that the writer was the Dutch editor in chief of the New Vision, a widely distributed national newspaper. Go figure.

So, all these stories have a point. I’m organizing a sort of ‘book drive’. I want to pool all the books about Africa or written by Africans we have gathering dust on our shelves and send them to Uganda via the Concordia Volunteer Abroad program (CVAP). We’ll make sure they’re distributed in schools in Northern Uganda, as well as at Gulu University. While I know many people become emotionally attached to books, this is a great chance to spread the word and ensure that the very subjects of these books can read about themselves and turn around the Western-driven impression of Africa. Remember Foucault and Said: “Knowledge is Power”. It’s our responsibility to ensure that our Western-driven impressions do not dominate the intellectual market, and, at the very least, to foster a much needed discussion about issues like aid, micro-finance, development and more.

If you want to help out and contribute, please drop off your books at the CVAP office at 2110 Mackay, right near Concordia (just a quick detour before class!). Please make sure to drop them off between these hours, otherwise the office is closed:

1. Peter’s office hours – 12pm to 5pm on Fridays

2. Jamie’s office hours – 11am to 6pm on Wednesdays.

I’d really like to prioritize with books about Africa / written by Africans. However, if you have some other ones that need dusting off, feel free to drop them off. If there’s room, they’ll go too! As the new CVAP volunteers head out, they’ll bring the books for free. We’ll then ensure that they’re distributed equally among CVAP’s partners and friends up in Northern Uganda.

If you’re not in Montreal, feel free to mail the books to the city. I know it’s expensive, so I’m not surprised if that seems like a silly idea. However, if you’re into it, send me an email and I can send you my address. I’ll make sure they get there.