Windows and mirrors



Chang'ombe Primary School, Children's Book Project Burt Award Readings
Christine Earnshaw (courtesy CODE)

In previous posts I’ve referred to the importance of people having and hearing stories that are their own – that reflect their realities and relate their lives – rather than having others tell stories about them.

Mkama Mwijarubi and Asungushe Kayombo are Tanzanian authors who are filling a gap in the availability of such stories. Both have recently written novels for young people, novels written in English that have locally-relevant settings and characters.

The need for English language books for young adults may not seem obvious, but in many Anglophone African countries, students start school using local languages but switch to English in later elementary or early high school. This shift to a new language is made more challenging if interesting reading material isn’t easily available. (Think about what you wanted to read at that age.) Young people need stories that engage them, and characters and settings they can relate to, where they can see themselves and their preoccupations reflected. Non-fiction alone, or fiction set in England or North America, just aren’t sufficient.

Asungushe Kayombo’s book, The Best is Yet to Come, is the story of Daima, a young woman who escapes her strict home in order to achieve her dream of attending secondary school. This isn’t a sugar-coated tale, though. Daima makes her way through complex relationships and sometimes disturbing situations, experiencing the powerlessness of a child in an adult world but also the power of perseverance and of friendship.

Mkama Mwijarubi’s novel, Treeland: the Land of Laughter, creates a fantasy land, Treeland, “where trees grow and people laugh.” Treeland’s King Majabe and his daughter, Princess Zuri, must come to grips with a changing world as well as with each other. Treeland is told simply, but its characters and the challenges they face are intricate. The novel brings insights into what it means to respect tradition yet still find a new path.

Mwijarubi and Kayombo have been able to publish their young adult fiction with the help of some African organizations and a Canadian program that supports local book publishing. Mwijaribui, Kayombo and several other writers in Tanzania, Ghana, Ethiopia and Kenya are recipients of Burt Awards for African Literature. The Burt Award is sponsored by CODE, a Canadian non-profit organisation that promotes children’s learning by supporting book publishing, libraries and teacher training in Africa and the Caribbean. The Award is named for and funded by Bill Burt, a Canadian who noticed a lack of engaging books for young people while travelling with CODE to Africa in 2007. He and CODE created the Burt Award to support local authors and publishers to produce and distribute English-language books that are meaningful to young readers in Africa and that can get them enthusiastic about reading.

Local partners – the Children’s Book Project for Tanzania, the Ghana Book Trust, CODE-Ethiopia and the National Book Development Council of Kenya – manage the Awards. In Tanzania, the Children’s Book Project, which received a UNESCO International Literacy Award in 2007 for its local language publishing work, published Mwijarubi and Kayombo’s books.

To be considered for Burt Awards, authors submit manuscripts that are dramatic, humorous or suspenseful, have strong characters, and deal with the social challenges that young people face. A 6-member jury of experts in literature, linguistics and publishing selects the winning stories. With the Awards, everybody benefits: authors receive cash prizes and a publishing contract, CODE and its partners distribute several thousand copies of each book to schools and libraries, and the publishers sell the books commercially.

The International Board for Books for Youth (IBBY)-Canada, which promotes access to children’s books in Canada and internationally, also supports the Burt Award by contributing jurors and co-facilitating writing workshops for authors. Says Scott Walter, CODE's Executive Director, of the partnership, "Our two organizations share a common belief in the power of reading to transform people's lives. We know that children need windows into other worlds and mirrors that reflect their own experience. We recognize the importance of offering children access to engaging, high quality, locally written books and share an understanding of the continuum of writers and illustrators, publishers, libraries, book distributors and teachers in getting stories told -- and books produced and connected with their readers."

The Best is Yet To Come is the first novel for Asungushe Kayombo, a health professional with degrees in medicine and public health. Treeland: the Land of Laughter is the second children’s book by Mkama Mwijarubi, who has a diploma in journalism and a business degree.

Additional Burt Award winners are listed at http://www.codecan.org/get-involved/burt-award. More information on CODE can be found at http://www.codecan.org/. CODE is looking into making the books available in Canada – which would be welcome for those of us interested in accessing engaging African stories in other parts of the world.

Supporting science



Aklilu Lemma
(photo courtesy Right Livelihood Award)

Back in 1964, an Ethiopian scientist named Aklilu Lemma was investigating a species of freshwater snail that transmitted schistosomiasis. His observations led him to a discovery of potential benefit not only in his own country but also globally.

Schistosomiasis, or bilharzia, is a chronic disease caused by parasites – blood flukes, or trematode worms – that are carried in the snails and released as larvae into water, where they can come in contact with humans. Adult worms can live in blood vessels or body tissues, causing abdominal pain, diarrhoea and damage to internal organs, and sometimes death.

Over 200 million people in Africa, Asia and parts of the Caribbean and South America are infected by schistosomiasis, with many more at risk, especially in communities that depend on agriculture or fishing, or where people do domestic chores or children play in lakes and streams, or where safe drinking water and sanitation are lacking.

While studying the snails in the north of Ethiopia, Aklilu Lemma found high numbers of dead snails in water downstream from where people were washing clothes. They were using a berry plant called Endod, or African soapberry, for soap, as people there had done for generations. Lemma collected some live snails in a container and asked one of the women to put some of the Endod suds into it; the snails died.

Lemma and his colleagues went back to their lab and did further studies on the Endod plant. Two years later, in 1966, Lemma founded the Institute of Pathology at Addis Ababa University and continued his research on the berries. The potential for Endod as a molluscicide was significant because although alternatives were available, they were manufactured elsewhere and were prohibitively expensive. Lemma’s hope was that simple techniques could allow people to grow, process and use Endod to control schistosomiasis in their communities.

For the next ten years, Lemma’s studies on Endod showed its promise as a natural, biodegradable, safe and effective substance for preventing schistosomiasis, and other possible uses. His research with scientists in North America led to the discovery that Endod was also effective against zebra mussels which were infesting the Great Lakes and other waterways.

In the 1980s, though, they ran into roadblocks in the development and testing of Endod, because of the need to verify Endod’s safety for humans and the environment and lack of funds and support for the necessary tests. Lemma's mission to develop a low-cost and locally available control for schistosomiasis remained incomplete.

Nonetheless, in 1989, Aklilu Lemma along with Legesse Wolde-Yohannes, also of Addis Ababa University, were presented with the Right Livelihood Award "for discovering and campaigning relentlessly for an affordable preventative against bilharzia".
　
Their long experience raises several questions, including how best to support science in African countries through development, testing and application, and how to ensure that communities with local knowledge benefit from scientific discoveries.

Lemma’s view was that indigenous knowledge should be respected, and that African capacity for scientific research needed support. In his acceptance speech for the Right Livelihood Award, Lemma said, "I believe that the best future course for Africa is to invest in efforts to build on the endogenous capabilities of its own people."

Aklilu Lemma had a doctorate in pathobiology and held senior academic and advisory positions in Ethiopia. He also worked in various capacities with the UN and at Johns Hopkins University. He and Wolde-Yohannes created the Endod Foundation in Ethiopia in 1992. Lemma died in 1997.