Of books and friends: building a library abroad with donated books.

THIS IS A STORY OF FRIENDSHIP, joining an American woman in fast bond with a Kenyan man, and of books, which are the frigates that sail between them. As Emily Dickinson observed, "there is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away".

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Even as we embark on our separate voyages, Harrison and I always return to the secure berths of our respective homelands. Together in spirit, we have been happily coursing the high seas of the printed word for the last eleven years.

It all began when I first visited Kenya in 1995 and reunited with a young man who had been a student during the years I spent with my husband at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. His African name is Kilonzo; I know him as Harrison. He graduated with honours in 1991 and took his business degree home to Kenya. By the time we connected four years later, Harrison was employed in Nairobi, married and the father of two sons.

It was a joyful reunion. We were invited to visit his home village, where we were warmly received by his large extended family, and to me it seemed that we were greeted by the entire village. All day long, from the time of our arrival in the morning until our departure in the early evening, people drifted into the family compound to greet us. A goat was roasted in our honour--a sumptuous feast--a warmhearted expression of traditional African hospitality.

Harrison took us to a small building, half of which he had been renting for use as a bookstore. He was able to make available limited quantity of school supplies, such as pencils, pens, notebooks and a few texts, to children attending the rural school. In most African classrooms, the teacher alone possesses the text for the day's lesson. With this in mind, Harrison asked if I might manage to secure used textbooks for shipment to Kenya upon my return to the United States.

My first effort in that direction yielded 13 "M bags" (capacious canvas bags used for international shipping) containing all sorts of books donated by the school system of Danbury, Connecticut, where I lived at the time. Word about my project spread quickly to the surrounding towns, and we were deluged with different kinds of books: describing the world's geography, rivers, seas and mountains; dealing with the celestial systems; relating to animals and plants; and children's books, including a well used set of the Americana Encyclopedia. Such abundance became a storage problem on the campus at Western Connecticut State University, and loads of books were hauled from one building to another as the need arose for increased space. I suppose it was my hypothetically privileged position as "the president's wife" that protected me from the outrageous verbal slings and arrows hurled routinely by academics at one another and the administration.

My project was allowed to flourish. Annually for ten years, with the invaluable assistance of the campus postmaster and his staff, and the generosity of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, I supervised the posting of a shipment of books to Kenya, arriving sometimes as "Christmas gifts". The 2003 shipment, to everyone's delight, arrived in early February 2004 during my second visit to the country to see the library for the first time. By then, it had moved into new and expanded quarters-two rented rooms on the top floor of a building in the Kasarani District of Nairobi. The last shipment, in late summer of 2004, made several unexpected landfalls before reaching safe harbour. It was shortly after my last visit that the library's Board of Trustees voted unanimously to rename the library in my honour, calling it "The Denise C. Hogan Reading and Conference Room". I have not gotten over it still.

Since first setting sail, book-travellers embarking for Kenya have changed in character and personality. More adults have clambered aboard, including secondary-level texts, reference books, resources on a wide variety of subjects and some fiction. Eventually, unsold and donated university texts became stowaways. Health-care professionals discover nursing texts, guides to medicines and drugs, and instructions for the care of HIV/AIDS sufferers. Teachers and educators stop by, looking for updated teaching methods and educational administration. Accounting, finance and management texts are powerful magnets; even American history texts are useful for comparison and contrast of democratic institutions. I soon learned that students from the three universities in Nairobi came to our little library, where they found resources that were unavailable elsewhere.

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The library steams ahead at full speed--it is now an officially registered non-governmental organization (NGO) and a repository of United Nations documents. Thanks to the generosity of the Government of the Netherlands, donated computers allow the library to provide computer training classes; significantly, more than 50 per cent of the trainees are Sudanese refugees. In 2001, the library secured the voluntary consultancy services of a professional librarian from the Netherlands. A book loan programme provides students the opportunity to expand their horizons and improve their range of reading and knowledge. The library houses both primary and secondary schools, permitting local students to pursue their education without having to travel great distances.

In 2005, the library received approximately 500 books from the Kenya Textbook Centre, one of the country's leading suppliers of educational materials. A room serves as a rental space for local groups and a venue for visiting lecturers. Plans are underway to apply for a foundation grant to enable the library to sponsor a series of "travelling lectures" on women's issues, such as forced marriage, and the plight of unorganized female labourers. The library's book collection currently amounts to about 12,000 volumes. Of particular delight to me is the fact that based on the library's own statistics, roughly equal numbers of girls and boys use the library. The Board of Trustees has recently initiated a new enterprise: the purchase of a piece of land on which to construct an adequate library building. Contributions are being sought to fund this project and Kenyans themselves have pledged most of the needed sum. An American architect has volunteered as a design consultant.

However, as exciting as all these accomplishments and possibilities are, much is still to be done and many necessities required. The library receives no government support, sustaining itself on a modest subscription basis. It has no connection to the Internet, which is an absolute requisite for academic achievement and participation in global citizenship. Start-up costs are the primary obstacle; book preservation and storage are urgent issues; and office space, quiet rooms for reading, appropriate lighting and office equipment, including suitable furniture and shelves, are essential. Equipment for up-to-date cataloguing, telecommunications and technology must be acquired even at a minimum level to allow the library to function optimally in meeting the needs of its local and larger communities. A public statement of support and request for assistance by the Executive Director of the Kenyan Coordinating Committee for NGOs to the Zimmerman High School, located at the library, is a testimony to the library's status as a community and national resource.

I am no longer able to oversee the packing and shipping of books, but my dearest hope is that the project will continue. The maiden voyage of two friends was a huge success. Subsequent sailings under our patronage have carried more and better cargo. On occasion, however; the book-travellers have found themselves in unintentional deviation from their charted course. They have spent weeks on foreign docks and eventually resumed their voyage, finally disembarking at Mombasa for their last overland trip to Nairobi. Their arrival is always eagerly anticipated and greeted with smiling faces and open arms. The long-time friends continue their tireless labours, shipmates in a common cause. The books have made them the best of friends.

Denise Hogan, who holds a Ph.D. in theology from Boston University Graduate School, has taught at college and university level before becoming involved with the library project in Kenya. While maintaining her commitment to the library, she is pursuing and developing her artistic creativity.