Happy Day of the African Child! (Yesterday)

Yesterday I held the first successful children's programming of the summer/winter. For Day of the African Child Rachel and I bought some colored paper and crayons and some biscuits for the kids that showed up after school. There were about 5 total, but I was pleased with the crowd. They all seemed eager for attention and thoroughly enjoyed coloring, looking at books with us and chatting. It's hard because I would love to do tons of crafts with these children, and I know they would love it, but sadly enough crafts are not built into the budget within BNLS. I wish I were rich enough to buy them all the materials, but I'm not! So, I'm going to have to get creative about activities and such without any materials or resources.

Today I finally finished putting all the new books into the Accession Registry, yay! It was interesting to go through the books and become familiar with the publishing companies here, as they are different from the US. I had gotten used to a handful of children's literature publishers from my work logging multicultural books at the CCBC, and not many of the same publishers are producing things over here. It's some African publishers and then also publishers from Britain. One that remains the same though is the ever-reliable Marshall Cavendish! There are also a couple of authors that I've found make the overlap, like they have a Sandra Markle book here, and I found "Sheila Rae, the Brave," by Madison's own Kevin Henke. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem the childrens' collection here is anymore audience-appropriate in regards to cultural representation than in the US. There still seems to be a much higher rate of Caucasian children illustrated than African! Geez!

My patron from last week interested in tourism career resources failed to come in yesterday as he said, so my nice pile of books that I had collected for him had to be re-shelved today. But...yesterday another man did come in interested in our new books (still in boxes, haven't been shelved yet) and asked me when they would be ready to circulate. I checked with Max and they were fair game, and I helped him locate some autobiographies/biographies, the books he was interested in. While I was helping him he asked "Tell me what other services the library offers besides these books?" To which I replied, "I wish I could tell you there were other services, but I'm afraid I can't! What would you like the library to offer?" He of course said the Internet, and I of course said, "Yes, I know, hopefully when the new building is done there will be lots of programs and computers." So sad. I asked Lobohang, a library worker what the hold-up was with the new building, and she told me that they are waiting for the electricity to be installed, and the contractor is refusing to do it until they get the $1 million dollars still owed to them! Yikes! The new building looks like it has such great potential-I wish it could be finished up and ready to be used.

Last night the electricity went off for about 45 minutes. We went over to the main house to sit it out. I guess because of the World Cup South Africa is using much more energy to satisfy it's visitors, and the surrounding countries that get it's electricity from SA are paying the price. Our host brother and mother taught us how to make "paps," a porridge they eat a lot of there, by candlelight! It was hard, there is a lot of stirring and the porridge gets really stiff as it cooks.

We had another interesting cultural exchange the other day with our little host nephew, Atie(4 years). We noticed that he had been grabbing at our breasts, and of course we thought this was entirely inappropriate. However, it seems that it is quite normal. MmaKgosi explained that in Setswana culture breasts are not taboo and its natural for him to want to take them out. Interesting...

It's been freezing here! I'm wearing all my clothes all the time! I never realized how much I cherish indoor heating, installation and weather proof windows!