Back in the mists of time, I wrote a section of this blog concerning how Namibian learners are leaving educational institutes with only a sketchy competence when it comes to the country’s only official language, English. At that time I was hoping to see a few manuscripts I had written get taken up and developed into materials that would help to bridge this gap. (See under: ‘Good and READy’.)

Nothing really came of this, finances being a familiar constraint, and I filed the whole idea under ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’. But a couple of things have happened fairly recently that reawoke my interest in seeing if there wasn’t a way to give disadvantaged Namibians (children, especially) access to reading materials that would otherwise not be available to them.

Firstly, I visited my family in a very rural part of Germany last year and noticed that, in the absence of the type of services that people in towns take for granted, the community had done some wonderful improvising. Not only were farm-fresh products available in tiny, weatherproof kiosks by the side of the road (with the eggs, jams etc. paid for through an honesty system) but a little cabinet filled with books had been installed by a bus stop so that people (chiefly adults) could take, read, and return any volumes that caught their eye. Why, I asked myself, couldn’t we have a similar little library movement in Namibia?

Secondly, at the start of this year, I read an article in our daily English-language newspaper by a perceptive man (apologies – I cannot find it in their online archives) extolling the virtues of school libraries for the role they play in introducing children to a reading culture. As I believe he mentioned, many of our most promising young school-leavers fail to progress to tertiary education simply because they lack proficiency in English, which remains the mother-tongue language for a vanishingly small percentage of our population. Yet establishing and stocking school libraries has historically been outside the capabilities of the relevant ministries.

It seemed to me that it would be a good moment to revisit the idea of a little library-type of initiative – especially as the movement seems to be gaining traction globally. (The US-based ‘Little Free Library‘ organisation, for example, has in excess of 175,000 sites across 121 countries, although for various reasons it would not be a good fit here in Namibia.) Fortuitously, at the same moment, I was put into contact with Alicia Dipierri (of the NGO ‘Umbrella Initiatives‘) and then I floated the idea with Anita Witt (of ‘Recycle Namibia Forum‘), both of whom are dynamic and enterprising women with energy to spare. They willingly got on board and so a small, informal team was established to push the idea forward.

So, I put out a call to friends to see if they could donate a few second-hand volumes to kick-start the endeavour – and ended up with more than 500 books (!), mostly in English. Many are for adult readers but that’s actually OK; the idea behind what we are now calling the ‘Promising Pages’ pilot initiative is simply to get paper books into the hands of people who would not otherwise have access to them. We are also scoping a couple of sites in Windhoek where suitable receptacles could be installed and then monitored to assess whether there is actually a demand for this in practice.

The ultimate goal – should the informal pilot prove successful – would be to hand off the Promising Pages project to a young, energetic Namibian who could help it to grow. This would mean approaching NGOs for funding so that the project can be led by a paid professional, rather than relying on volunteers. We are well aware, too, that there are significant gaps in the the materials we have received in terms of books in indigenous languages, and also those written by people of colour, so these would need to be purchased. And one day, wouldn’t it be great to have a small fleet of vans visiting outlying, rural areas once a month so that people – young and old – can swap the book they have read for a new reading experience? (Way back in the day, this was, in fact, how I learned to read – a mobile library visited the street where my family lived in southern England and my brother, sister and I eagerly dove in and replaced the books we had read with a new set. For free, because reading is a priceless asset.)

A sustainable model would also require that books are chosen and sourced in volume, rather than through the kindness of friends who are downsizing. One idea would be for big local tourism companies to ask their clients to pack a few books in their luggage to hand over on their arrival here – I think that most people visiting Namibia from the Global North are well aware of the poverty many Namibians must endure, and wish to help.

Watch this space to see how Alicia, Anita and I get on. And if you have any books you would like to donate, or want to purchase books for us to fill some of our critical ‘gaps’. then get in touch (+264 81 1271741).