In sub-Saharan Africa, books can be hard to come by. Mathews Sapemba Tistayane, a teacher in Malawi, owned his first book at 18 years old. With only a handful of textbooks to work with, Mr. Tistayane, like many of his African colleagues, often has to teach from memory, says Portola Valley resident Chris Bradshaw.
Ms. Bradshaw knows whereof she speaks as founder of the two-year-old African Library Project, where Mr. Tistayane is now a director. The library project enlists U.S. volunteers to gather boxes of children’s books and ship them to impoverished and isolated African villages that have agreed in advance to create libraries.
“Our mission,” Ms. Bradshaw says, “is starting and improving small libraries.” To date, volunteers have sent 20,745 books to 29 new libraries in Lesotho, two in Cameroon and one each in Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe, she says. Next up is Botswana, where the plan is to start seven libraries.
The villages involved in the program are located in countries where the official language is either English or French; a branch of the African Library Project is just getting off the ground in Paris, Ms. Bradshaw says.
It all began with her one visit to Africa in 2004 for a “pony-trek” family vacation in Lesotho. “I knew I wanted to do something for Africa before I went,” she says. “I was deeply affected by the lack of resources and the poverty I saw and also the warmth and kindness of the people.”
Africa has been a lifelong interest. She minored in African studies during undergraduate work in sociology at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. She spent her junior year in college at the University of Sierra Leone. Her next trip to Africa may be to a library conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2007.
The idea of creating libraries came to her while discussing with her son ways to help Lesotho villagers. Her first shipment of books included some from her own and her friends’ libraries plus more from a library in Cupertino.
Ms. Bradshaw and her husband Steve Levin, a corporate leadership coach and consultant, have two children, ages 12 and 16, who attend Corte Madera School in Portola Valley and Summit Preparatory Charter High School in Redwood City. Before starting the library project, Ms. Bradshaw worked as a YMCA executive for 10 years, then quit to home-school her children.
Among the volunteers who have sent books are several California public school communities, including Corte Madera and Ormondale schools, Woodside Elementary School in Woodside, and Summit Prep, which enrolls 80 to 100 students from the Almanac’s circulation area.
For the families who collect, sort and pack books — and raise the minimum $350 needed to ship them — the experience can be a rare hands-on and important act of kindness undiluted by organized charities and other such middlemen, Ms. Bradshaw says.
Books are rare
In the kingdom of Lesotho, a roadless, mountainous country surrounded by South Africa, barefoot children often have to walk two to three hours each way to school, Ms. Bradshaw says. The kids endure such treks because career options in the Malealea Valley boil down to a choice between going to school or being a shepherd, she says.Because teachers are influential role models, many students go on to become teachers themselves, which is “really quite wonderful because that’s what (the countries) need,” she adds.
The Lesotho school she visited in 2004 had a tiny classroom packed with 100 children and one teacher. “That is standard for an African classroom,” she says.
Textbooks are seldom available, she says, and as Mr. Tistayane noted, teachers often teach from recall because their training did not include reference books they could take with them. “Governments will supply textbooks if they have the money, but that is a huge, huge if,” Ms. Bradshaw says.
To connect children to books, the project guides U.S. volunteers in the logistics of gathering, boxing and shipping 1,000 to 2,000 selected books — including English, math and science textbooks, children’s books, atlases, encyclopedias and dictionaries. Paperbacks are preferred to keep mailing costs down.
Ms. Bradshaw says she hopes to provide books written in native languages someday, but she says it’s a problem in countries that often have no publishing industry, a scant market for native-language books and few native-language authors.
Because many of these children grow up not knowing of electricity or such amenities as stoves and toasters, the books are screened to avoid disruptive references to modernity, as well as references to American culture, religious beliefs and slang.
Villages, too, are screened. Members of the Peace Corps act as liaisons to gauge interest and commitment to keeping a library going. “Peace Corps volunteers are amazing people,” she says. “They’re like what you want your sons and daughters to be.”
Getting books into the libraries has its own set of irritants, she says. Phone calls to African governments go unreturned, mail service is inconsistent and bureaucracies can delay delivery for months, often for unknown reasons. Politicians have arranged to have the books confiscated, only to grab the spotlight when the books “arrive” in the villages, she says. At least once, she has had to ask for help from a U.S. ambassador to get books delivered.
“Books are the tools for education and I think that a lot of the problems (in Africa) have come from not having enough educated people, people who don’t have the tools and skills to stand up to leadership,” she says.
INFORMATION
To get involved with the African Library Project, go to www.africanlibraryproject.org.
YouTube 'auditor' provoked, pepper-sprayed shopper at Mountain View Costco, police sayApril 8, 2026 12:23 pm