Friends of African Village Libraries (I post regularly here)- Daytime session at Sherigu Community Library
- La deuxième journée des activités de café littéraire à la bibliothèque de Boni
- Échanges avec la nouvelle gérante de la bibliothèque de Koho
- Reprise des activités de la bibliothèque mobile Pénélope
- Sortie de la Bibliothèque Mobile Pénélope à l’école Sainte Thérèse
- Bonne nouvelle pour les amoureux de la lecture à Niankorodougou
- Bibliothèque communautaire de Zimtenga ! Les livres attendent patiemment le retour des communautés
- Bilan des activités du mois d’août de la bibliothèque de Bougounam
- Bilan des premières journées du café littéraire
- Nyariga community library, daytime activities
Author Archives: mkevane
100 pages of projects for South Sudan and no libraries, no books… sigh.
South Sudan, poorest place on earth, but with a LOT of aid and oil money… large swathes of public services are run by the United Nations. Lee Crawford points to the newly issued Humanitarian Appeal for South Sudan and I … Continue reading
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Basic reinforcement of personhood for adolescent girls in West Africa
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Ross Douthat and Tyler Cowen need to read Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street
I am reading Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street, over the last few days, and I could swear one of the characters in the small town of Gopher Prairie, about which Lewis feels so ambivalent, mouths exactly Douthat’s lament… and that was … Continue reading
Posted in Burkina Faso
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Cell phones make people feel bad
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How to understand African economies like that of Burkina Faso
National statistics tell one part of the story, and Burkina Faso’s GDP per capita has been fairly steadily growing at about 2% per year for 20 years (but starting at a $500 per person base, that means the country is … Continue reading
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“Bull” by Mo Yan
I just read the story, by 2012 Nobel prize winner Mo Yan, last night. Pretty riveting, but also hard to understand without the full context. You wonder about how much is working as a broad allegory (and what it might … Continue reading
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To my peeps in the Bay Area… Rainy Day Dream Away
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Ouattara dissolves Ivorian government over marriage law: must be more to story than this
Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara has sacked his government in a row over a new marriage law which would make wives joint heads of the household. Mr Ouattara’s party supported the changes but the members of the ruling coalition were … Continue reading
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Education and health and fertility in the United States
A quick glance at a paper by McCrary and Royer. They find: 1. School entry policies have large effects on schooling at motherhood: one-fourth of young Texas mothers born after the school entry date have a year less education than … Continue reading
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Geranium Cat’s Bookshelf: Thursbitch by Alan Garner
Thursbitch feels very much like a sequel to Red Shift to me, although the only connection is the intensity of its sense of place, and a setting geographically close, since Garner likes to write about the area around his home. … Continue reading
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Inestimable Susan Straight, author of short-story “Mines” with a timely opinion piece
SOMETIMES life is like a fun-house mirror, the glass and then the real thing. I had just watched the TV show “The New Normal,” a comedy about what used to be called untraditional families, for the first time, and the … Continue reading
Posted in Burkina Faso
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Cute, but the audience idolatry a little off-putting…. I’ve been able to be that kind of rabid “fan” who laughs and cheers at literally anything…. “a music stand”
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Justifications for spending public money….
A big part of development economics is about justifying expenditures of public monies. Why are people better off with spending tax money this way? Who is better off? Who is worse off? Why are those better off not able or … Continue reading
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Scary reporting from Adam Nossiter of NYT on Guinea-Bissau
Strictly for the Afro-pessimists…. Since the April 12 coup, more small twin-engine planes than ever are making the 1,600-mile Atlantic crossing from Latin America to the edge of Africa’s western bulge, landing in Guinea-Bissau’s fields, uninhabited islands and remote estuaries. … Continue reading
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Illiterate kids given sealed boxes with tablets figure out how to use, master, and hack them – Boing Boing
More idiotic hyperbole from the OLPC people, who want to take your money away from proper libraries with proper books. Ask yourself, if he has to outright lie about the product, why should anyone give any money to it? The … Continue reading
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Great video report by Koffi Amétépé on albinos in Burkina Faso
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Meet Don Francisco, Host of the TV Show ‘Sábado Gigante’
Otro articulo tan interesante, de mi hermana!!! This fall, the wildly popular Spanish-language television show Sábado Gigante Supersize Saturday—seen by millions of Hispanics around the world for two hours every Saturday afternoon—celebrates its 50th anniversary. This makes it, according to … Continue reading
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15 octobre 1987 analysis of interview of Sherif SY on Sankara’s death
Interrogé sur ses relations avec SANKARA et par la suite ce qu’ils se sont dit à leur dernière rencontre, il a déclaré ceci : « …si ma mémoire est bonne, je crois que la dernière fois que j’ai dû voir … Continue reading
Posted in Burkina Faso, Politics
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Stephen Pinker takes on “Silent Violence”
One of my PhD advisors at Berkeley was Michael Watts, whose wonderful, massive, and dense work Silent Violence was a great inspiration…. but like Pinker remember thinking that while I understood the argument– social structure led to outcomes, like death … Continue reading
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