DOI~IS
LESSING
17
out saying that they didn't have electric li ghts o r telephones. All the kids
were saying, "Please give me your books. Please can I have your books.
Please send books from London." This is a place where they frisk the chil–
dren coming out of class in case they've stolen books because their desire
is so great. They found a tome on advanced physics under a li ttl e boy's bed
and said to him, "Why did you steal this book? You can't understand it,"
and he said, " I want a book of my own." I cou ld in fact wring your hearts
with Illany tales like this, but I will just quote another littl e example. This
happened to a friend of mine who continuall y travels the country trying
to provide books. Two young men came to her, aged sixteen and seven–
teen, and said, "We hear you have some books. We have built ourselves a
library. Come and see it." They had buil tali ttl e grass hut and a wooden
plank, creosoted for the white ants, and that was the library. They said,
"There is our library. Can we have sOllle books?" So she did what she
cou ld. I know people who work al l over the Third World. The place [
happen to know is Zimbabwe, but this happens everywhere. A friend of
mine went out into a remote village and threw away the paper she'd
wrapped her shoes in and everyone dived for the newspaper.
It
was weeks
old. It was a treasure.
It
was precious. Now my son who went out to work
with this team for a littl e bit took a taxi from the airport to the ci ty and
told the driver what he was doing and the man said, "Wel l, the government
has taught us how to read but they don't give us any books." Theirs is a
government that pays lip service to providing libraries and books but in fact
does not do it and that is true allover southern Africa.
It
is an astonishing
fact that people who have hardly held a book in their hands yearn for
them, because they certainl y haven't had any decent libraries or they've
been very lu cky if they have. They beg for books. Why? I mean, it is a
strange fact that there you have this reverence for books and for literature,
but in our kind of society we worry day and night about the fact that kids
don't want to read.
It
cou ld also be that you don't value what you get eas–
ily. The book team that I am involved w i th takes out packages of books.
Do not imagine that they're the kind of books we would be deeply moved
by because they're just what the local publishers produce. This letter comes
from a place call ed Gokwe where they were taken two boxes of books
which si t on a shelf under a tree. That is the local library. It has transformed
this area. There must have been about forty books. The letter reads:
"People from different areas they flock to drink and swall ow at our library.
I can compare ou r library as a source of life. A human being cannot live
without water, reading books. l300ks is their rainwater." Now I think that
there are people in this room whose grandparents might have had this atti–
tude towards reading books. I think that my grandfather or his grandfather
did, and it is gone from our society. The paradox is this: that the brains of
