In a country where many families can’t afford books, one woman is getting them to kids in an unconventional way: motorcycles.
Rosey Sembataya, an English teacher and publisher in Uganda, started the Malaika Mobile Library in 2014, according to Christian Science Monitor. The library delivers books to kids in and around the capital city of Kampala via motorcycle.
"My sister has four children and I've been finding it very difficult to buy them books because they're quite expensive," Sembataya told the BBC. "So I thought there is a need to create something that can make story books accessible, and available at a quite cheap price."
Books in Uganda can be prohibitively expensive, according to the BBC. Many people rely on foreign friends buying books for them abroad, as a book in Kampala can easily cost $42 -- the price of a week’s worth of groceries -- or even $60 -- a month’s salary for a waitress.
That’s why Sembataya prices her library books at a flat, affordable rate: Parents pay $30 a year to borrow up to three books per week, according to Christian Science Monitor. That’s under $0.20 per book over a year.
But high prices may not be the only things keeping Ugandan kids from reading: low literacy rates are an issue, too. A recent study found that close to one in three students complete primary school without having mastered basic literacy. By the time they reach adulthood, only 73 percent of adults in Uganda are literate -- compared to 99 percent in the U.S. and 87 percent in neighboring Kenya.
“The effects of not reading are so glaring it hurts," Sembataya told Christian Science Monitor. “If they can start reading now, we're going to build a generation of adults who love reading, and adults who write."
Sembataya started the library with her own savings, running it out of a spare room in her house, according to the BBC. Each week she sends enrolled kids their weekly allotment of books via motorbike taxis, locally called “boda bodas.”
While motorcycles are certainly an original mode of transport for a library, there are stranger ones around: There have been mobile libraries on boats in California, on horses in Indonesia, on a donkey in Colombia and even on a camel in Mongolia.
"In rural regions, a child must walk for up to 40 minutes to reach the closest schools," Soriano, the Colombian teacher who delivers books via donkey, told CNN in 2010. “For us teachers, it's an educational triumph when a child learns how to read. That's how a community changes.”
Related
Before You Go
