-Getting books to Liberia, one book at a time
-Grammar Girl, teaching your humble blogger
-Getting your input about Shakespeare
-Shakespeare and Facebook, combined at last!
-Factoid, and why you should stop using the word
-Beedle the Bard and Brisingr, embrace your fantasy

I met Mulbah earlier this year in his hometown.  He is a Liberian college student in his early twenties who has spent most of his life coping with the twenty years of civil war that ravaged his country through 2003.  Mulbah is a persistent guy.  Though we initially spoke for less than ten minutes, as I was rushing off to our next meeting, Mulbah made sure to collect my contact information so that he could keep the conversation going.  Before I had even made it back home to California I had this e-mail waiting for me [ed.: misspellings kept, sic neglected]:

Dear Justin,
I am very happy to extend my sincere greeting to you, including your family members, love one, friends and the entire Better World .
Sir, you give me your call card including you E-mail address at the ALPP/ Creative Associates International Inc. office which is commonly called Bong LRC during your trip to Africa for Vision In Action, Million Books Match for Africa.
Justin, you and are got into conversation but we did not end due to your busy schedule, that is I graduated since 2004-2005, and I started my Freshman Courses at the Cuttington University, Suakoko, Bong County but due to lack of finance I drop from school and my parents don’t have money to sponser my education. […]

It’s Mulbah [redacted].

He wanted to know if I could help him find a scholarship to continue his study of economics at Cuttington University – one of the schools that has received books through the partnership between Better World Books, USAID, and Vision In Action.  Though I did not have the personal means to help him pay for college I wanted to find a way to help him continue his education.

Liberia is starving for books.  During the civil war nearly all of the books in the country were used as fuel for fires, libraries and schools were torn apart to harvest the scrap metal for weapons production, and many of the most educated and successful people in the country left forever because they feared for their lives.  Bas a result, there is a serious ‘book famine’ which keeps people like Mulbah from accessing information that could radically transform his life.

I decided to send some books to Mulbah.  It’s great to work for a company like Better World Books that makes it easy and inexpensive to send a book to literally any corner of the world.  I sent two economics books to Mulbah in two separate shipments – I wanted to see if they would actually arrive.  One made it, the other didn’t.

Dear Justin,

Thanks you and your family for the book sent last month the 20 of May 2008.
To be audacious to you I received it succeswsfully today the 27 of May 2008, therefore may the Lord our God bless you and your family.

Justin, I appreciate the book you sent to be specific Economics, A self Teaching Guide this wounderful book is rich and I am sure that I will read it to the best of my ability and achieve what I wish to achieve, Meanwhile, I have been wishing to have advanced Economics book like this. You did not make a mistake okay.

Here comes the order numbers and the Title of the book: Economics A Self Teaching Guide, order No. 2735151. But, as per the order Email sent to me the last time, one of the book was left out, it is consider missing in Transit? Because I was Email by you that, the End of Poverty Economics possibilities for our Time was to come alone with this book, Economic A Self Teaching Guide  to my surprise only one came so please find out from help@betterworldbooks.com, I did not receive this book.

Justin, I will Email you in one week time for the photo of the book in order to be trustful or convince.

I have more thanks and appreciation to come pretty soon but this is urgent just to remind you about the situation. By God grace you will receive comprehensive letter from me.

God will bless you and your family at your working places, and God will bless your families, you will never be the tail but rather be the head of all activities both in you community and your working places.

Mulbah soon began sharing this book with others in his community, and students started looking to him for assignments:

Good Afternoon Justin?

Sorry for long time no communication it is due to the up and down movement in and around the Nation capital Monrovia.

Justin, My ideas and toughts about the BWB is fine and I am taking the advangage of it to read through out the night because of this book students in and around my communities appreciate the effort a lot, Majority of them come to me for assignment and because of this book I am able to do their assignment for them as well. As I told you that the book is rich not only in words but also in meaning.

My knowledge about this Economics since the arrival date up to now are: I have been able to study on the following topics: Market and the type of markets, monopoly, oligolopoly, Demand and Supply, the Equilibium of demand and supply, Taxization, Barter system, Money the function of money, Banking system and Percentage of price of the goods and commodity.

Justin, this book will help me a lot, I will utilized this book up to the beginnig of university freshmen to graduation. Let met share my experience with you while I was in the senior class 12 grade, my Physics instructor told me “Mulbah, do not feel because you are scoring 85%, 95% in physics to do physics at the University, physics will make you to spend a lot time in University but try to do Economics which will make yo to spend 4 years and obtain your degree instead of you spending 5-6 years, reason he said this was you don’t have sponser and you are from the poor family so from here I started growing interest in Economics this is how I took Economics to be my lovely Subject and praying to obtain my degree in Economics if possibility exist.

Have a good day Justin.

We have been in regular touch and have sent upwards of 50 e-mails back and forth about everything from the ‘4th of July holiday’ in the United States, to Mulbah’s brief struggles with a bout of dysentery (he’s fine now).  We have connected, and continued to foster a relationship, through literacy.  He recently sent 3 photographs to me as a token of his appreciation (scanned in this post).  It is pretty amazing to hold a letter in your hands that has just arrived to your house from rural Liberia.

A couple of weeks ago I shipped a few more books to Mulbah.  They have not arrived yet, but I’m hoping that the Liberian postal system can make it happen.  Without Better World Books this would never have been possible.

Cuttington University (map) is a rural 4-year university in Liberia . It is the oldest coed 4-year university in West Africa , considered by many to be the country’s most prestigious institution of higher education. It also happens to be quite close to the farm of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia who is currently on trial at the International Court of Justice in the Hague .

So here’s what I mean about “starting from zero”… four years ago, this prestigious university had no roofs on its buildings and no books in its library. The campus was ransacked during the wars… most of the books in the library were burned as fuel for fires.

Our group was able to meet with leaders from the university and hear their needs. Better World Books has committed to funding, through Books for Africa, the shipment of two 40-foot sea containers full of books (that’s 80,000 books) to Liberia for the country’s universities.

Cuttington is in dire need of books, so Liberia ’s brightest minds can be educated to help pull this country out of war-ravaged poverty. I think I speak for everyone at Better World Books when I say that we’re honored to be helping Cuttington.

Over at Adventures in Liberia, Justus talks about an event that you might be interested in:

Today I witnessed a marvellous ceremony which took place at Aquilla School in Paynesville. Visions in Action is helping supply a million books to schools, libraries, and other areas to promot literacy. They are also training teachers how to use a library system so that the books are not just locked in a room as a valuable ‘trophy’ and not used by the kids! The children marched into the school joyously singing where there were speakers from USAID Liberia, Books for Africa, and Better World Books as well as members of the Liberian Ministry of Education. It was exciting to see all the smiling faces on the children. I met with the founder of Visions in Action who I am going to sit down with and talk about possibly volunteering with them as they continue to distribute the million books to the 15 counties around Liberia. I met Justin (on betterworld.com team) and Andy (CIO) from Better World Books which is an online book seller like amazon.com but they donate some of the proceeds to purchase books for children who need them. So if you are going to buy a book check them out at www.betterworld.com.

Thanks Justus!  Keep up the good fight!

Full post

Check out the following letter from Pat Plonski, Executive Director of Books for Africa!

Hello everyone–It is my honor to inform you that Books For Africa has just signed a memorandum of understanding with Visions in Action to ship 25 40-foot seacontainers of textbooks to Liberia.  This agreement will provide for the shipping of between 875,000 – 1,000,000 textbooks (550 tons) valued at approximately $4 million over the course of the next 12 months.  Books For Africa history.  This agreement with Visions In Action stems from a meeting I held in Monrovia with Visions in Action in January of this year where this concept was established.  USAID is also playing a role in the financing of this project.  I will be traveling to Liberia in October or November of this year as part of a Books For Africa / Better World Books delegation to meet with Visions In Action, and Liberian government officials, and other key players to formally initiate this project. Thank you everyone for your great support of Books For Africa.  This is exciting news.  The need for books of all types is very great in Liberia and this is an opportunity to help rebuild this country and give hope to the people there.

–Pat

Patrick Plonski

Executive Director

Books For Africa