By Mary Serumaga

 

The morning of 10 January 2009 saw children in Ggaba Parish, some 5 years old, some 8, most 10 yearsold, hurrying towards St Karoli Lwanga Church. When they got there, they hesitated along the periphery of the gardens and peered tentatively at the tent erected the night before. They were nervous, so were we the organisers, because we had never had a book day before.

 

Ggaba Parish was blessed with a library that opened on 5 December 2008. Almost just like that. Agape Pendo la Mungu applied to the National Library (NLU) to join their community library scheme and were given a starter collection of over 1,000 books. Text books for all subjects and lots of junior readers and novels. Beautiful hardcover books, many of them brand new. We only had to pay port handling charges. We have shared these with Bbiina and Mengo-Kisenyi Parishes. Towards the end of December Brother Byarugaba of the Brothers of Christian Instruction, Kisubi gave us another 220 books at no cost.

 

Ggaba Parish hosted a two-day workshop for community librarians; Veronica Kasasa and Josephine Akirana from Ggaba Parish, S. Masereka and J. Kayongo from Mengo-Kisenyi Parish and Joseph Katende and Simon Peter Sekavubu from Bbiina Parish.

 

By 10 January we were ready for a reading promotion drive and together with NLU, we organised a Reading Tent dubbed, ‘Book Day.’ On the day itself, Ms Jennifer Nalwanga laid large mats on the grass and spread them with books. Two tents had been provided by Coca-Cola in support of our goal. As we decorated it with balloons, the children began to approach. It did not take them long to settle down to a reading session followed by writing what they remembered of the story. Ms Nalwanga, Mr Katende and Mr Masereka took them through this and many other reading-promotion exercises. The teenagers who attended had an essay-writing competition. There were over 50 children and early teens and over twenty other geusts.

 

Prizes were awarded for good performance, for participation and for merely turning up to read. This encouraging gesture was made possible by the National Book Trust of Uganda which donated 220 books including Natural Disasters, Dinosaurs, Children Just Like Me, Animals Like Us (endangered species) and Christian Stories. There were also fancy writing sets provided by Coca-Cola. The children were thrilled, never has reading been so cool.

 

Mrs Stella Nekusa, Head of Extension Services at NLU gave the keynote address after which she performed the official tape-cutting ceremony. The point that sticks in my mind is that when people do not continue to read regularly after leaving formal education, they begin to lose the skill.