How to shop with a Bookworm:
Step #1 – enter store.
Step #2 – keep eye on bookworm at all times.
Step #3 – wow okay you lost them.
Step #4 – they’re gone forever now.
The first time somebody called me a geek was in 2018. I remember it like it was yesterday.
A bunch of friends and I were sitting in one of my friend’s offices having a ‘wine down’ on a Wednesday evening because the week was getting a bit tew mooch for all of us and we were all just in dire need of a good venting session.
Now I know some of you may probably be judging us in many ways right now and I’m here to tell you that it is okay. Completely alright. Just dandy. It is okay because we’re in the middle of a pandemic and I’m choosing who and what to fight. So no, of course I’m not going to fight a reader while I’m trying to fight for my life. I’m choosing my struggles thanks. Plus I kinda’ like you a lot (a whole lot) and would love for you to stick around for this one. (So much love for you. All love). #AllMyLifeIHadToFight.
Anyway, here we are, seated round her desk, handbags thrown far into a corner, opening our second bottle of white wine. I should probably mention that at this point all my friend’s colleagues had gone home and left us to our debauchery. So the office was empty except for these four women and their prorems’. Not sure how the convo’ veered off into this direction but at some point we started talking about our respective dating lives when suddenly two of these ladies started prodding into mine. I laughed a bit too sarcastically because there was none to talk of at the time. When one of them, let’s call her Amani, said “I have the perfect guy for you, and he’s a geek just like you!”
Me – shocked. *insert gasp*
But before I got the chance to recover from this hard tackle, friend No.2 came in with the ‘FINISH HER’ knock out move when she went – “I ALSO HAVE A GUY FOR HER! And he’s such a geek she’ll love him. Like all he does is read. And all she does is read too.”
Safe to say I never recovered. Still healing. And it took me awhile, but I guess it’s time to come out of the shelf. (See what I did there?)
I, ladies and gentlemen, am a geek.
If I’m being entirely honest with myself, and with you, my love for books developed at a very young age.
One day, when I was four years old, my dad brought home three storybooks: ‘The Princess and The Frog’, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘Three Billy Goat Gruff’. My excitement that day was through the roof!
Then a little later, when I was five, my sister’s friend’s mom gave me a package of old fairy tales – akina Cinderella, Snow White and company, and I was hooked from then on. And here’s the thing; my dad was really smart about cultivating this reading culture. He made trips to Text Book Centre our Saturday hangouts. Every so often, we’d go to TBC – Sarit Centre or Kijabe Street – to just smell hard cover books and to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at them. He’d then let me choose one book if I’d behaved well that month (the more colourful the better) and he’d buy it. My reward for choosing a book was a KinderJoy egg or eclairs. In hindsight, this was some Matrix Level manipulation. But I’m so much better for it.
See it’s this thing that books do that nothing else does. It’s the way they teleport you into the world of the story’s subject; you feel what they feel just as intensely, you move like them, you may even begin to think like them. And even to this day, I hate finishing books because I’m left thinking ‘What am I Supposed to do with my life now that I’ve lived someone else’s experiences for 4 weeks straight???’
You now see why I got very curious and a little giddy when I learnt about the Book Bunk and the work that they do restoring libraries around Nairobi. Thankfully, I got to speak with one of its Co-Founders, Wanjiru Koinange (with the help of Angela Wachuka, the other Founder) to talk to us about the Book Bunk and the amazing work that they have done restoring the McMillan Library in Kaloleni.
BOOK BUNK’S CO-FOUNDER’S CHAT WITH WANJIRU KOINANGE ON RESTORING THE MCMILLAN LIBRARY,KALOLENI
Q: Hi Wanjiru, could you tell our readers more about you?
Wanjiru: Alright, my name is Wanjiru Koinange. I am one of two founders of Book Bunk. The other founder is Angela Wachuka and she’s a publisher. I’m a writer, from Kenya, and a lover and restorer of libraries. I’ve been working in the Arts and Culture space for all of my professional life and the arts is something I have always loved and I know that the rest of my life will be spent to trying to find ways to have more art being created and purchased and distributed and help create more livelihoods through it. Outside of that I’m a lover of the outdoors.
I have also written my most recent book too. The book titled ‘The Havoc of Choice’ has been a result of 8 years of writing and researching and I’m so excited that it’s out now and available everywhere including Kenya at TextBook Centre.
Q.: Tell us more about the book? (Pictured below)
W: ‘The Havoc of Choice’ is a book that tells the story of an upper class family in Kenya and their experiences during the post-election violence as the book is set in the week before and the week after the 2007 general elections. It and goes through their experiences as they relate with those around and connected to them – their driver, their nanny, their housekeeper.
Q. I’d love to read it! But in the meantime, who or what is Book Bunk?
W. The Book bunk is an organization that restores libraries. We’re restoring libraries in Nairobi and we’re taking a broad approach to the restoration; not just the physical space but we’re also focusing on the utility of the space to give our work a holistic approach. We’re concerned about how people feel when they walk into the space; how much art the space can accommodate. Things like that. So towards this end we created nuanced programs between 2018 and 2019 to really inform this research into what a public space meant in Nairobi.
Our finding was that it’s not just about the physical space in the building, it’s about what the space can do for the community. The thing with looking at it from a holistic perspective is in the fact that the utility of the building gives the building longer life. We can hang art and create spaces for storytelling and other programs.
Q. Why you do what you do?
W. Because I don’t want to live in a city where libraries do not exist and I don’t want to move, so building them was the next best solution. That is the simplest and shortest answer to that question. I honestly don’t want to live anywhere else and I’d like to be able to walk into a library in my city at any time. It’s my small but deliberate way of trying to create the world I want to live in.
Also as a writer, I may write a book that may not be as accessible as I would like to every Kenyan and so a library is another way that everyone can access books by Kenyan and African authors, regardless of prices. This puts books in the hands of readers, books which may have otherwise been inadvertently expensive to purchase because of taxes. She explains how the taxes on publishing books are a lot higher in Kenya in a way that isn’t done in many other countries.
The final strand of my answer is that I’m tired of people saying Kenyans don’t read books when we have actual data that we have collected for the last two years that shows otherwise.
So yeah, I don’t want to live in a city that has no library so I’m going to build a library that I want to use and hopefully we can inspire others to build museums and galleries and places that hold art and culture.
Q. What has the response of the community around it been?
W. It’s been incredible! They love it! At the beginning it was suspicion, understandably. The communities we are working in and around have historically been targeted by land grabbers and by people who want to take up public spaces and privatize them and so that was what the initial sentiment was. That’s why we didn’t start with the physical architectural work first. We wanted the community to understand that we weren’t going to make a move until we asked them and we did that during our research phase.
So in Kaloleni specifically, now that we’ve completed the work that we said we were going to do, we’re still communicating that as soon as the pandemic is done and spaces are opened up again, we’re going to open up the library so that anybody can walk in for free as was the case before.
I mean the community even took part in building the library. We hired 28 people from Kaloleni to work on that building. Every piece of the building, from the tiles to the window panes has been touched by someone who lives right next to it which means that by default, we have security for it because no one is going to let the building be touched when they live right next door to it.
The library is something the community needed and so they’re happy that someone is listening to them. In the grand scheme of things it’s important for people to have a source of intellectual knowledge and so you then begin to understand how vital libraries are.
Q. In what ways are you getting the word out there about it?
W. We are everywhere. Of course the people who live around the area know of it because we still speak with them. Pre-pandemic, we’d have events there almost every Saturday. Right now, however, our website is our most current and updated source of information on the work.
We’re also on all socials. And the thing is we also reach out to people to come see these spaces before we start the work so that they can lend their voices to the work.
Whenever we have something to say now, because of the current situation, we do it online.
Q. Did the government play any role in the realization of this project?
W. The government have ownership of the building, and they still do, so we had to negotiate a partnership that would allow Book Bunk unfettered and exclusive access to the building. This means that we’ve been made custodians of these libraries for a set period of time so that we can prove our concept so that once that’s done and the buildings have been restored, then we can continue our partnership with the government. We actually both play managerial roles.
We however didn’t get any financial resources from them, we had to get those on our own as a small organization.
In all honesty, we wouldn’t exist without the government. They’ve been such a critical part of the entire project. Interestingly enough, this is the first time that we’ve worked with the Nairobi County government, and this partnership has been so fulfilling because there are people in that office who actually want the best for the city and thankfully we’ve had these people in our corner.
Q. Lastly, what’s the one thing you would want our audiences to know about you that we may not find on your website?
W. We rely on public and individual funding a lot more than we communicate. People often ask us how they can contribute and most people’s first thought is to donate books to us which is a very noble thought and something we’ll always be grateful for. While we are happy for these donations, we also recognize the value of the coin. There’s a lot we can do towards philanthropy financially. You don’t have to have millions to donate towards an organization in the social impact field. You can find ways to donate because those 200 bobs you have allow us to pay our staff’s salaries. So the value of individual philanthropy shouldn’t be taken for granted. Your charitable coins are still so important.
If you can, find an organization you can support and hold them accountable to what it is they say they want to do.
PARTING SHOT Q: You’re a writer, do you have any biases in which form of art you like more?
I don’t. Art is art is art
Drops mic
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To learn more about the restoration of the McMillan Library Kaloleni, please watch this short video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUERkNJgYrU on this incredible journey.
You may also watch this short video about what they do here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaITRjXBf5I
Kindly also visit their website https://www.bookbunk.org/ and socials i.e. Facebook ,Twitter and Instagram @TheBookBunk.
Please donate if you can too? That thing about individual philanthropy going a long way is real. You could do so via MPESA, Bank Transfer, PayPal and more – all these deets are on their website.
Until next time, stay safe and wash those lovely hands!
Peace!
Love it!!!!