Biblioburro: The fascinating donkey libraries of Ethiopia and Columbia
Do you love going to the library? Now imagine a moving library that too catered by donkeys. Sounds far-fetched, isn’t it? Well, believe it or not that’s exactly what Biblioburros are in Ethiopia and Columbia – donkey libraries to support underprivileged children and help them develop the habit of reading.
The tale of Alfa and Beto
In La Gloria, a rural Columbian region, a philanthropist and Spanish teacher named Luis Soriano has been spreading abundance of joy among underprivileged children for the last two decades with the help of two loyal donkeys, Alfa and Beto. They carry water and books on their packsaddles and move about with their master acting as a makeshift mobile library reaching kids who otherwise have no access to reading materials. Wondering how he came up with the idea? Well, turns out, he was heartbroken to learn that most of his students have no ready access to books at home to further their studies. This is when Soriano decided to do something about it and came up with the idea of Biblioburro.
He started his journey with his own 70 books comprising of dictionaries, Spanish language and literature books, books on history and geography and children’s story books. Interestingly, the names of his donkey Alfa and Beto merges to form the Spanish word ‘alfabeto’ meaning ‘alphabet.’ At present, this mobile library has a repository of 4700 books and caters to hundreds of local elementary school students aged primarily between six and twelve. Impressive, right? Surprisingly, there are now dozens of donkey libraries set up across Columbia to continue the good work of Soriano who dreams of building a cultural centre for his hometown one day.
Birtukan and his donkey
A 21-year-old librarian named Birtukan travels to some of the remotest rural villages of Ethiopia. Her goal? To offer life-altering opportunity to kids of her community by giving them access to books. She wants the children to be educated so that they can grow up to support their own families and community. And she is doing all this through the help of a donkey that helps her carry books between seven villages in the country’s Amhara region. She delivers reading materials (both subject-oriented and basic ones) to youngsters and teaches them the art of reading under the shade of trees. She even allows the kids to borrow some books in order to read for both knowledge and pleasure, individually or in groups. Birtukan takes up to three hours on foot to walk between villages and her donkey carries as many as 400 books in canvas bags catering 1250 students from kindergarten through the eighth grade. Inspired by her, Ethiopia now has four donkey libraries, that are funded by the government and NGOs, such as Save the Children.