KalahariLog

Books. We read a few books about the area before coming to Botswana. Most notable among them are the books in the "No.1 Ladies Detective Agency" series by Alexander McCall Smith. He lectured in Botswana several years ago and is now a Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. All of them were a pleasure to read and if you need further encouraging, two of them were Booker Judge's Special Recommendations.

A different kind of books were those by Norman Rush. I read three of them: "Mortals", "Mating", and "Whites". The author was a Peace Corps officer in Botswana and all the stories take place here. Mating received the National Book Award sometime in the 90's.

I also read a couple of books by Laurens van der Post about the bushmen of the Kalahari (now called San people). A great deal of the stuff he wrote is a little pompous but "The Lost World of the Kalahari" is an interesting read.

"The Cry of the Kalahari" is also well-known because the two authors lived in the middle of the desert studying lions and hyenas for a few years in the 70's. It is quite controversial here for several reasons, including descriptions of a long fence that cuts off the movement of wild animals across Botswana.

"Okavango Gods" by Anthony Fleischer and "Sunbird" by Wilbur Smith were among the few books that I didn't enjoy reading.

On Sue Whitesides' reccomendation I also read "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" which would have been rewarding even if for nothing else, just for the title. The story takes place in nearby Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

Barbara Kingsolver's "Poisonwood Bible" also belongs to that list, although it is based in Congo. Quite different from the other stuff I've read by Kingsolver, I can see how it became a best-seller a couple of years ago.


The above books are more or less a complete list of all that I've read about Africa. Before we arrived here (and using the Fulbright Africa webpage) I put together a list of about 50 books by Africans about Africa that I was hoping to read while here. After a couple of weeks of paperwork I got a University Library account and I headed to the library with the first 12 books on that list (a beautiful modern building with hundredds of computers and nearly a million books). This is a short description of my attempt to find these books in the UB Library. First I had a difficult time finding the online catalogue: it does not seem to be linked from the Main Library webpage. However, after asking colleagues I found out that the address is medupe.ub.bw and I was able to access it from my office.

Of course, I looked up all the books in the catalogue and they were supposed to be available in the library stacks (not checked out, not reported lost, and not on reserve). Once in the stacks, I was only able to find 2 of the books in their correct places. I found a third book, more or less by accident, after I noticed that many of the books were misplaced and looked for it among books with similar Dewey Decimal numbers.

I then spoke with one of the librarians on the floor, who came with me and verified that the books I was looking for were indeed listed as available but could not be found. She mentioned that they could be misplaced, lost, or stolen. I then asked if there was a “missing book” form that I could fill out or a “book hunting” service that I could use but neither seemed to be available. Since then I've been to the stacks a few times for a few hours and I noticed that many books are misplaced. In particular, books are located near plausible-looking numbers; e.g., 823.996872 HEA could be near books with numbers 823.9 HEA, a mistake that a staff member not familiar with the Dewey Decimal system could easily make. Also, there are a few instances of books placed near similar-looking numbers; e.g., 823.76 could be placed in 823.67. Although I've been told that students intentionally misplace books (so that only they can find them while they are working on a paper) it seems that quite a few books are unintentionally misplaced, and that could be fixed by an organized re-shelving effort.