Radio Programme Transcript

Narrator: In celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the United
Nations, UN Radio would like to present the human face of the organization
to our listening public. In that spirit, we have invited staff members who
have had memorable, interesting, serendipitous, or humorous experiences in
the course of their work with the organization to share them with UN Radio,
so that we can share them with our listeners. Our first guest was Pat
Duffy, a language teacher at the United Nations with a strong enthusiasm in
supporting literacy.

Duffy1: The whole point of the Kitengesa library was to promote a reading
culture in the little village in Uganda. Many people can read, but they
don’t have access to materials. And now this library has become a real
community center.

Chuck: Pat Duffy is an English teacher in the United Nations language
programme. Last summer (?) she visited the library in the tiny village of
Kitengesa in Uganda, a library begun by a teacher from Hunter College in
New York. Pat and her other teacher colleagues had raised money for the
library with a book sale and she wanted to see first hand what the library
meant to the people of Kitengesa.

Duffy2: It’s given them access to reading materials. It’s given them
access to the world. When I was there I had a chance to talk to a lot of
users of the library. There I had a chance to ask them about their favorite
books and how they like to use the library, and everybody very excitedly
showed me their favorite books. Everything from George Orwell’s Animal
Farm to Chinua Achebe’s, A Man of the People …One thing that excited them
very much was to see their own folk tales that they’ve heard from their
grandmothers and grandfathers, written in the form of books.

Narrator: Building on that excitement, the library came up with the idea
of having older and younger people work together so that their own folk
tales become books.

Duffy3: That is for some of the older people in the community – perhaps
people who don’t always know how to read, to share some of the traditional
folk tales with the younger people, and then the younger students have the
job of writing them down, and then creating…the idea is to create books of
these traditional folk tales. It’s kind of gotten the generations closer
together, and everybody cooperating on this project.

Narrator: Another project was started to stimulate learning for women, who
often miss out on learning to read. Pat tells the story of one woman,
Angela, who took advantage of what the Kitengesa library had to offer.

Duffy4: Some years ago, a much more educated man had proposed marriage to her, and Angela wasn’t too sure about this and said, “Are you sure this is going to work?” “You’re educated. And you went to the university. And I never had the chance to go.” And the man said, “Well, but I love you, and that doesn’t matter.” Well, then a few years later, it did seem to matter
to him, and the marriage didn’t work very well. He ended up leaving her.
And so Angela decided to go the library, become a member and benefit from
the literacy program. She learned how to read and write, and one of the
first things she wanted to do was write a letter to her husband, her former
husband, to show him that you see, “I am developing myself, and I am
becoming independent and strong, and using my skills.”

Narrator: The money earned from last year’s book sale on World Teachers
Day, October 5, was used to buy solar panels to generate electricity so
that many more people could benefit from the library.

Duffy5: They were spent on a solar panel so that now the library can stay
open until 9 p.m. every evening. There’s not a lot of electricity in the
village, but because the library has solar panels, and because it is open
until 9 p.m., it is the only building that is lit in the night.

Chuck: The image of a lit library is not one that will leave Pat Duffy
soon. She says her visit to the Ugandan village of Kitengesa was as
wonderful for her as it was for the people there.

Duffy 6: Actually seeing how a literacy project is transforming the lives
of people in a small farming community in Kitengesa, Uganda, actually
seeing how people’s lives are benefiting, and how a library has become a
kind of center of the community, where a community has formed around
reading books, and around people developing their skills and their
knowledge and their potential. It was really quite a wonderful thing to see.