Paul’s account of reading a book in the Sumbrungu library (apologies for typos):
I read a book with the patrons in group titled; Anansi Starts a Library by Eleanor C. Trimble. A very interesting story book, after I finished reading the story with patrons, some borrowed the books home to read on their own. A brief about this story; Anansi was a lazy man who did not like being reminded of his laziness, he was about to take a nap under a coconut tree by the sea after ignoring a thought he had earlier about going to dig some yams. Sister Turkey came around and woke Anansi up with some rumour-talks after which she left. Anansi was very angry about being woken up with the rumour talks from Sister Turkey with ‘I hear tell, or somebody told me or I read signs in the sky’. This rumour-talks was what upsets Anansi who intend sought answers from Mr. Owl who was considered as a wise person as to what to do to stop sister Turkey from spreading lies all the time. Anansi believes people should spread facts rather than rumours. And so wise Mr. Owl told Anansi that the only way to stop nonsense is to put sense in people’s heads. Anansi asked how that was going to be done. Mr. Owl told Anansi that there is a lot of sense in a good book, start spreading different kinds of books to the folks to read and soon they will know better than to let sister Turkey rumour scare them. Instead of sitting down and thinking up ways not to work, why don’t you gather books of all kinds of subjects and put them in a library and tell the folks they can borrowed them to read. Wise Mr. Owl assisted Anansi with all the assistance that he will need to convince the other forest animals to support him set up the library. After lots of hard work, the library was fully set up, sooner than later people have to queue in order to get a book and read at the Anansi library. As time went on all the initial system that were put in place for management of the library were properly improved upon. There were no time again to spare for rumour-talks that upsets people.