Makele

Monday 10/18 – Posted by Heather Ross for Helen via email

We were up at 4am today to get to the airport for a 6:30 flight to Makale. We go to Mekelle University (have to ask them why there is a difference in the spelling!). The idea was to talk to them about the CIKARD Indigenous knowledge collection and consult with them generally about library collaboration.

I was struck from the air when we flew out of Addis how green and fertile the land around Addis seemed. It certainly seemed to be under cultivation. You certainly don’t get that feel from within the city confines. Driving around the city you don’t seem much in the way of corner vegetable markets that are common in most cities in Latin America and developing countries I've visited before, only a very few scattered here and there. Not sure what that means. What I know of Ethiopian cuisine vegetables are key so I would expect them to be pretty common—if they are affordable.

Landing in Makele was like landing in another country. The air was fresh and clean. This is clearly agricultural country though it seems a sizable small city as well. And booming. Construction is everywhere. If Addis feels like it is dying, Makele feels like it is thriving. The University is expanding rapidly and perhaps that accounts for some of it. There are 3 campuses in the city, the most recent being where we went first. This is home to the Social Sciences and Business schools. The define Social Sciences quite broadly to include literature and history!

They are struggling to set up their libraries—saying they have a shoestring budget would leave you with the impression they have some money to work with. They pretty much have our subject libraries model. Each of their colleges has a departmental library with central administration. With 3 campuses spread over the city (there is a lot of open land here I’m not sure why they divided up the campus they way the did). It isn’t possible to have a single library but they really only have one “librarian” with any training—has a bachelors. The rest of the “librarians” have about 2 weeks training—which seems to be the equivalent of what we give shelvers—and they are sent out to manage the libraries.

They know this is awful, but there aren’t any trained librarians to be had, or the money to hire them. The school has just started a bachelors degree in library science and the first students matriculated this week. Faculty to teach have not yet arrived from India!?

The University is definitely a work in progress, but the operative word here is progress. This seems to be a young, eager faculty, very much wanting to make a difference working in a city that is in sharp contrast to Addis.

What a difference a day – and a plane ride -- makes.