Fiona Sweeney is an American librarian with a desire to do something with her life, something that matters. Her family has always been rooted in the same New York neighborhood, but Fi isn't content to stay rooted. Instead, she decides to take a job in Kenya, helping to start a traveling library. The library takes books, by camel, to different tribes of people throughout the bush of northeastern Kenya. The people of Mididima have differing feelings about the traveling books. Matani was sent away by his father to be educated in Nairobi, and he returned to teach the children of Mididima. However, most of the people of Mididima do not share his values or appreciation for books and learning. They believe that by learning to read the stories are lost because people do not make an effort to keep them in their brains to retell them orally. The elders know that the paper can be destroyed, but if the story is in one's brain, it cannot go away, it cannot be lost.Many of the people of Mididima want the library to stop coming altogether. And when Taban, a.k.a. Scar Boy, does not return his library books, an action that is strictly forbidden, chaos erupts in the community.I fell in love with The Camel Bookmobile on page one, paragraph one.One of the strengths of this novel is Hamilton's efforts to take the reader inside the minds of the characters, all of the characters. The point of view changes by chapter, alternating between Fi, various people of Mididima, and the Kenyan librarian. The reader is able to experience the plot from different age perspectives, different cultural perspectives, different gender perspectives. The mesh of these perspectives illustrates the mammoth complexity of cultural change. Fi travels to Kenya with the best of intentions, but what Fi doesn't realize is that she is seeing everything through the eyes of Western culture. And likewise, the people of Mididima who are dead set against literacy see things through the eyes of their own culture. And when Nature begins to tell them that their way of life cannot be sustained much longer, their response is not to learn a new way of living but rather to move to another geographic location that will support their present way of life. The novel is almost a tennis match, volleying back and forth between the two cultures. But then there are times when the cultures mesh and the similarities between fellow members of the human race emerge.The themes of this novel are powerful, and they raise questions that don't have right or wrong answers. Themes of this magnitude demand three-dimensional characters with strengths and flaws; characters who are forever and realistically altered by the events they experience. Hamilton doesn't disappoint on this front. The silent and most powerful character is Nature. Hamilton manages to brilliantly blend the setting into character in this novel. The beautiful Kenyan bush is also a remorseless killer and it plays as much a role in the community as any of the human characters do.I can't imagine reading this book and not being more aware of how we view cultures that differ from our own. The Camel Bookmobile is a stunning multi-layered, multi-perspective novel about tolerance, about humanity, about change. I highly recommend it.
A downside of living abroad in a country with a different language is that the selection of books in English is always minimal. Searching through the raggedy shelves at hostels or tourist-oriented cafes becomes a treasure hunt. Finding a copy 1984? Elation. Finding out that it is in German? Back to the shelves. All of which is to say, I didn´t pick up this book on purpose. But I finished it because a lack of other options.If you want a book where you can lose track of how often ´African´ is used as an adjective, this is the book for you. An entirely heavy-handed account of a naïve do-gooder in Kenya, and the unintentional consequences/responses to her portable library. I admire Ms. Hamilton´s desire to show the more complex side of development, but to literally have a board meeting where the corporate sponsors declare they only wanted good press and don´t actually care? This total lack of subtlety runs through the entire book, taking what could have been an interesting premise into a rather dull and flat story.
What do You think about The Camel Bookmobile (2007)?
Fiona is an idealist who is tired of her New York life and wants to do something more to make her mark on the world. When she reads of an opportunity to work on a Camel Bookmobile, she decides to go immediately, even though her friends and family don't fully approve. Once in Africa though, the story focuses less on her, and more on the lives of the people of the small nomadic tribe of Mididima. Here people's lives are changing, in reaction to the ideas the books bring, the threat it brings to their way of life, the prospect of a coming drought.The story is very simply written, but it's powerful. It raises a lot of questions about the process. Is it really ethical to bring literacy to these people? Can it really help them? The problems it brings up and the resolution that Hamilton decides on were heartbreaking but ultimately, I felt, appropriate.This was especially good to read because I've been dealing with mixing cultures as we have had exchange students stay with us. Obviously entirely different things, but some of the miscommunications and things Fiona was learning sound awfully familiar right now!
—Lindz
This was a very interesting story based on a real life experience. A librarian wanting to do more than work in a library and shush children applies for a job in Africa in order to deliver books by camel to villages that would otherwise not ever be able to have access to books. However, because the books are scarce, if any books are lost or damaged the camel bookmobile will not return to that village.The book deals with issues of whether bringing books to a people who still depend on the earth and believe that drought must be the fault of the tribe (or someone in it) rather than an effect of the weather will change that people for the better or destroy their lifestyle in an attempt to educate them. Very interesting ideas.The ending was a little jarring though in the sense that the author had set everything up to go one way and then went in the total opposite direction and then just left it there when the book ended. It did serve to illustrate her point that life goes on for these people in the way it always did and the books did not change anything (although there was potential).
—Theresa
I liked this book. It wasn't what I had expected, and didn't end as I had feared it would. While on the surface it appeared to be simple in scope, and the beginning of the book describing how the "The American" became involved in the camel bookmobile project supported this idea, it soon turned out to be quite complex. The author did a good job of weaving all the personal, cultural, environmental and zoological elements of the story together to create a very thought-provoking, disquieting picture of the realities of life.
—Ginger Hallett
