donkey-borne literacy

The BBC carried a piece today about mobile libraries drawn by donkey cart that travel among Ethiopian villages in order to provide schoolchildren with reading material. The project is part of the Ethiopian Books for Children and Educational Foundation (EBCEP), which also functions as a publishing house for many children’s books in Amharic script.

In addition, the project hopes to teach children principles of animal husbandry. Donkeys are a common form of transportation in rural Ethiopia but tend to be badly treated. EBCEP’s donkeys, however, receive the same respect afforded to a horse.

julie mehretu: looking back to a bright new future

Julie Mehretu is an Ethiopian-American artist who works primarily in abstract cityscapes of massive scale. We have an exhibit of her work currently on display at the Williams College Museum of Art, where I work, and I encourage you strongly to check out some more of her art. It’s impressive stuff and plays a great deal off of themes of globalization and world events, as you can see in the piece above, Looking Back to a Bright New Future, which my museum’s director described as resembling “an exploded map of the world”.