PHOTOS: © BRIAN MILNE

Kathy's Gift

BY DEBORAH COWLEY

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Her work has helped
impoverished Ghanaian children
discover a larger world
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AS THE pounding heat of the African sun began to abate on a May afternoon in 1990, Kathy Knowles stuffed her children's favourite storybooks into a basket and lugged them out to her garden, a lush oasis of exotic plants that stood in stark contrast to much of Accra, the dusty capital of Ghana. Settling her four children under the shade of a tree, she started to read.

Suddenly she became aware that they were not alone. Looking up, she spotted six small faces peering over the fence, their eyes wide as saucers. Two were children of the local tailor, the others children of a man in her husband's employ. "Can we listen, too?" one begged. "Of course," said Kathy as she ushered them into her garden. Then, unaware that she was about to change her life, she held up a book to show the pictures and began to read: "Once upon a time...."

A few months earlier, Kathy had journeyed to this West African country to join her husband, John, a chartered accountant for a mining company. Stepping off the plane into the noisy, crowded terminal, a lone figure in a sea of unfamiliar faces, she felt more than a little anxious. Not only was she half a world away from her comfortable home near Guelph, Ont., she had her three small children, aged three, five and seven, clutching at her skirts -- and she was eight months pregnant.

But Kathy took quickly to her new life. And after giving birth to a baby girl, she went to work two mornings a week as a clinic nurse at the Canadian High Commission. The afternoons she kept free to spend with her children.

WORD OF Kathy Knowles's storytelling circle spread quickly through the neighbourhood. Soon, more children began slipping through her garden gate to listen. Over the course of the next year, as many as 70 youngsters at a time would sit sprawled around her garden, mesmerized by her tales. Children's books are obviously something these kids don't have in their lives, she realized.

Kathy was an unlikely person to be hatching a literacy program on the other side of the world. She had no library training or any special interest in books.

But now, as she watched an ever increasing circle of children enjoying her storybook sessions, she was determined to give access to more of them. So she emptied her garage, installed shelves and small chairs, tacked up posters and creat-ed a library register with members' names. She then wrote home to family and friends in Canada, asking for donations of new and used children's books. And on each trip back to Africa after her husband's semiannual leave, she stuffed books into every spare corner of the family's luggage.

Kathy called her refitted garage The Osu Avenue Library, after the name of her street. It opened for two hours on Mondays and Thursdays, and within three months, membership reached 150. She hired a university student to read stories to the children and recruited her housekeeper, Joanna Felih, to manage the fledgling operation.

The library was a revelation to the neighbourhood children. In a country where a labourer's wage is around $75 a month, many parents can't even afford the modest fees needed to send their kids to school, so many can't read and write. The lucky ones who do attend school rarely see a book other than the dog-eared texts they share with classmates.

While most of the library's young patrons could understand English, which is widely spoken in the former British colony, they had few opportunities to read storybooks and weren't sure how to handle them. So Kathy and Joanna set strict guidelines from the start. Members had to remove their shoes on entering the library, and wash and dry their hands before touching the books. "We have to keep the books in good condition," Kathy told Jo-anna, "and teach the children to value them."

Each member could borrow one book at a time and was asked to carry it home in a bag to keep it protected. If it was returned on time and in perfect condition, he could choose two more. After ten "returns" with a perfect record, he could borrow a "red dot" bookhighly prized favourites such as Curious George, the Nancy Drew books or those by African writers.

Kathy's library was soon running like clockwork. As the book collection grew, so did the library's waiting list. But as her project prospered, she worried: Her husband's job in Ghana would end in two years. What would become of the library then?

Kathy decided the solution lay in a larger, permanent library. For weeks she walked the streets of Accra looking for space to rent, but nothing was suitable. Then a Ghanaian friend told her about a piece of vacant land on police property. But securing the land and erecting a structure on it called for a convoluted set of permissions. Undaunted, Kathy wrote letter after letter and met with officials. She kept hammering away and finally got an okay to use the land. Canvassing local businesses, she raised $1,400 to buy a shipping container to use as a temporary structure. She employed a contractor to lay a concrete base, raise the container's roof and cut out windows; then she recruited volunteers to help paint the shell inside and out, line the walls with shelves and plant a small garden outside, with a bright-pink bougainvillea bush framing the door. That done, they moved all the books in, and in November 1992 the sparkling new Osu Library officially opened.

As news of Kathy's library spread, schoolteachers from villages far outside the city came to seek help in setting up libraries. So, in 1993 Kathy designed a three-week training course. Her outreach program has since helped launch libraries in more than 80 schools and communities across Ghana. Three of them are named after Kathy Knowles. Determined to continue nourishing her literacy programs, Kathy set up the Osu Library Fund and the Osu Children's Library Fund as registered Ghanaian and Canadian charities.

Teachers and parents report that exposure to storybooks has given their children new confidence, expanded their horizons and helped many shoot to the top of the class. "Kathy made a monumental difference to hundreds of children and their teachers," says Emma Amoo-Gottfried, headmistress of Faith Montessori School in Accra. "When anyone speaks about literacy in this country, the name Kathy Knowles followsin -- lights!"

IN 1993, when the Knowles family returned to Canada after John's tour had ended, many feared that Kathy's projects would founder. They needn't have worried. A well-trained staff carried on and sent Kathy monthly reports. She also named two Ghanaian headmistresses to act as directors and local fund-raisers for the Osu Library Fund. Says director Florence Adjepong: "Kathy always gives people the means to help themselves. That's why things worked, even though she was thousands of kilometres away in Canada."

Once back in Canada, Kathy barely paused for breath. Being 10,000 kilometres from Ghana didn't stop her from launching a major new project from her new home in Winnipeg in 1996 -- the building of a much-needed library in Nima, an impoverished and densely populated section of Accra.

Working by fax and phone, she managed to secure a patch of barren land and a derelict building from a local assemblywoman, Agnes Amo-ah. Then she set in motion an ambitious fund-raising campaign for the $34,000 required to renovate the space. With the assistance of the Rotary Club of Accra, among other benefactors, Kathy hired a carpenter to make tables, chairs and shelves.

On her next visit to Ghana, Kathy helped plant papaw trees and flowering shrubs around the building, erected two giant flagpoles with Canadian and Ghanaian flags flapping side by side and tacked up a sign: SHARING THE JOY OF READING. On June 8, 1998, in a glittering ceremony attended by high-ranking of-ficials and tribal chiefs, the Nima Maamobi Gale Community Library was opened.

Today the demand on the im-posing Nima library and its hardworking staff of seven is insatiable. Typical of the 8,000 children registered is Joshua Atimbila, a bright, lively lad of 16 whose single mother struggles to earn his required school fees. Only able to attend school sporadically, he has come to the library every day from the start, devouring most of the books on the shelves. His favourite author, he earnestly confides, is Charles Dickens. Says Em-ma Amoo-Gottfried: "Seemingly the world has given up on most of these kids until they enter that library. Suddenly a whole new world opens up for them."

The Nima library has developed in other directions, says Nima's head librarian, Sister Hannah Agyeman. It now has a stamp club, a wildlife club and a choir. An instructor visits every second month to teach sign language to the deaf. The library also holds literacy classes where more than 60 mothers, grandmothers and school dropouts learn to read and write. "This is one of Kathy's most far-reaching projects," says Amoo-Gottfried. "It's magical to watch the faces of these people light up when they say, 'I can read.'"

PROUDLY claiming her overhead is zero, Kathy runs the Ghanaian library projects from a table in her bedroom in Winnipeg, with the help of a ten-year-old laptop computer. A team of volunteers receives, sorts, cleans and packs the mountains of contributed books that overwhelm her dining room and hallways. (An extraordinary cargo of more than 7,000 kilograms has made its way to Ghana since 1992.) Her children and family also pitch in. Her mother, Beth Lennard, handles the financial side, and her husband, John, takes charge of the home front when she sets off on her semiannual field trips.

Following Kathy around on one of these trips is like being caught in a whirlwind. Last September, sandwiched between visits to a doz-en outreach schools, I watched her open a handsome new library in the School for the Blind in Akropong. She also turned the sod for her latest library project, in Accra's Mamprobi district, acting as contractor for the new building and meeting with architects and masons to discuss myriad details. "She is a master at getting people to help out," says Richard Beattie, a Canadian International Development Agency official. "You simply can't say no to Kathy. Some of us have nicknamed her The Velvet Steamroller."

It is my last day in Ghana and Kathy is winding up her monthlong visit. As we dash around Accra, checking off a seemingly endless list of chores -- builders to pay, phone calls to make, last-minute items to buy for a library, thank-you letters to write -- she remembers an important stop she still has to make: the St. Kizito primary school, one of the first she nurtured with books and encouragement more than five years earlier.

Our taxi wheels into the school courtyard for the unexpected visit. Suddenly a teacher spots Kathy and alerts the others, who rush up to engulf her in hugs. Then each in turn takes her into their classroom, where the children greet her with delight. "How many of you have read a book this week?" she can't resist asking in one. Every single hand shoots up as they shout out their favourite titles.

"That's wonderful!" Kathy says, encouraging them to visit the nearby Nima library as she waves good-bye. As our taxi pulls away, with the entire school waving back from doors and windows, she blinks back tears. "Now you can see why I count myself blessed every second of the day."

Reprinted with permission from the March 2001 Reader's Digest.