The Book Farmer of Botswana

On this broiling October day in Maun, no one at the book choosing is complaining about the donation. Many of the visitors have walked, hitchhiked or bounced along in a public bus for up to 10 hours to get here. An air of purpose pervades the room. There is no breeze, no water and no snacks, but nobody seems to notice. “You have to see Pam to believe her,” says David Tregilges, an educator in Botswana. “She is this little fireball of a woman, fast-talking, passionate and undaunted by obstacles.” If she sees a child alone, she will make reading recommendations with an intensity that Tregilges says “always inspires and motivates.” Thanks in large part to Shelton, he says, over the past decade reading for pleasure has become a possibility for thousands in Botswana. In 2007, Shelton  received a James Patterson PageTurner Par Excellence Award for her devotion to cultivating readers.

By sundown, every head in this sand-swept town on the edge of the Kalahari Desert is gray-tinged and gritty. As the Maun headmaster locks the doors, Shelton is grimy, hungry and pleased. Today has shown her, once again, why she’s a book farmer. Tomorrow she’ll get to work on new ideas, such as developing teen book groups (“we need teen novels and health books,” she says). She’ll also comb the Internet for po-tential grants. “I’m sharing my greatest joy, the love of reading,” she says. “What could be better?”  

Go to Pam Shelton's Botswana to see a slide show of scenes from everyday life in Botswana.

To find out where to send books or how to donate cash, go to botswanabookproject.org.

Salley Shannon lives in Washington, D.C. and often writes about people changing the world little by little.


RUNNING THE NUMBERS

320,000 Books distributed to date by the Botswana Book Project to Botswana schools, libraries and individuals

100 Botswana citizens who were secondary school graduates when the country achieved independ-ence in 1966

164,201 Batswana teens in secondary school in 2006 (75 percent of the age group)

83% Batswana literacy rate for those 15 years of age or older