Traveling holds the highlight of most of my weeks. But living an everyday life here is what has been the most interesting to analyze, yet difficult to accurately talk about. Obtaining reading materials for classes,for instance, is incredibly difficult.

For example, my Masterpieces of African Literature class was assigned 10 books for the semester. Only one was available for purchase in the University bookstore. When I asked if they could order the other books, they simply said, “No, we can’t order books.”

“But you’re a bookstore,” I said.

“We can’t do it.”

So I tried the library. I found four more titles in the Africana Rare Books Room. The books here cannot leave the library, but the sign posted outside the room reads, “Reading in the Africana Rare Books Room is strictly prohibited.” So you must find another place in the library to read them (a feat harder than you might think) because you can’t take them out. I brought the book to the photocopy room, knowing I couldn’t sit down and read the whole thing in one sitting. At the desk, however, I was told that photocopying the entire book was against copyright laws. I had to resort to sneaking the book out of the library by stuffing it down my pants, going to a photocopy store across the street, getting a copy made of the whole book (300 pages) which obviously took a few hours, then later returning the book.

We asked our professor why it was so difficult to find African literature in Africa and he began to describe the idea of neo-colonialism. He said that colonialism still exists, but it has changed clothes. African countries still depend heavily on its colonizing country, Great Britain. African literature is published in Europe, which is problematic in itself for the sake of the art, but also makes it difficult and expensive to import.

Experiences like this are a good representation of life in a developing country, but are somehow easy to skim over when you have things like elephants and tro-tros to talk about.

Just some fufu for thought.