Baccalauréat · Série D · Anglais — 2017

Text — The library that nobody wanted

When the town council of a small city in the west of the country announced that it would build a public library, several councillors objected. « People here do not read », one of them said. « We need a market, not books. »

The library opened in 2014 in two rooms behind the town hall. For three months, almost nobody came. The councillor who had objected reminded everyone that he had been right.

Then the librarian, a woman of twenty-nine named Bintou Traoré, did something that was not in her job description. She took twenty books, put them in a basket, and walked to the market. Every Wednesday, she sat between the tomato sellers and read stories aloud to the children who followed their mothers.

The children began asking where the books lived. By the end of the year, the two rooms were full every afternoon. Three years later, the library lends more than four hundred books a month and organises evening classes for adults who cannot read.

« The councillor was not entirely wrong », Bintou says. « People here did not read. But that is not the same thing as saying they did not want to. »