CB-DQ ~ Part Three

We are all supposed to have finished reading the book, so the rest of the CB questions assume you know the whole story. (I also assume you have no more questions for the author; if I'm wrong, you should speak up now.)

15. What do you think of this quote from Part Three?

"Fi had never accepted Mr. Abasi's claim that Mididima and settlements like it could disappear with a still breeze -- that the next time the Camel Bookmobile came, there might be no sign that life had ever huddled there. She'd considered this assertion nothing more than another attempt to talk her out of making the trip he hated. It seemed to her, in fact, that the houses of Mididima were rooted directly in the earth's subsurface, and that during the coming generations the settlement could only spread" (p. 127).

16. What did you think of Fi journeying to Mididima alone?

17. Why do you think Jwahir was attracted to Abayomi, instead of her husband Matani?

18. What do you think of Taban's desire to make pictures "pop off the page" (p. 146)?

19. Could you imagine Fi doing a cartwheel for Matani (p. 157), thinking of herself as the Cartwheel Queen (p. 158)? (I wonder if Masha Hamilton can do cartwheels.)

20. Did you notice the mention of female circumcision (p. 150)? What do you think of it?

21. Jwahir's father said, "Matani, like his father before him, is too fond of a remote and dangerous world." Why do you suppose people think any place (or anything) far from what they are used to is dangerous?

22. Neema had a problem with the white woman in the village. Maybe I should say problems, plural: Besides the fact that this woman was a foreigner, she had her own peculiar noises and smells and, worst of all, was sleeping between Neema and her granddaughter (p. 168). Neema couldn't imagine the foreigner's city which was said to have cars that moved with the speed of a gazelle, but she overheard Kanika saying, "I want to go to the Distant City" (p. 169). Can you relate to Neema's feelings?

CB-DQ ~ Part Two

8. More questions for the author, please, before Friday.

9. Who is the Hundred-Legged-One?

10. What's Scar Boy's real name, and why is it so important to him?

11. What is Mr. Abasi's point in telling Fiona this story?

"Let me tell you a story," Mr. Abasi said, sitting again, "about another settlement not too far from Mididima. The people there fetched water from a well that was a four-hour walk away. A few years ago, a Christian mission raised money and started to build a well that would be only fifteen minutes away. Before they could finish, it was destroyed. They began to build again, and again it was destroyed. Finally, they asked the people of the settlement if enemy tribes were wrecking the well. No, the people said. They were destroying it themselves. The women had always walked those four hours, once a week, and it didn't seem too long to them. It allowed them a break from daily chores and a chance to visit their neighbors. Also, it had become a rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood, a part of their culture. They didn't want a well fifteen minutes away." He rubbed the back of his neck. "These people have connections to the land and their traditions that outsiders might not understand" (p. 113).

12. Mr. Abasi said, "Have you heard ... that many of our people believe if you know five colloquial expressions in their tribal language, they must always provide you with nourishment and shelter? ... But if you know fewer than five, they owe you not even a sip of water" (p. 114). How would you explain what this story means?

13. "He would have emerged a different man if he'd been born someone else's son. A hunter. A warrior, perhaps. It wasn't predestined, his current life as Mididima's teacher" (p. 115). Have you ever wondered who you might have been, if you had been born to someone else?

14. When Abayomi brought his mangled child to Matani's father, Matani had bolted, "cowering like a child" (p. 129). How did this affect his life?

CB-DQ ~ Part One

1. Do you have a question we could ask the author? It may be about the book, or its characters, or the actual Camel Bookmobile in Kenya, or why she wrote the book, whatever. (Masha, we would be very pleased if you choose to add your own comments and questions to our discussion.)

2. Fiona Sweeney had found that "the assumptions people made about one another were invariably wrong" (p. 11). If you struggle (as Shirley is struggling) with whether Westerners should disrupt the lives of people like those in Mididimi, ask yourself about Fiona's assumptions, and also about the assumptions made by some of the Kenyans: Mr. Abasi the librarian, the elders who believe it is "far better to learn to read animal scents on the breeze or the coming weather in the clouds" (p. 15), Neema's brother-in-law Elim who believes that "the hours you waste staring at pages ... is a rotten sin" (p. 33). Then compare their assumptions with what the teacher Matani thinks: "How the Camel Bookmobile offered the only chance of survival for this collection of half-nomads with only one toehold in the future" (p. 39).

3. Jwahir, the teacher's wife, thinks the books are "for the foolish or misguided of Mididima" (p. 48), but even she found something good about Library Day. What was it? Do you agree with her assumption that it's a good thing?

4. "Mididima ... means Those Rooted in Dust" (p. 25). How is this a metaphor for the lives of the villagers? In what ways are their lives changing, for the better or for the worse?

5. Mr. Abasi considered Miss Sweeney meddlesome: "These foreigners couldn't understand that literacy was not the only path to education. In tribal settlements, the tradition was an oral one..." (p. 51). What do you think about a librarian with this attitude?

6. What do you think about Mr. Abasi's rule that losing even a single book means the camel bookmobile will not return to the village? What was Mr. Abasi's ulterior motive for making such a rule?

7. Why do you think educated people are feared by the illiterate? "Mothers watched with a mixture of envy and resentment as she [Kanika] shared some mysterious secret with their offspring. They didn't respect her any more than ever. But they were afraid of her ... afraid of the skill she possessed that they didn't have" (p. 16).