Above: Children have questions for Yohannes
Gebregeorgis, who spoke Wednesday at
Arrowwood Elementary School in Highlands
Ranch. Gebregeorgis is creating libraries in
Ethiopia – 17 so far – including one pulled
by a donkey to remote villages.
(George Kochaniec Jr / The Rocky)

Rocky Mountain News

By James B. Meadow
Published November 13, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

Two hundred and twenty-five small bodies parade into a small gym to learn a big lesson from the Slayer of the Dragon of Illiteracy.

They listen raptly – a strangely attentive a group of 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds – to the words of the soft-spoken black man who grew up across the ocean, a million miles away from the comforts they take for granted. A man who had risked much to flee his turbulent land and then, 21 years later, sacrificed even more to return, to bring a precious gift for the “beautiful children” who lived in the Land of 1,000 Despairs.

The man is Yohannes Gebregeorgis. He is 60 years old. He is Ethiopian. He is on a crusade to spread literacy across a nation where 67 percent of the people can’t read. He is doing it with books, thousands and thousands of books. He is doing it by creating libraries, 17 to date – one pulled by a donkey to remote villages – each one bringing magic to young minds. He is doing it through Ethiopia Reads, the Denver-based nonprofit he founded 10 years ago.

Yohannes Gebregeorgis speaks to children Wednesday
at Arrowwood Elementary School in Highlands Ranch.
(Photo by George Kochaniec Jr / The Rocky)

He is also “a wonderful man. I love him. Ohmigosh, what he has done is amazing – bringing books to all those children. Going back to his native land. Nobody does that. Nobody goes back to that kind of poverty. But he did!”

The person speaking is Mary Beth Henze. She is a teacher at Arrowwood Elementary School in Highlands Ranch, a modern facility unlike anything in Ethiopia.

A penny, a nickel at a time

Henze is the one who galvanized the students into raising $2,300 for Ethiopia Reads, a penny, a nickel, a quarter at a time. She is the one “completely excited” that Gebregeorgis has come to her school on a bright Wednesday to speak.

But she isn’t alone.

“I believe in him! To bring books to so many children is phenomenal,” says Janet Lee, a librarian at Regis University.

Lee believed in Gebregeorgis so much she nominated him to be a CNN Hero, the cable news network’s competition to honor those who make outstanding contributions to the world. Out of 4,000 nominees, Gebregeorgis made the final 10, after online voting. Later this month, he will find out if he is the top vote-getter, the one who wins $100,000, the one who is 2008’s ultimate hero.

But he says, “The real heroes are the children who collect pennies, the people who help us bring books to Ethiopia.” His words are strung closely together, his voice strong but gentle, a waterfall washing over smooth stones. “Yes, it was my idea, my dream,” he says, “but the people who help us, they are the dream realizers.”

But it started with the dreamer.

Novel changed his life

He was born in the small town of Negelle Borena, the son of an illiterate cattle merchant who insisted his only child be educated. Gebregeorgis traveled 375 miles to the nearest high school. But it wasn’t textbooks that detonated his imagination.

When he was 19, a friend loaned him a copy of a romance novel called Love Kitten. It was the first book he ever read for “pleasure,” and it changed his life forever.

Now he began to read voraciously, any literature he could find, and “books became my friends.” Books “gave me strength, a purpose for living.” Gradually, he came to realize “literacy has the power to make people better.”

But before he could make others better, he had to save his own life. In 1981, a coup toppled the government. Gebregeorgis’ political stance didn’t fit in, and he fled Ethiopia. He made it to Sudan then to the U.S. Along the way to becoming a citizen in 1989, he earned a bachelor’s and two master’s degrees in library science.

Land of 1,000 Despairs

In 1995, he got a job at the San Francisco Library’s main branch, in the children’s library. He loved the job but was saddened to realize that while the library had children’s books in 75 languages, none were in Amharic, the official tongue of Ethiopia.

That changed in 2001 with Silly Mammo, Gebregeorgis’ retelling of an Ethiopian folk tale, the first Amharic-English book in the U.S. But by then, he was looking beyond San Francisco.

The rise of a less hostile government had allowed him to revisit Ethiopia. He saw a land “devastated” by years of war and decades of poverty. He saw “beautiful children” in tattered clothing, hungry, without hope, without toys. Without books.

He came back to the U.S. and founded Ethiopia Reads. Slowly, on a shoestring, he began collecting books and donations, finding backers. He found enough in Denver to base his headquarters here. But all along, he was preparing for his big move.

In 2002, with his two young sons and 15,000 books, he left behind the comforts of his adopted land moved back to his homeland. “People said, ‘Are you crazy?’ But this was my missionary calling.”

People were right to ask. Ethiopia was a world of wrenching poverty and famine. AIDS was rampant; the average life span was 41 years. Gebregeorgis called it “The Land of 1,000 Despairs.”

He rented a house in Addis Ababa, lived upstairs and turned the downstairs into the Shola Children’s Library, naming it for the fig tree, a traditional gathering place for Ethiopians. The first year alone, he brought books into the lives of 12,000 children.

Book Man of Africa

Over the years that number would grow to 100,000. He would create libraries in schools that never had them. He would take a donkey cart laden with books into the hinterlands, inspiring and dazzling children with the power of literacy. He became known by different names – Donkey Librarian, Book Man of Africa and Slayer of the Dragon of Illiteracy.

He smiles when he says that – and he doesn’t smile often. How can he? There is so much to do, the “need is huge, so vast,” his work is “only a drop in the ocean.”

In the next six months, he plans to stock a dozen more school libraries, create three more “donkey libraries.” He hopes to do this because “Only through literacy can we overcome poverty.” Because “We have seen so many kids transformed.”

Because “When people are literate they can understand humanity.”

meadowj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2606

If you go

* What: Yohannes Gebregeorgis speaks about Ethiopia Reads.

* When: 4:30 p.m. today

* Where: Boulder Public Library, 1000 Canyon Blvd.