Mar 25, 2009: Blackboard Blogger

[xoxoxoBruce]

I found this a couple weeks ago but didn't get around to posting it,
but now it's starting to show up on a couple blogs so I better get it up.

Liberia's Blackboard Blogger has been spreading the Liberian and international news to what he estimates as 10,000 people a day.
Well big deal, you say? that's not many in the internet age, you say?

But but but, Alfred Sirleaf doesn't use a computer, just a cell phone and a blackboard.
It's an analog blog and many of the people he reaches are illiterate.

For those who cannot read, Mr. Sirleaf has devised an ingenious system of symbols that transmit and sometimes subtly editorialize on the news. With the electricity story, hanging from the eaves of the newsstand on one corner was a kerosene lamp, next to an unlighted fluorescent bulb; on the other corner, there was a bag of drinking water, the kind young children sell to passers-by on the streets.

He said he used symbols to inform Liberians who never learned to read “so they will be able to follow along with those who have education know-how.”

This guy has been working hard at this for years, in the capitol city of Monrovia, which hasn't had electricity for 14 years.

Every morning Mr. Sirleaf buys half a dozen newspapers and scours them for the most important developments. If they involve the United Nations peacekeeping force, for example, Mr. Sirleaf hangs up a blue helmet, the ubiquitous headgear for those forces everywhere. A chrome hubcap is the symbol for the president, who is called the “iron lady” of Liberian politics.

Oh, he sells ad space too.

link

New York Times (2006)