Library Fines

So I'm not a very fast reader, but I really enjoy reading. At the start of the summer, I took my younger brother and sister to the library to register for the summer reading program and while I was there I decided to register for the adult program. This year's theme was travel so in the adult program you had to read books (or listen to them or watch a documentary or go to a library event) relating to each continent (except Antarctica). I was enjoying the challenge since the majority of books that I read are set in the U.S. or Europe and they are written by people of the same continents. (Hopefully, this will continue and I'll branch out occasionally)
I quickly (well, quick for me) finished 4 of the continents leaving Africa and South America. So I looked at the list of suggested books for each of those countries. I saw a book called A Thousand Sisters in the Africa list (and not gonna lie, I only read the description because I thought of sororities when I saw it). The summary talked about it being a nonfiction book (out of my comfort zone there) about a women Lisa Shannon who saw a story on Oprah about Congolese women and the trials that they are facing and she decided to do something about it by starting an event called Run for Congo Women and participating in Women for Women International. (I hadn't heard of these organizations before, but they sounded neat and impressive) So I checked out the book and started reading.

This true story about Lisa Shannon and the women of Congo was eye-opening, interesting, and inspiring. It was amazing to see how a simple idea of Lisa's transformed into something so big. The book starts when Lisa starts her first Run for Congo Women (where she was the only participant) after watching an episode of Oprah about the women of Congo. Then she proceeds to do more amazing things to raise awareness for the women of Congo and the trials they face everyday. The book describes her travels to Congo as well as features interesting stories about many women and children of Congo. The book really opened my eyes to the lives of other people. It is hard to think about what life in a war-torn and violent country is like, but this book really painted a great picture of aspects of it. Most of it is still unbelievable to me. It is hard to think about that some women face such struggles when they are younger than myself -- it made me think a lot about what I freak out about and how I should relax about some things because I'm pretty lucky that I don't have the Interahamwe bursting through my door or killing my family, and I don't have to worry about clothes or food or health care or an education. My problems are so small compared to what these brave women face everyday and I need to be more thankful for the simple things that I have and always will have.

Lisa also has inspired me. She started a simple project that grew into a movement. She had goals for the project, but didn't expect a lot from other people. She just wanted to help the women of Congo and her project has grown more than she expected. She really stepped out of her comfort zone and in return made a huge difference in the lives of over 1,000 women who have been sponsored through Women for Women by the money raised in Run for Congo Women. (She also has a list of 10 things that the reader can do to help support this cause in the back of the book. The last is "Dream up something new, like I did".) Pretty inspirational.

This book came to me at such a perfect time too (for many reasons, but one is here)- I was reading my sorority's (Kappa Kappa Gamma) magazine "The Key" a few weeks ago, and there are always little stories about Kappa's achievements in the magazine. While I was reading the most recent issue, I noticed a little paragraph about Kate Spade (yep, she's my sister!) and how she had a line in which the profits were going to Women for Women! Crazy right?

So back to the title of this blog post. After I started reading this book I think I visited NYC, worked at camp, babysat a lot, and basically forgot about the book until I realized that it was going to be due back. So I renewed it and I vowed to finish it quickly because the reading program was ending and at that time I was mostly finishing the book to color in that part of my score sheet (I hadn't realized the impact the book would have on me yet) and to get my prize. But, it ended up taking me a whole extra week to finish reading. The book was definitely worth the monetary fine, but I wish that I would have finished it in time and then used those extra few cents to help the women of Congo. I also missed the reading program deadline and I never got my prize, but I probably got something better - a story about a real women with a real dream who made a real difference. I got a new person to look up to and to provide me with motivation to follow my dreams.

Tonight, I will take the book back to the library and hopefully it will be picked up by someone soon and they will be inspired by Lisa's story as much as I was...