 Until the lion learns how to read and write, every story will glorify the hunter. This is an African proverb that I know that every African out there knows it. It's time for us to unite as one Africa and help change the narratives of Mama Africa. It's time for each and every African to be an ambassador for the continent. Wherever you find yourself right now, if you look like me, you're an African. So it's your duty, it's your responsibility to represent the motherland wherever you are. I'm so happy today, I don't know why because a sister is telling our own story in Accra Ghana. This is a black library and it's just incredible. Like I mean I'm here already and what I'm seeing I feel like I just can't wait to have a conversation with this beautiful sister who left the UK, came to Ghana and established something beautiful like this. It's time for us to support our own so I'm here to support this sister. So if you're watching me for the first time, my name is Mr. Ghana baby, the annoying village boy from Ghana. If today is your first time on this channel, please do me a favor. Subscribe and like the video to be part of this family. Let's hit the 500,000 subscribers by the end of this month. Come with me, let's go talk to this beautiful sister. Hi. Welcome to the library of Africa and Africa and Accra. Thank you so much. I've heard a lot about you and I really want to talk to you. Are you ready for me? We need to sit down and talk. Thank you. My sister. Hello. Do I still have to introduce myself? No, I think I know who you are. Oh, okay. All right. No need of introduction. So which means that you have to introduce yourself. My name is Sylvia Arthur and I was born and raised in London, but I'm of Ghanaian heritage. Obviously, I'm Ghanaian and I've been living in Ghana since June 2017 and I'm the founder of this library. Wow. You're born in the UK. Yes. Born and raised. Born and raised. I didn't come to Ghana. Yes, I didn't come to Ghana for the first time until my 20s. What brought you to Ghana in the first place? Do you know, I just finished university. It was turn of millennium almost and I was looking for something different and I felt there was something about my identity that was missing and my mum had started coming to Ghana quite a lot and I was wondering like why is she going to Ghana. She'd never spoken about moving to Ghana, never spoken about like living in Ghana and so I was interested in as to what she was coming back for and so I came myself for the first time in 1999 and I realised, okay, now I understand what she's coming back for because I just felt at peace. I felt like these are my people and yeah, I understood in the moment why she was coming back. You felt at peace. What are you saying? You're living in the UK, you're not having peace during that time? I definitely had peace but I think it's more about knowing who you are and when I came to Ghana, there were certain things about my identity and who I was that suddenly made sense that didn't make sense to me when I was in the UK. Now obviously when you're brought up in a western education system, the things that you're told about Africa is not the reality of how things are. What are the things that they told you about Africa? Oh you know, I mean obviously we're talking about the 80s, there was famine in Ethiopia, there was war in certain countries of Africa, so when we were growing up we were always teased about oh you know eating bananas and you know you can't you can't read, you can't write Africans are backward people and then obviously you come to Africa, you come to Ghana and you see that that's not actually how things are and it's an awakening and it's not that I didn't know that that's how things are, it's just that I think it's different when you come and see it and experience it for yourself. You moved to Ghana in 2017. Can you tell me why you moved to Ghana? Yeah so in my day job I worked with the European Commission, we just had Brexit in the UK, the Brexit referendum and you know things were not looking too good let's just say they weren't looking too good economically, socially, culturally the UK was totally changing and so you know where else but Ghana by that time I already had like an established connection I'd been coming and going you know maybe twice a year at that point and so when it came time to consider a move yeah Ghana was a natural a natural choice and how has the experience been it's been interesting I mean honestly I didn't think I would last three years so now I've been here for three years thank you it's just been it's been a challenge I'll have to say it's not as easy as people think to just pick up and you know go and move to Ghana I think the most difficult thing for me was a kind of adjustment in culture and pace of life and so for example in the UK I can maybe do three things a day four things a day I can go to east London south London west London and I'm from north London in Ghana in a car honestly if I'm going to a shimon where we have another library that's all I can do in that one day because a shimon it's not that it's far but the roads are you know not the best and so yeah it's just an adjustment of I think expectations and knowing that this is not the UK or it's not America it's Ghana and I think people come here thinking that they're going to get a lot from the country and yes you will but I think it's about you giving back to the country as much as you taking from the country and that's where people sometimes go wrong which means that I need to tell you to advise your fellow brothers and sisters who are looking forward to visit the continent what are the things that they need to be ready for like you know they are just moving from one continent to another so what are the things that they need to be ready for I think it's as I say you need to be very realistic about what you're coming to and you know I think one thing is that maybe certain little luxuries such as you know electricity and water you'll have to buy a generator maybe that's going to be money you know all those kind of things that people may may not be used to I think you really need to have like a real reality check and you know let's forget about that for now and you know the reason why I'm here yeah because I've got this beautiful library that's dedicated to African writers to me and I was like you know what I need to look for you yes and how do you find it like this is beautiful and incredible because I never even the person behind it is young and well I'm not saying you're too young but I mean like it's not I look young that's good let's yeah yeah you know let's let them take it like that I just want to know what really inspired you yet to start this beautiful library yeah I mean honestly sometimes I can't believe that I've done it because I walk in here and it is such a beautiful space but you know I've always been a reader since a very young age that's one thing that my parents especially my my dad who's no longer with us but he was also a reader and so I think that's where I got it from and he was a collector of vinyl so when I was really young my mum would take me to a shopping mall and all the children would be playing and I just want to go to the book shop so I've always been interested in reading I had all these books lying around at home because I've collected them over the years and what happened was is that I got a job in Brussels in 2010 and that's really when I started to collect and so it got to the point where I ran out of space in my apartment in Brussels for my books I ran out of space in my apartment in London for my books and my mum at that time was living in Kamasi and so I would ship the books back to her house in Kamasi and then every time I would go and see her I would think wow look at all these books that are not being read when there are people who could be using them it's such a waste so it was back in 2011 that I had the idea for the library but obviously I moved here in 2017 in June and then we opened the first library in December 2017 so it's been a journey it's been a journey yes this library I think it's a library of Africa and the African diaspora is it only black books in yes 95 percent of the books in here are by African and African descended authors so when we say African descended we mean obviously African African Caribbean African American black British black European anyone who is African descended in the world yeah we have their books have here is the total opposite of a library that you would have in the western world in that the focus here is totally on African writers and African descended writers so this shelf here is all African writers and we have books by 41 or books from countries from 41 countries of Africa's 54 so we have books here and then this middle section here is Ghanaian writers obviously we're in Ghana so we have to highlight our beautiful prolific writers here really quickly here we have African Caribbean writers from various islands across the Caribbean here we have black British and European yes this section here is poetry and then here we have politics as you can see African politics predominantly but also diaspora politics so you can see their Stokely Carmichael Malcolm X etc etc here we have books about the craft of writing from a black perspective and an African perspective here we have afrocentric books and you can see we've had some famous visitors to the library and so it's going to be there it's going to be there trust me it's going to be there and then here it's the only shelf that is not African descended writers this is world writers we call this world writers which is the opposite of when you go into a library in the western world there would be a tiny section that's called black writers which wouldn't even get to here so you know that's that and then here it's African American writers and you can see that we have everybody from the great such as Maya Angelo exactly my name is what am I oh yeah so there you go you've got your book you've got your writer your grandmother Maya Angelo and then very quickly here we have like a little archive container which has books in here that you won't find anywhere else in africa or even the world so signed um Kwameen Krummer autographed Kwameen Krummer and then the whole collection of i.e. Kwamei our first edition some of them signed some of them with letters so okay and so what we have here is the children's library and in this library we have books for children up until the age of about 16 and they are mostly by african and african descended authors and this is a really important shelf here so i don't know if you've heard of Emmanuel Fosso Yobua the Ghanian disabled Ghanian athlete that's a book about him um Schomburg from the united states from Puerto Rico in the united states Sulway by Peter Nyongo obviously Mandela here from south africa Wangari Mathai from Kenya so all of africa is represented in this children's library and all of the diaspora as well so even footballers as you can see Lukaku Venus and Serena Williams they're all here they're all here and what children's library have you been into where they have a portrait of Malcolm X or Alice Walker so yeah this is new and i feel like we need to promote you more so that a lot of Ghanian kids are definitely coming and not even Ghanian kids but someone like you who is so blank about african history but it's not just you i find that a lot of Ghanians are not just Ghanians probably Africans are blank about their history as well but you have to think about what our education is and what we've been taught even though obviously we have been independent for 63 years you know our education system is totally biased towards the western education system this is why you are important in here so you know what just tell me who are the people that you're looking for where to come and visit your library yeah so we welcome all kinds of people here i should say that you pay to be a member of this particular library and this library you pay we have two different memberships we have 600 Ghanian cities a year which is 50 cities a month or we have 1200 a year which is 100 cities a month and the differences between the number of books you can borrow so for 600 cities you can borrow two books at a time for 1200 you can borrow four books at a time but you can also use all the facilities in this library but we also have three free community libraries which is very important to say so we have a library in a shaman at the gem star school we have one in kumawu in the ashanti region and we have one in ensutem in the eastern region and they're completely free and before coronavirus we used to go especially to a shaman every second saturday and do reading and creative play activities with the children and that's definitely the best part of the work all right thank you so much for taking me around and now you need to answer these questions for me yes you've been in Ghana for three good years yeah do you believe that africa is a future i do i think it's the present and the future so yes definitely i mean if you look at the way that the world is going and the way that people are thinking now especially with the black lives matters protest etc a lot of people are thinking about africa in terms of relocation and i think that's a good thing obviously you know relocation yes so you believe that africa is home i believe that africa is home yes yes definitely can you tell your fellow brothers and sisters out there it's time to make africa home again i definitely think it's time to make africa home again i think first of all come explore try to spend a significant amount of time here your first time like don't come for two weeks three weeks because that's not enough to do anything you need to come for at least three months i think in the beginning and work out you know who you are where you are etc because i'll tell you something from the beginning it was really disorientating for me in the beginning walking around and seeing all these billboards with black people on it so for example i'd see a billboard for nivia or for you know a car and there'd be a black person in it i'd be like wow why is there a black person on that billboard like nivia is really doing well and then i remember oh i'm in a black country i'm in africa so why shouldn't there be a black person on the billboard so i think you know you really need to take time to readjust and that takes at least three months so come for an extended period of time if you can and then work out where it's best for you it might not be the city it might not be a cry it could be outside of the big cities and yeah explore and find your find your base so yeah there's something you didn't tell me what's that how do people find you in here okay so the best way to find us is to follow us on instagram and facebook so on instagram we're at low tad that's loa tad underscore org and so find us on instagram find us on twitter and also on facebook if you just search library of africa and the african diaspora we will come up um also i should say we do lots of events here related to african and diaspora literature so spoken word film screenings book readings talks and debates music performances so if you follow us on any of our social media channels you can find out what's happening and when exactly so upstairs is also library no so upstairs actually is a residential space so we rent out the three bedrooms upstairs which are all named after ghanian writers by the way and so if anybody wants to come and stay with us and have a unique travel experience here in gana here in akra definitely um dm me or message me and um i can give you the details about renting upstairs thank you so much i'm definitely going to spend a night here you should i have a lot to you've got a lot of reading to do so bye thank you see i went natural i left my nap thinking my black pro they try to say that my black was a natural