otics may lead to future antibiotic-resistant infec - Kuwait Times

FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2012
Floating bookshop
sails on amid
electronic storm
Despite fierce storms, a deadly bomb attack and growing
competition from electronic media, a Christian charity still
sails the seas on a mission to offer cheap books while promoting
family values. The Logos Hope, which docked in Manila
Bay last month, is the latest in a fleet of converted ferries that
have been selling books in harbors of mostly poor nations for the
past four decades. “What we hope happens is that people get
excited with reading,” ship captain Pat Tracy told AFP during a
tour of the 132-metre-long (433-foot) vessel that inside resembles
a bookshop in an upscale mall.
“We want to encourage people to get into reading but we
want to make the books available to all people, not just people
with a lot of money.” The ship carries at least half a million books,
with stocks being constantly replenished during port calls,
according to Tracy. It is run by GBA Ships, a German-based
Protestant charity, that relies on a volunteer crew of 400 people
and donations to meet running costs drawn from a global church
network. In the air-conditioned aisles of the floating shop, children’s
books featuring popular characters such as Bob the Builder
share space with the works of Shakespeare and Dickens. Another
section is devoted to technical books on engineering and biology,
which Tracy said were particularly popular in poor communities.
“Everything can be found in our books, from brain surgery to
bridge construction,” he said. There is also a large selection of
books on nurturing family life and developing leadership skills, as
well as other lifestyle genres including education, health, handicrafts,
home repair and cooking. —AFP
Abroken-down vacuum cleaner, an
old bicycle, a torn shirt ... almost
nothing is impossible to fix for a
group of crafty Dutch volunteers dedicated
to giving potential trash a second lease
of life. The volunteers of Amsterdam’s
“Repair Cafe” are part of a network of 20
similar groups across The Netherlands
who mend broken household appliances
and electronics, rather than relegating
them to the trash heap-an all-too-easy
choice in today’s consumer society.
“People have simply lost the culture of
repairs. We too easily throw away things
that can be fixed,” Martine Postma, the
driving force behind the initiative, told
AFP at Amsterdam’s Repair Cafe.
Here in a rented hall, saws, screwdrivers
and electric cables hang from the walls.
Four electronics enthusiasts and two
seamstresses are hard at work, fixing a
sound system and mending torn clothing.
Postma, a former journalist, pulls a cell
phone from her pocket which she bought
a decade ago, saying: “It’s missing three
keys on the keypad but otherwise it works
fine. Surely there must be a way to fix it.”
Convinced that no one enjoys throwing
things away, Postma, 41, opened the first
Repair Cafe in Amsterdam in 2009 “to
bring together two groups of people:
‘repair volunteers’ and those who want to
fix things but don’t know how.”
Margreet Bakker, 57, brought in her
vacuum cleaner, preferring the Repair Cafe
to the manufacturer. “It’s much better to
bring it here, rather than have it fixed by
the manufacturer, who would charge the
equivalent of a new vacuum cleaner,” she
said. Bakker and Theo van den Akker, a tax
consultant by profession, but also an electronics
enthusiast, start probing the
machine’s innards. They dismantle it,
check its fan, test its electronics ... and
within an hour later identify the problem.
Simple, really: a loose connection at the
plug. With that fixed, the vacuum cleaner
hums back to life.
‘Devices today
are not made to be fixed’
Visitors to the Repair Cafe, working
with “fixers,” sometimes learn to do the
repairs themselves. “Devices made today
are less and less reliable and they last far
less time than they used to,” lamented Van
den Akker, 64, adding: “They are made
less-and-less easy to take apart-they are
not made to be fixed.” What started as a
purely local initiative in Amsterdam, the
Repair Cafe became an overnight success,
far exceeding Postma’s expectations. The
Lifestyle
Dutch ‘Repair Cafe’
give trash a new lease of life
File photo shows Ronald Westerlaken one of the volunteer repairers examining a broken hi-fi
unit watched by its owner in a ‘Repair Cafe’ in Amsterdam. —AFP
The “Eye of the Time” by Spanish artist
Salvador Dali is shown yesterday during a press
preview of the Tefaf art fair in Maastricht. The fair is open
to the public today and lasts until March 25. —AFP
initial goal was to set up 18 Repair Cafes
across the country by 2013. Today, around
20 are already up and running, and another
50 are in the planning stages.
Postma now works full-time for the
Repair Cafe Foundation, which she founded
in 2010. Funded by the Dutch state, the
foundation advises volunteers on how to
set up their own Repair Cafes. Each one
works independently and sets its own
pace-be it one afternoon a month or two
evenings a week-in a workspace that may
be provided by the local municipality or
rented to an individual. It is up to each one
to obtain funding, recruit volunteers and
find tools. Now Postma dreams of opening
a Repair Cafe in every one of The
Netherlands’ 415 municipalities: “It could
also work elsewhere in western Europe,
and why not in the United States as well?”
she asks. Ronald Westerlaken, 37, a former
electrician who now works as a designer,
said he volunteered because he “wanted
to do something with my hands again. My
other job requires me to be constantly in
front of my computer!” “When it comes to
fixing something, you feel a great deal of
satisfaction,” he said. —AFP