Keroka Community LibraryKEROKA · NYAMIRA

Our story

A family opened its shelves. A community found a library.

Keroka Community Library is the Gisesa Community Library initiative in the Westlands area of Keroka Town, opposite Keroka Central SDA Church. Built to strengthen local literacy and give back to the neighborhood, it grew from one household's books and the people who chose to share them.

  1. 1

    The beginning

    The first shelf was a home shelf

    A box of second-hand books being handed from one pair of hands to another

    The collection started with books the Gisesa siblings kept on their own shelves. Lilian Kerubo Gisesa and her siblings, including the journalist Nyambega and Mike Gisesa, put those personal books to work as a shared collection rather than leaving them behind closed doors.

  2. 2

    Making room

    A matriarch brought the furniture

    Readers gathered inside a community library building

    Wilkister Bochere, a retired high school teacher, contributed the furniture that turned a room holding books into a place where readers could actually sit and read.

  3. 3

    The name

    Named for the patriarch

    Wooden shelves filled with mixed hardbacks and paperbacks

    The library grew from the family of the late Prof. William Obiero Gisesa, a botanist and family patriarch whose premises became the library. His life's work in plant science is the reason the shelves sit where they do.

The next chapter is still being written

Lilian Kerubo Gisesa's work in information management and community reading advocacy keeps the library coordinated. Every book, shelf and hour added by the community becomes part of this same story.