Where books mean the world – the Caribbean

Mobile librarians on the road. They bring books to places where people live on the margins or on the sidelines and the nearest book is just too far away. They take us with them on their journeys and introduce us to the world of their readers. In this episode of the five-part documentary series, we are with Micha Roggensinger in the Caribbean. The islands of the southern Caribbean are a popular tourist destination. In their history, they were sometimes in French and sometimes in British hands. Today they are independent and mostly belong to the Commonwealth. The “Logos Hope” has been in the port of Kingstown, the capital of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, for a little over a week. The ship, which is managed by the evangelical organization “Operation Mobilization”, is all about books. An entire deck of the former ferry is an extensive bookshop with around 5,000 different titles. The deck below houses the book warehouse, which can hold up to 800,000 books. From the outside, it looks like a normal ship. But the crew is unusual. About 400 volunteers from 60 nations keep the on-board operations running. And they don't just do it for free; they also pay up to 25 euros per day. One of them is Micha Roggensinger, a native of Switzerland, whom we accompany in Kingstown on St. Vincent and a few days later on the island of Grenada.