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| Militant/Jean-louis Salfati |
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BAMAKO, Mali — Some 45 students and teachers attended a Feb. 20 presentation by Pathfinder representatives Michel Prairie from Montreal (inset, speaking) and Jean-louis Salfati from Paris at the Balla Fasséké Kouyaté Art and Multimedia Crafts Conservatory here in the capital city of this West African country. Also present was Sidenio Acosta, Cuban ambassador in Mali (inset, right). There were 16 Cuban art teachers working at the Conservatory till January 2013, when all 153 Cuban doctors, sport trainers, teachers and other volunteers were evacuated from the country in face of a spreading civil war. Prairie explained how socialist workers are using books published by Pathfinder — from The Communist Manifesto to Thomas Sankara Speaks and The Cuban Five: Who They Are, Why They Were Framed, Why They Should Be Free — to build communist parties in the U.S., Canada and other countries. Salfati explained the special effort made by Pathfinder to make these books available in West Africa at significantly reduced prices. In the discussion period, Mohamed Kassoum Djiré, a surgeon from Mali trained in Cuba for 13 years, praised Pathfinder books, which he knew from the Havana Book Fair in Cuba and a World Festival of Youth and Students he attended in South Africa a few years ago. As a result of a one-week trip by Prairie and Salfati to Bamako and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, five bookstores ordered a total of 1,055 Pathfinder books, with two more orders to come. |
| — JEAN-LOUIS SALFATI |