After more than a year in limbo, 22,000 books will be shipped Tuesday from Atlanta to rural Kenya to establish libraries in villages where none exist.

Atlanta nonprofit inABLE, formerly known as Our Reading Spaces, first arranged to send the books, a quarter of which are in Braille, last June on a planned Delta Air Lines flight to Nairobi, the East African nation's capital.

The day before takeoff, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration denied Delta approval for the new route, citing insufficient security around the Nairobi airport. That left the books stranded at the Atlanta warehouse of Books for Africa, a Minnesota-based charity.

The shipment will be a dream come true for Kenya native and Atlanta resident Irene Mbari-Kirika, founder of Our Reading Spaces.

Delta had planned to ship the books free, so when that plan fell through, she had to scramble to find an organization willing to donate $10,000 to send a 40-foot shipping container across the world.

More than a year later, Safaricom Ltd., Kenya's largest mobile phone company, stepped up to fill the void, donating the full amount through its new foundation, said Ms. Mbari-Kirika.

The Braille books will be used to establish a library at a primary school for the blind in a small city called Thika. The others will be used to create a library that will be shared by schools in Kairi village. 

"It feels totally amazing, because you have these kids that are waiting for these books," she said.

On average, four to six students share each Braille book in Kenya, where people with disabilities haven't traditionally had a place in society, she said.

"They won't have to share a book for the first time," she added.

On Saturday, Aug. 7, 52 volunteers showed up at the Books for Africa warehouse to help sort the books, said Ms. Mbari-Kirika, who came to Georgia as a business student at Kennesaw State University in 1998.

"We had an amazing time. In a warehouse full of books and no air conditioning, everyone had a wet t-shirt, but people kept going," she said. "Sorting Braille books is not easy because one has to find the correct number of volumes per Braille book and most of them were in different boxes."

Ms. Mbari-Kirika will travel to Kenya in September for seven weeks to help set up the libraries. Her organization has already set up a computer lab in Thika Primary School for the Blind and is working with Georgia Institute of Technology to research ways to improve digital accessibility for the disabled.

During the World Cup soccer tournament in June and July, the students set up blogs to write about the tournament and soccer in general.

Such projects help build accessibility for the disabled into Africa's technology infrastructure as it grows, preventing costly conversions later, Ms. Mbari-Kirika said.

"This is when Africa is blowing up in terms of technology; this is when it is developing. If we can get ourselves acclimated to the needs of the blind now as we grow, then it is easier," she said.

For more information on inABLE, visit www.ourreadingspaces.org or e-mail Ms. Mbari-Kirika at irene@ourreadingspaces.org.

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