There’s a kind of drought you don’t see on weather apps.

Not the kind that cracks the soil. The kind that cracks the will to read.

In some places it looks like a township street where the library door is locked and the Wi-Fi lives in one corner of one shop. In other places it looks like a neat suburb where the bookshelf is full, but nobody touches it because life is loud and tired and scrolling is easier. In the city it looks like bright billboards, endless noise, and a million people walking past each other like strangers in the same lift.

And yet, underneath all of it, the mycelium is still there.

Thin. Quiet. Stubborn.

Not visible to the eye, but stubborn like a grandmother who refuses to let a family fall apart. A network of threads running under pavements, through school corridors, behind clinic queues, beneath taxi ranks, inside WhatsApp groups, along the shelves of a library, and across the soft glow of a phone screen at night.

It is not a metaphor for “nice ideas”. It is a metaphor for infrastructure.

Because reading for joy does not arrive by motivation posters. It arrives when the ecosystem is fed. When the child is not alone. When the adults around that child, whoever they are, become a Care Circle. A parent, a cousin, a gogo, a big sister, a neighbour, a coach, a youth leader, a librarian, a teacher, the guy at the spaza who says, “Here, take this book, bring it back when you’re done.”

That is how the barren patches begin to change.

First, the Academy shows up like a field guide, not a sermon. It doesn’t shout, “Read more!” It says, “Let’s build the habitat.” It makes the digital less scary by making it practical. Low data options. Offline versions. Short routines that fit real life. Tools that don’t require perfect homes or perfect schools or perfect anything.

And then, quietly, you start seeing the first mushrooms.

A reading club that meets under a tree, or in a classroom, or in the corner of a library, or on a screen after dinner. A maker table with cardboard, string, and borrowed scissors where stories become objects and objects become stories. A librarian who becomes a knowledge worker in full view, not hiding in the background, showing learners where information lives, how to test if it’s true, how to tell the difference between facts and vibes.

Mushrooms are not the forest yet. They are the sign that the ground is waking up.

Then comes the part that adults pretend they don’t care about, but they do.

The moment a child chooses a book without being chased. The moment a teenager reads something just because it hits the heart. The moment a tired teacher laughs because the class is quiet, not from fear, but from being absorbed. The moment an official walks into a school and sees reading happening without a programme being forced like medicine.

That’s when the mushrooms start turning into butterflies.

Not literally, calm down, we are still professional people here. 😉
But something does lift.

You can feel it in the way the child’s face changes when they understand, not just decode. You can hear it when they tell the story back in their own words. You can see it when they start asking better questions, not because someone taught them to, but because curiosity has switched on like lights in a city block during load shedding, suddenly everyone peeping through the windows, smiling, “Yoh, it’s back.”

And that’s the bigger picture, the global village part.

Because forests are not only rural. Cities are forests too.

High rises are vertical trees. Sidewalks are roots. People are seeds walking around in shoes. When the reading ecosystem is healthy, the city becomes greener in a way you can’t always photograph, but you can measure it in safer streets, steadier families, stronger work, better choices, more dignity, more imagination, less manipulation, less easy lying.

A healthy society is not just one with money or technology. It’s one where people can read the world, trust what is true, challenge what is false, and still choose stories for pleasure when the day has been hard.

So this platform, this Academy, this Library and Information Services heartbeat, it’s not “extra”. It’s land restoration.

It’s taking those barren patches of mycelium, the ones that are invisible but alive, and feeding them until the ground becomes generous again.

Until the mushrooms rise.

Until the butterflies start moving through the streets.

Until reading is no longer a school task, but a kind of shared weather, something that makes the whole place breathe easier.

And yes, adults are welcome too.

Some of you need the transformation most. Wink-wink. 🦋📚