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I don't remember learning to read either, but I do remember the first books that I read over and over again. My third grade teacher read 31 Brothers and Sisters to the class. It was about a girl growing up in an African village whose father has many wives and who wants to go on the elephant hunt with the boys. It had two sequels that followed her through to young adulthood. She eventually did some sort of nursing training and her boyfriend went to work in the diamond mines to earn money to buy the cows he needed for her dowry.
I vividly remember the teacher explaining to the class that people in "Africa" still lived like the characters in the books, in the 1970's. She was one of the worst teachers I've ever had for anything in my life, and it wouldn't surprise me if she really did think that no one on the whole bloody continent of Africa lived in modern cities.
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