Travelling Bookshop in Freetown

It's been awhile since a bookmobile rolled though this blog, but here comes one now--the C.M.S. Travelling Bookshop from Freetown, Sierra Leone in West Africa.


C.M.S. stands for Church Missionary Society, founded in London in 1799. They didn't take long to get to Sierra Leone, just five years later in 1804 with their first overseas mission work.

I don't know when the book shop got started, nor when they put their books on wheels to reach more folks, but this postcard appears to depict an early 1960s bookmobile. A note on the back indicates the pictured vehicle has been replaced. And, from scouring the Web, there appears to be a network of CMS book shops across the many countries where the Society is active.

Perhaps there is no need, or maybe no budget, for CMS bookmobiles today, but judging by the crowd gathering in the postcard image, there definitely was a need some fifty years ago.

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