The Pavement Bookworm Is Making a Difference

Philani Dladla, The Pavement Bookworm

Way back in January 2008, I started a post category that I labeled as "Readers."  I use the label to highlight a special kind of reader, a person whose love of books has inspired them to do something that will likely change the lives of others.  If you check my sidebar, you will see that this is the 80th posting I've made about "Readers" in what is almost now eight years.  So they are out there...and people notice them and love them for what they do.  This guy, though, is definitely one of my favorites out of all eighty people I've highlighted.

Twenty-four-year-old Philani Dladla has become known as Johannesburg's "Pavement Bookworm" because of how he supports himself by selling books on the corners of that city's streets.  But Philani is no ordinary panhandler or recycler of books he finds in the trash.  Philani, you see, only sells books he has himself read and he offers a detailed book review with each purchase - and prices his books according to how much he enjoyed them.  But there is a whole lot more even than that to this man's story, and One.org has the rest of the story:

“With some self-motivation and a lot of self-help books, I made the decision to stop taking drugs. But while I was helping myself I also wanted to help the other people I had been living on the streets with. So I started using the money I got from selling books to buy everyone soup and bread everyday instead of spending that money on drugs. Seeing their smiles motivated me to keep using the little I had to spread happiness. From that point on, I knew I never wanted to go back to being a drug addict.”

Click on the One.org line to learn more about Philani.  And if you are still not sold on this guy, take a look at this YouTube video in which he explains himself in great detail:





Philani mentions in this segment that he is working on his memoirs and, while there are not a lot of 24-year-olds whose memoirs I would be much interested in, I would love to see his story get published.  He is an amazing young man.

Post #2,547