Far from South Africa

By Alexandra Garry

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

When Lorraine Haricombe arrived in the United States in 1986, she saw a nation and culture starkly different from that in which she grew up.

Haricombe, then 33, had emigrated from South Africa with her two young daughters to pursue a master’s in library science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigne.

Shortly after her arrival, Haricombe saw for the first time a picture of someone who had a big impact on her life.

The picture was of Nelson Mandela, the leader of South Africa’s resistance against the country’s racially separatist government. Mandela was incarcerated from 1964 to 1990 and became South Africa’s first completely democratically elected president in 1994.

"Haricombe described the move to Kansas as a 'very new experience' for her and her husband, but sees some similarities to her previous places of residence."

“We always heard about Nelson Mandela, but we were not allowed to see a picture,” Haricombe said. “I did not know what he looked like till I came to Illinois. It was very exciting to have this free access to information; that was a big change from life in South Africa.”

Though Haricombe had spent her entire life, up to that point, in South Africa, she had never seen Mandela, whose face is now internationally associated with the nation of South Africa, because the apartheid government banned his image from being reproduced. Bans were not limited to photographs.

“I was a librarian for 11 years before I came to the United States and I had a library where I could not buy certain books because they were banned and censored by the South African government,” Haricombe said. “When I arrived in Illinois, I saw some of those books on the shelves and I could not believe that they were available for people to read. It was very exciting to see those books.”

Haricombe completed her master’s and continued to study at Illinois, eventually receiving a doctoral degree in library science. Following the completion of her educational program, she worked at Northern Illinois University and Bowling Green State University before coming to the University of Kansas in August of last year.

Haricombe described the move to Kansas as a “very new experience” for her and her husband, but sees some similarities to her previous places of residence.

“The commonality between my experience in South Africa and here is that I was born, reared and lived in a big university town, and after coming here, I have lived only in university towns,” she said.

As dean of libraries, Haricombe oversees the budget, the programs and the effort of the libraries “to keep the libraries relevant to the students’ needs.”

“We are here to serve the students,” Haricombe said of the librarians.

— Edited by Amelia Freidline

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