Friday, May 11, 2012

Why a Library - Part 2

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their kind and generous support for this project. It truly amazes me how quickly word of this project has passed. The world can be a small one sometimes! Since we have reached half of our fund-raising goal, I thought I could add another post as to why I am pursuing this project. The reasons I chose this project are many, and although the main ones are included in the first post, there are many other reasons and events that have led me to pursuing this project.

So... Why a Library - Part 2.

Last summer I received a generous donation of English books from Darington Book Aid. They shipped us one, 20-lb box of new books for free as a donation to our library project. But because the books are in English, it isn't everyone who can read them. Some of my coworkers at the health center have read through all the chapter books since they studied enough English in prior years to understand the material. Some older kids from the village who are going to high school in the city (and therefore have more advanced English levels due to better education) would rotate through the different books and trade them among themselves. The donated books included a wide range from simple reads like the Giving Tree, classics like the Lion King to advanced books about how to build castles.

Because the idea of books are new to many members of my community, the knowledge of how to take care of them is also new. I found this out quickly after first giving a group of kids a stack of books to go through. Atleast I realized this before a book went missing, lost a cover or a few pages, or ended up with some kids name in it. I took the books back and started from the basics: how do we handle a book, how do we turn the pages, how do we mark our spot, why we can't write in them, why we should make sure our hands are clean first, etc. I'm not sure at what point in my early childhood life I learned these skills, but I've realized that they are skills that are infact learned.

Since that first day of book sharing, I have learned my lesson on teaching kids how to care for books before handing them over. Its a routine now really and is something we've planned to spend a lot of time on when we first open our library. I have found that book care has been a new concept for all of the kids in my village who have borrowed books to read. All except one.

One day when I was walking back to my house, I passed the water pump. My best friend from village was nearby washing her clothes. I stopped to greet her and she saw a book poking out of my purse and was immediately intrigued. We sat down and opened the book. She started reading the first story about Cinderella - the book was a collection of Disney Princess Stories - and I helped her with the pronuciation. This friend was someone I had spent quite a bit of time working on book care with after getting back a dictionary that was split in two and catching her ready with marker-in-hand to write her name across another.

While we were reading, one of my 9th grade students approached us. He is about the same age as me, lives on his own, and is one of my more difficult students to manage. He most often misses class and when he's there, he's either sleeping or chatting in the back of the class. He's known for his wannabe rapper attitude and moves, and even though he is quite the impressive dancer, he is also quite the handful.

The fact that he approached us even surprised me at first. I mean really, we were looking at a book on princesses! As soon as he walked up though, he washed off his hands with some of the water he had just pumped, dried them on a clean area of his clothes and quietly sat down next to my friend. At first he just stared at the pages, mouthing through the words as she read them outloud. When she finished the page, he so delicately turned it for her. He then began to trace over the pictures and the words as if they were gold.

I've never seen someone so gently handle a book before. Its not like he's had much experience with books - I don't think he owns any of the required school textbooks. He was, ironically, the first student I felt completely comfortable and confident handing a book over to. But what amazed me most is the change this pretty pink book brought about on such a hard-shelled guy. Is that all I had needed to capture his attention and desire to learn? A book?

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If you are interested in supporting this project, or know someone who might be, please visit the project proposal on the Peace Corps website https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=694-202

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