Twice a year, Peace Corps Volunteers have to fill out a report card about all of the projects we have been working on at our sites. Part of the report form asks volunteers to tell a success story. The following is the story I wrote for my Peace Corps Report Card, and since I won’t be able to make it back home for our traditional Report Card Dinner at Pietros, I guess I’ll share it here.
When I first visited the village that I have come to know as my home, I was a guest. I had not moved my stuff in yet. I was only there to visit my future host family, future school, and my future village. My future host father and the current head of Misera Basic Cycle School spent a morning showing me around the school. I saw the office, the staff quarters, and the classrooms. I saw the school garden, grown over with flora fed by the rains and ignored by students who were physically and mentally on summer vacation. Finally, I was brought to a door with a lock that was jammed shut. My host father had to find a sizeable rock to force it open. This room, however, could not be overlooked as it was the room my fellow Gambians were most eager to show me. The metal door swung open, and I stepped first into a dimly lit, dusty, stale room. Tables and benches were placed haphazardly around the room. There were stacks of wood planks covered in spider webs. Books were scattered everywhere, on the tables, benches, and floor. A few papers pasted to the termite infested walls told of an organization system that may have been but was clearly no longer in use. Welcome, I thought, to the library. When do we start?
My first look into the library
It was an organizer’s dream
After this first visit, I returned to my training village where I completed my Peace Corps Pre-Service Training. On Swear-In Day, the day of my transformation from Peace Corps Trainee to Peace Corps Volunteer, I felt well equipped to head back to my village and tackle the room that had left such a big impression on my first site visit. As part of the Education Sector in The Gambia, I knew that improving the literacy education practices at my school and improving the library resources was directly in line with our project plan. I had a flash drive full of resources, including a library manual that a former volunteer created. I even had a book about how to manage and organize a library. Confidently, I volunteered to work with the library committee at our school’s first staff meeting. Our committee met and made a plan to start working right away to organize the books currently in the library and at least make it usable by the classes. What’s the point of having a library if you are not going to use it?
The work was hard and slow. I knew the value of working with counterparts on a project. I knew the value of a shared interest and responsibility in the project. I did not expect that sharing this project would mean having to sacrifice some of my standards for organization and cleanliness. I also did not expect to have to teach things like the proper way to stand a book up (with its spine facing out) or the difference between fiction and non-fiction to teachers. Eventually though, our library was set. We had rules in place. Books were organized according to reading level, in stacks on tables because we had no shelves. The cobwebs were minimal and all of the old, damaged books had been cleaned up off the floor and stored to give away to students. We were ready for classes to begin using the library. And they did.
I observed how the library was used this first term. Some teachers would use the library during their scheduled time, some would not use it at all. Some would plan lessons or activities for their library period, others would not. Some would help their students find appropriate books to read, others would not. After every class held in the library, the place was left looking disheveled but used. This is good, I thought. Having a library that is messy because of use is a good problem to have in a country where reading, libraries, and literacy are all challenging, unfamiliar concepts. But I admit, it was frustrating to come in day after day with my library monitors to see the work we had to restore the library to some semblance of organization. It seemed like, as the term went on, the students and teachers were becoming more relaxed or less engaged in the library and being sloppy with the upkeep.
Fortunately, a former volunteer had arranged for 24 boxes of books from a charity called Books for Africa to be sent to my school. I used the arrival of these books to close the library, reorganize, and have a fresh start. This time around, the process was slower and I tried to be more intentional with changes we made. I worked with the school’s administration to work the purchase of new shelves and mats into the budget. The shelves were metal and therefore more sturdy and resistant to age, rot, and termites. The library committee implored the students to bring in old 10 gallon bidongs (plastic oil containers). These bidongs, in various states of decomposition, seem to be everywhere in the village. I wanted to cut the bidongs in half to use them as bins for the books so that students could see their covers when looking for books instead of the spine. The bidongs were slow to arrive at the library. Though, once the village children realized we were trading each container for two of the old or damaged books in our library, they began flooding in. Long lines of children waited outside of the library with bidongs and half of the library was stacked high with them. Great! We had shelves, mats, hundreds of bidongs, and 24 boxes of books. It was time to get to work.
But just when I felt a rush of motivation and momentum, I hit a hard, cold brick wall in the form of no teachers being around or willing to help me. I scheduled one weekend for the library committee to come in and work. Somehow, most of the teacher managed to be travelling that weekend. The two teachers that were around were busy with who knows what right up until the moment that I decided to go home because it was ridiculous to be working by myself. The following week, I reluctantly agreed to another work weekend. Teachers assured me that they would be there and we would get the work done. I guess when they were promising this, they forgot about the religious celebration and circumcision ceremony that they were all attending that weekend. So, yet again, I found myself alone in our library working half-heatedly and questioning whether or not I should just abandon the project since, clearly, I was the only person invested in this library. Yet, I was inspired by the work and success other volunteers were having in their libraries. And I knew that improving the access to books and literacy was a cause worth working and struggling and being let down again and again for.
So, I decided to give it another shot. And this time, I decided to do everything I possibly could to get teachers to show up. Bribery, I decided, was an acceptable way to get them to come and then, I was convinced, seeing the fruits of their labor and feeling pride in our work would be reward enough after that. I reminded everyone I saw during the week again and again. I promised candy, I promised juice, I promised China green tea, and I promised music. I promised that it would be more like a party than work. It worked like a charm. Saturday morning, five teachers, including the Principal, joined me in the library and we got to work unloading books, stamping and sorting them, cutting bidongs, and putting books in their rightful spots. We listened to music, drank juice, and were delighted by some of the books we found. Knowing that Gambians’ enthusiasm for work is directly related to the time of day and the heat of the sun, I was not expecting my counterparts to work past two o’clock prayer. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the momentum we had established working all morning lasted throughout the day and well beyond 5 o’clock prayer. We moved all 24 boxes of books into the library that day. And at the end of the day, I could hear the excitement and pride in the voices of the teachers as the poured over all of the new books and resources we had. “We have a standard library now!” I heard again and again.
Hard at work (finally) in our library
After a few more weekdays of work (each time, I was helped without having to ask, beg, or bribe) the library was ready. Books were organized into sections. Bidongs lined the tables filled with books with their covers enticing young readers. Bright, colorful mats invited students to sprawl out with their books. Posters and pictures transformed the environment into a place of learning and opening one’s mind. Teachers and students kept coming by to see our new, “standard” library.
Our Standard Library
Our Standard Library
All that remained was to train our teachers how to use this space. I did not want the library to have the same fate as our library from first term. I believed that if teachers understood how to use the library and how to properly care for the books there, they would be better equipped to teach the students how to use the library. So, with the help of four other volunteers, I conducted a library training divided into three parts. Teachers learned the classification system in the library and which books are found in each section. Teachers learned how to properly shelve and care for books. And teachers practiced checking out books from the library and using them to inform their lesson planning or even as the lesson themselves. The training went extremely well. I suspect that the most enjoyable part for the teachers was sitting on the mat and being read aloud to. Who doesn’t love a read aloud?
At our library training, one teacher explains which section his book belongs to and why
At our library training, teachers race to put books from the return box back where they belong in the library
At our library training, my colleagues are captivated by a read aloud
The transformation of our library took most of second term. The true test of our new library and our newly trained staff will be third term, and the years to come. But already, I feel successful. I succeeded in motivating teachers to take part in the library project. I saw the results of their involvement in their enthusiasm for the work and the pride and satisfaction as they referred to our library. I feel successful because I trained all of the teachers in my school in the use of our library. Now, my hope is that these teachers will be able to better use the resources in our library and better guide their students. I will measure the lasting effects of this training by observing the teachers who use the library in term three. I will pay attention to how they are using the books, how they are conducting their library lessons, and the state of the library after each lesson.
There are so many ways to measure the immediate and short-term successes of this project. And I believe there will be long-term effects that are impossible to track or measure. I like to think that each of my teachers now has knowledge and skills to use a library and maybe even conduct their own library project at any school they may end up at. I believe that this library can changed the reading culture of the teachers and students in the school. I believe that as these children grow older, they have the capacity to change the reading culture of our community. It would be great to see, somewhere in the future, children checking out library books and reading at home in their compounds. It would be wonderful to see students picking up books for fun. I would love to see the students choosing more and more challenging books. Eventually, maybe they will even start to choose books based on favorite authors or favorite series. For now, though, I feel successful because we have a “standard” library, its transformation was a collaborative effort, and the teachers have the knowledge and skills to use the library and make some positive changes in our community.
My host father, a teacher and an influential community member, shares the vision for our library
The Gambia Files 