Children's Room Project!

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Finally – at long last – we are actually starting the project that was attempted in 2011. A burned foot, change of Town Clerk and LABE work intervened and conspired to stall the project.  And a truculent volunteer dug her heels and played the role of a power-mongering bureaucrat.  Her first question when approached in 2011 was “What will you give us?” after I’d already offered to organize the children’s collection (i.e time, expertise, all free).  Obviously that didn’t bode well.

Time passed and, as volunteers, we finally got deep enough in our projects and gained enough credibility to try again and take time away from our primary work.  Although, the library task is in line with LABE’s goals and secondary projects are encouraged, things just needed to come together.  It took a while.  Another volunteer had some university books donated  - though no funds to GET them here.  Shipping books is pricey even via the M-bag route which coast around $250 - $300 – as some of you already know!

Since getting the books here wasn't working, we put our heads together, and re-engineered the original idea - boosting literacy and reading.  We approached the library (study center) again are were lucky enough to find the real librarian there and he was very excited about the project.  He’s not requiring us to jump through administrative hoops (you have no idea how huge this is) and embraces everything we’ve suggested.  So – we have been granted permission to claim a secondary room as a children’s room, but to do that we must clear the existing chaos:  organize thousands of newspapers for several years (back to 2009!)  into title, year, date, day, getting rid of thousands of duplicates, etc. etc.    Here's a sample of what we found:

There is no storage or shelving for them so we have been creating a makeshift system using discarded grocery boxes.  There is also no money for binding the newspapers.  So witness the current solution (below) – boxes with paper separators….    Makes us realize anew how fortunate we are in the States to have funded libraries!  When life gives you boxes - make shelves...  Samir, our favorite local grocer, gave us these.  That may not sound like much, but other places wanted $7 US for a discarded box.

After the newspapers, there are rooms full of old donated books that need sorting – and hundreds of books for the adult section have to be processed and some discarded.  Some of those will go to the new library in Wakiso my homestay host is starting and others will hopefully  go  to schools and a local youth center.

There are new shelves in the adult section and they are empty.  ALL (thousands) of books must be moved from old shelves to the new ones. When that’s done, the children’s room will get the current (more child-friendly) shelves and by then we should have at least the newspapers done and the text books figured out.  THEN we can start categorizing the hundreds of children’s books into reading level categories.  Forget Dewey Decimal System, no one will ever refile a book by number and there is no such thing as a card file or inventory of books.

Since there are not children’s chairs or tables,  we’ll shorten the legs on a few adult tables and make them available for kids.  We’ll get a few mats from the market and create play and reading areas, paint when we can get paint donated….  And!  There is a  local teenager who is a budding talent and we’d like to encourage him – sooo – we’re hoping to get him to paint fun images on the walls to brighten the place up.  Here's what it looks like now:


That blue thing you see is a huge iron gate being stored.  We have no idea about how to get it out of the building since it's both taller and wider that the door. I'm thinking of painting it and calling it the "Gateway to adventure" - or some such.

Ahhh it goes on and on.  Creating the space is only Phase I.

The bigger challenge is “mobilizing” schools, parents and children to get them to USE the room.  As I’ve said before, this is not a reading culture.  In the library, there are only text/academic books, nothing for pleasure reading.  Our goal is to provide a children’s space, so children and parents will have a place to get books, come for reading-hour,  have some puzzles available,  and plan some kids activities. This means visiting schools, holding events for children, and maybe someday creating a mobile library to get books to the field.  Some of the doors have already been open by LABE as they take the books you all have donated to the field to Home Learning Centers.  

In the meantime, life goes on.  I've visited my sponsor-student, Peter, who has now been in boarding school for about a month.  so far, so good.  He's happy having a place to sleep and three meals a day. 
His challenge seems to be math, so one of our new PC education volunteers has offered to meet with him to see if see if some tutoring will help.   

OK - gotta get to work.    House-sitting for some friends with a mischievous "teenage" cat who has managed to drag in an interesting assortment of critters over night:  I've counted one large roach, a large strange moth with a long funnel looking proboscis, a big lizard and a huge grasshopper.  And that's just what I can see scattered around and need to remove before I find them in pieces when I get back.  Seems she likes things that crunch (lizard legs....)

Onward through the dust...