Growing Together: From Book Boxes to Our First Library
How does a sturdy aluminum African Children’s Book Box, full of culturally relevant storybooks, transition to become the Igoda Primary School Library? A Mkataba (library) for 545 watoto (children)…the first one in Mufindi, in the southern highlands of Tanzania where the tea plantations flourish. Most of the children have never held a storybook.
Anne Pearson, ABB’s founding director taught us the Kenyan Swahili term “Harambee”, a well understood African strength. It means “People, who have all pulled together to help achieve the needs of others.”
Villagers crafted kiln and sun dried bricks for walls. Local fundis(carpenters) made the tables and chairs. Eager children helped to deliver them. The concept of needed bookshelves was shared and much discussed, for a first ever library! Foxes NGO and ABB shared construction; a strong cement floor, wooden ceiling tiles, paint and reinforced windows. Both Anne and I fretted over the late, late Canadian container first stuck in Addis Ababa and then “imperilled” by seized ball bearings on the road from Mombasa.
The personnel at the Kase Bookstore in Arusha crammed used cardboard boxes with both curriculum texts and appropriate storybooks filled with illustrations of African kids. They were all tied up with string and loaded onto to buses travelling to Iringa town. It was a three hour drive for pick up.
Just the day before our official opening by the District Commissioner, the container arrived!! Children poured out of Igoda classrooms to witness the magical unloading.
The teachers and parents rewarded Anne and me with a live chicken each! Neither of us had ever held a live(unhappy struggling) chicken… the lady district commissioner simply asked us when we could start on a library for the desperate Luhunga secondary students.
