Finishing Touches

I’m now left with just under three weeks in country, and just over two weeks in my village. It feels at once surreal and normal, inducing feelings of excitement to go home and stress over all I have left to do in the time remaining. The last few months feel almost like they never happened- I remember a conversation with a friend sometime in June in which we were discussing how bored and anxious we’d probably be waiting to go home, with little left to do at site. That has not been the case at all. I started to pack about a month ago and I’ve gradually been adding things to my suitcase, giving things away, and throwing things away because I know if I leave it all until the last week I’ll give myself an anxiety attack. It’s amazing how many things I’ve amassed in two years and that it all fits into my tiny little house.

The schools started back up last week and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the bookshelves our principal ordered back in March before she retired finally came. I think it was also around March that a shipping container full of donated books arrived in neighboring Jericho. The volunteer couple who worked in Jericho up until they finished their service recently, had organized for the donation of approximately 20,000 books (I think I’m remembering that number correctly…maybe it was only 10,000?). The books were free but the shipping needed to be covered by those on the receiving end so we decided to divide the books and the shipping cost between five schools, four in Jericho, and my primary school here in Legonyane.  After lots of hard work, mostly on the part of the Jericho volunteers, sorting and inventorying the books in the container, our school ended up with a lot of books. We had also previously received 12 boxes of books through another donation that Peace Corps organized so I think we have somewhere around 4,000 books for our school library.At the end of last term I was really starting to think that I would never see this school library actually come together since there was no way it would be possible without shelves, but voila, they’re here! I was doubly impressed by the educators at our school and the Head of Department who is our current acting principal and full-time teacher because not only were the shelves custom fit to the library but when I arrived at school a few hours late, all the old books (leftover from the Apartheid era and covered in dust) and shelves had been cleared out!

The volunteers in Jericho had the bright idea of putting colored stickers on the binding of the books to correspond to the learning area to make taking and putting back books easier for the little ones and for people unfamiliar with libraries, so I stole their idea. I didn’t see that it would be possible for me to put the stickers on all the books and organize and shelve them before I left so I recruited a team of 6 grade-6 girls to help me with this task. Besides the help with this initial work, these girls will be “in charge” of the library once I’m gone. Since my counterpart is out of school on maternity leave for four months, it’ll be good to have these girls to bridge the gap between my leaving and her coming back. We’ve put in three long days of stickering books and I think we still have at least one more day of that ahead of us and then we’ll put up the library rules, tie up any remaining loose ends, and open the library for school and community use, just in time for me to say goodbye. The real challenge, to be honest, is getting the teachers to use the books in their classes and to allow the children to enter the library and actually read the books. A few of the teachers have already used some of the books in their lesson planning so I hope that will catch on and that the library won’t be too intimidating. I won’t be around to see what happens and my site won’t be getting another volunteer because of problems with the middle school, so I’ll just have to hope that things work out for the best.