The Library project is finally making big progress at the school as we finished the cleaning and sorting of the books, chased the rats out of the old book closets (the casual passerby would probably comment that the rats were chasing me….one shriek and sprint from an enclosed room and a dog-sized rodent and no-body ever lets you forget it…), we also had the carpenter outfit a small-lockable room with shelves for the books to be stored upon. After starting this project the 3 strong boys and 1 incredibly brave girl, who decided that their spring break would be best spent with their favorite teacher sorting through 3 years of disorganization and rat droppings, together we all realized that Makong’onda actually had a LOT of books. Our science subjects are the best stocked, followed closely by the number of French, Physical Education, and Home Economics (I’m not kidding, we really found these) books, and finally Finnish literature books. After we sorted through all of the books we tackled the magazines and the past exams. Each year the Form 2 and Form 4 students are required to take 2 national examinations. Our school started taking these in the year 2006, and thus we had stacks and stacks of tests that would require sorting and filing into our newly cleaned (but incredibly abused) filing cabinet. Our idea (which two of the students came up with on their own) was that all student resources, including the tests, should be kept in the library for easy access. When the filing was complete, each book was numbered and put into its correct position on the shelves, and then we did an inventory “wish list”.
We swept the library, took our final pictures, and locked the door. Andrew, one of the student helpers, followed me to our lunch and said “Mwalimu, we may not have any teachers, but we really do have the things we need to learn, for those who really work for it”.
“Andrew, you’ve always had the books, and I’m insulted that you said you don’t have any teachers”.
“You don’t count as teacher. We like you.”
“---”
Our book inventory revealed that there are no history, civics, geography, or English/African literature books in the library. This is one of the problems we are looking to remedy…stay tuned!
We swept the library, took our final pictures, and locked the door. Andrew, one of the student helpers, followed me to our lunch and said “Mwalimu, we may not have any teachers, but we really do have the things we need to learn, for those who really work for it”.
“Andrew, you’ve always had the books, and I’m insulted that you said you don’t have any teachers”.
“You don’t count as teacher. We like you.”
“---”
Our book inventory revealed that there are no history, civics, geography, or English/African literature books in the library. This is one of the problems we are looking to remedy…stay tuned!
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