THE LIBRARY IS FINISHED! March 3rd

On the last Saturday in February, the first-ever Librarians of Makong’onda Day Secondary School arrived early in the morning (surprisingly on time) to convene the first ever meeting at the new Makong’onda Library.
The week before, the school board had granted our request of allowing the allotment of school academic fees to match 10% of the donation that we received from America. This money and the donated funds in hand, I went to the big book store in Mtwara, ordering the books that students had spent the week listing that we needed for the library. (Recap: there were no History, Geography, or Civics books in the school, nor dictionaries or more that half of the OLD syllabus for English Literature, and NONE of the books for the NEW syllabus.) The last shipment of books arrived in Masasi shortly after a trip I made to Dar es Salaam, and thus all of them were ready to be labeled and ordered in the library when I returned.
When I arrived at the library, the clouds looked threatening, and so we hurried all of the books into their new home as the first sprinkles began to hit the ground. We decided that in order to put all of the books in alphabetical order by subject and title it would be easier to remove all of them from the library, and then return them by subject. At first it seemed like a good idea, until we realized that with the new donated books (we received 50 from a local Tanzanian politician when he saw our library efforts in early January), and the books we were able to purchase with donated funds (over we had a grant total of 500) we had nearly 1500 books in the library, and some of those books were HEAVY. None the less, we started the process of hauling and sorting each book by subject - Habiba smacking people with her crutch as part of her “motivational supervison” – and began numbering and writing the names on each of the books.
The storm clouds finally gave berth to a huge rain and lightning storm, which the kids responded to by turning up our little radio (it had been loud enough to summon the dead, now it was loud enough to wake the dinosaurs) and hustling all of the books from our main corridor back into the library where they would be protected from the wind. At times the students needed a little motivation (cue Habiba – WHAP!), as they kept stalling the work to hide in the corner and read one of our new books. Even when we took a chai break, each student grabbed a book and read while drinking their tea. When my house help Joy came running through the storm, face tear-streaked, (Joy is TERRIFIED of lightning) the boys simply set her down with a book, and she read for an hour until the storm let up and she could go home.
When the library books were all put away, counted, and catalogued, we had a short meeting concerning our training, how we would take care and lend out the books, and how to discipline students should they lose a book or break one of our rules. The next day, the real work would begin, but as I was going to the marathon, I would not be able to see how the first week would go. I feared I would return to an empty room and harassed and angry librarians.
When I tentatively walked through the doors of our library, I noticed a strange sound…sweeping. It was followed by a strange visual…all of the books were in order. I peeked around the door; there stood all 4 of my new librarians, two with brooms, and one making a list of students to “hunt down and threaten” at the morning assembly (students who did not return books the night before).
“Good morning Mwalimu!”
“MWALIMU! You didn’t fall off of the Mountain!”
“Mwalimu, we need a new notebook, this one is all finished”.
The notebook comment threw me, I had given them the notebook (which we use to write the names of students, the books, and the book number) from last year, which was less than half full. Baffled, I flipped through the pages. The library had seen more than 250 different students and had lent out more than 300 books in less than 7 days, AND THEY DIDN’T LOSE A SINGLE BOOK. Teachers had lent out books and had written down the names and numbers.
I was so proud of my librarians, and I’m proud that my school KNOWS how to use the resources that they were given. There are still some minor improvements to be made: we need a ladder so that our smallest student doesn’t break his neck while shelving books, we also are waiting for a new filing cabinet to organize all of the past school exams, finally we are waiting for our new tables to arrive – they will be organized in one of the classrooms with electricity, so that the students have one quiet room in the school where they can go to study. Overall, the library project was a HUGE success. Even now, as I sit next to one of my librarians typing my blogs, I’m watching students filter in and out, taking and returning books, and listening to my librarian list off the rules to students who try to take more than one book or persuade him to let him take a book without writing it down. The students of Makong’onda now have the resources they need to study without teachers, the teachers now have the resources they need to teach, and everyone at the schools recognizes that these resources can help them achieve so much more on their exams and in their education.
Makongonda Library: $2500, 150 books, 247 brighter futures.