Resurrecting a Library

Even though I am an environment volunter, many of us choose to work in the local schools especially during the first three months because teachers speak English, and we can work in the garden or help teach classes. I went to help at a school in the next village (my village has no school). At first I went to help in the lower basic school (grades 1-6) because it was something different than sitting in my village all day long. There I have been learning more about Gambian culture and the local community through their teachers.

One problem was that I did not really know what to do when I went. The garden master did not need encouragement because he has a great garden of carrots, green onions, eggplant, cabbage, and tomatoes. A few children are assigned to a bed and they are in charge of watering, weeding, and planting. The school sells the vegetables to earn a little extra income and puts the vegetables in the lunch food bowls. I suggested I could teach in the classrooms, which the headmaster said was good, but he did not give me any instruction as to what I should teach or which grades. He just said "go". The kids also do not speak english well. So far I have not taught a class, but I plan to in a couple of weeks, about deforestation in the Gambia.

After inquiring about their library I figured out what I wanted to do. Now my project and reason for going to the school is to resurrect the library. Their library was a big dusty cobweb room filled with books stacked on tables at one end of the room. The rest of the room was empty except for an old chalkboard with some numbers and a date from 2005. The room looked like it had not been used in months. I started by going through the books. Most of them are targeted for beginners which is good, and they had some basic math books which look promising. They also had two boxes of which on top were written "Geography Discard." The books are all written before 1975 and have titles such as Surveys for town and Country Planning and Intro to Geomorphology. I am sure a library in England decided they no longer wanted these books and decided to donate them, a worthy decision, but why the books ended up in a primary school in the Gambia I do not know. I asked the teacher in charge of the library about the books and he said they were important because the teachers could read them. Current volunteers said schools will always ask for more books because they can show off how many they have. It is a source of pride. The usefulness and how much they are used are usually not considered.

Inside the library

The kids have an hour lunch break where they have the opportunity to go into the library. The librarian does not open the room unless I am there. I try to go twice a week. The other days he chooses not to open it. At first the kids were hesistant to come in, but by the second week a bunch of kids came. They look mostly at the pictures instead of reading, but some do read and at least they are exposed to the outside world of knights, planes, and exotic animals. Recently I have decided to work on math. I write problems on the board and the kids solve them. I realized the kids even in grade 5 and 6 still have trouble doing basic addition and subtraction problems. I have seen some interesting counting methods from drawing lines on the board to moving from their hands to their toes to counting on their chest and thighs. I think I want to work on math skills because if the kids stop school, the english they learn will be useless, but math they will use in their everyday lives. I want to start a math competition when I get back. I am hoping it will motivate the kids to study outside of class. As a reward I am going to let them draw with my crayons and markers.

The room is extremely bare. I am going to try to brighten the room up by posting fliers on the walls including maps, pictures of the sun, moon, and earth, and other stuff that would expose the kids to the outside world and stimulate them to learn. Any ideas would be appreciated.