Library musings..

..one of the nice things for me (surprisingly..and surprising you!) is that one always chats with and is chatted to by fellow yevus that one comes across out in rural Ghana. And the conversations seem to happily cross nationalities and ages which too is unusual and ..ummm, nice!

But the same is true of meeting visiting Ghanaians ('visiting' as in visiting the community or just passing through ) and that is equally nice.

I am the person, the yevu, the volunteer who operates the nice new Whuti Community Library. Fair enough..that is who and what i am here. It is my credibility, my standing. I am the Library, the Library is me.

Of course, now i'm also the person that they see getting the JHS Library up and running ..and that's a little different. It puts me in a slightly different light.

People i meet or people i'm friendly with here ask me when they hear about the JHS Library efforts..getting a school library up and running in less than two months!...don't i feel very proud of my efforts? It 's a nice question, of course, but it surprised me the first couple of times..it wasn't what i felt.

It wasn't and isn't what i felt/feel because i've come to understand that opening the JHS Library and running the Whuti Community Library for 55 weeks now are not, in and of themselves, achievements.

In a sense i learned that the hard way..i had naively thought that simply opening the community library would immediately change things around here..and be of immediate direct benefit to all the children here. My guess is that lots of 'library-openers' think that too!

I now understand that opening the Library is only the first part of doing something meaningful.

And that there is much work to do in making the Library popular, useful, fun, important in children's lives...and actually beneficial in helping to raise children's literacy levels. In fact, maybe opening the Library is the easy part!

How, in the short-term of a PCV's time here, for example, do you 'sell' the Library, how do you get children to develop a Library Habit, how do you convince them that improving their command of English has to be their number one priority ..RIGHT NOW...and that developing the Library Habit is how they achieve that? Especially, if you're pretty much the voice in the wilderness?

Well, in the case of the Whuti Community Library, perhaps you achieve this indirectly by banging on those who seem to have influence in the community- the chiefs, the elders, the ministers/pastors, the head teachers, the teachers - really, anyone who will listen, and 'encourage' them to use their influence and positions to get children to come to the Library AND THEN,THERE ..make it a fun experience for them if you can so that they will want to come back again.

And maybe it is working..in this last week, we have had 476 ' Community Library visitors' and they have 'read' for 422 hours. These record numbers are big and the impression is that indeed the children are having fun. Now we have to make sure that this momentum continues. These numbers are twice what we had in May and June. So, highly encouraging!

Our Libraries are still works in progress but having almost 500 users in a week is HUGE!

And, i believe that as long as we make visiting the Library fun then we will be able to get many more Library visitors for whom learning is fun.

And the JHS Library, the 'son of the Whuti community Library' is progressing well also!

Now, exactly two months since we started working on the project..and started sorting through the book donation that we had received from the U.S. ..the JHS Library..VERY MUCH a Work in Progress and mostly lacking in tables and seating for the students ..is up and running and being used by the JHS students.

In the new curriculum, each class has two scheduled Library periods, and as of Thursday, 13th October, since the library isn't quite ready enough, and the students can't come to the Library, then the Library comes to them with a selection of the Library's books delivered to the classroom for their use!

AND...we've started training the Student Library Volunteers who will be responsible for and who will run the Library in its After-Hours mode (MON-FRI 2.20 - 4.00 p.m.) such that we can open it in this mode next Wednesday or Thursday!

Exciting.

The Student Volunteers, two per class, were elected by each class.

We haven't the faintest idea how the JHS students will actually respond to this 'opportunity' and i'm sure that the process and procedures will have to be modified and improved..but it's a real chance, a real opportunity.

Emmmm..occasionally, i realise that i seem to be doing most of the work here..both in the WCL and the JHS Library..and i wonder sometimes. And i say that i 'wonder' because that makes thing less sustainable, at least in theory..and i'm conscious now of the fact that i only have 9 months or so left in my scheduled Ghana effort. (And i worry about and would be truly heartbroken if what i did here collapsed after i left)

But..i recognise the difference between efforts that have real support and those wherein you feel that you are pushing against community habit (inertia) and i have very real support in the JHS Library and there is no way that we could have made this progress without that support!

And even the very best people here are unused to people working with them, stirring their community improvement spirits, setting the right examples, and making things happen and so it takes time to become a team and share responsibility and direction. I've been very lucky here in finding some people to work with ..and i must continue to take the long view. It has been an amazing learning experience.

How do i put all this learning to future good use? I don't know but i can and will learn over the next nine months and if the result is that we have three libraries up and running- the Whuti Community Library, the Eastridge JHS Library, and the Whuti primary School Library- and we have applied the lessons we learn to improve our process in each place, then i believe that we will see improved exam results in all the Whuti-Srogboe community students!

And i also believe that these results and the processes that we have developed will enable us to make the Libraries self-sustaining and -supporting.

And it's fun doing this shit..it really is!