A Village Library After One Year

I’m currently sitting in the library at Kasadwini Atenaeɛ, covering for Kumi while he runs an errand in another town. We’re about two weeks away from the one-year anniversary of the library’s opening, and I have plenty of time during the schooltime lull to organize books and reflect on how the place is holding up.

We’re at the end of the dry season now. The Harmattan winds have been blowing dust down from the Sahara to the coastal rainforests, and everything is coated with a fine layer of the stuff. This dry dust hasn’t been all that damaging to the books – after all, books can survive in a dusty attic for generations, and old Malian manuscripts have withstood centuries of history buried in the hot sand. What has not been kind to the books in our collection is childish eagerness.

There are some books that have just been loved to death by small Ghanaian children joyously and recklessly flipping through pages to “watch the pictures”. We did our best to cover all the paperbacks we could with self-adhesive plastic, but the time and volume needed couldn’t match the generous book donations of our supporters. I’m glad we did what we could (and we will continue to) because those with plastic coverings have endured this first year much better than their bare counterparts. Even the sturdy hardbacks have been no match for the anxious, grabby hands of the avid children here if they like them enough. Any book with sound effects or interactive pull tabs have been read asunder.

Despite the kids’ eagerness to open book after book and show the pictures to their friends, the books they most want to read are the Twi ones. This makes sense to me – they don’t start learning English until the 4^th grade, and even at that point it’s awkward and obligatory in the classroom. What they understand is Twi, and everybody likes to understand the story they’re taking part in. Fortunately, Twi story books are produced inexpensively by the Bureau of Ghana Languages and we can buy them in bulk, either repairing or replacing the copies that the kids read too hard. Unfortunately, the Bureau of Ghana Languages hasn’t produced a new Twi-language story book in at least 20 years, and we can’t find any other publishers picking up the slack. It’s another vivid reminder to me of the desperate need for more Twi literature. Stay tuned to see what we decide to do about that.

Fortunately, the books whose glue hasn’t given out from over-flipping are still relatively clean and readable on the inside. I think this is due to our early commitment to making every student wash their hands upon entering the library and before handling any books. The oil from their hands (and the okra stew they had for lunch) gets intercepted at the door and doesn’t transfer to the pages. This takes dedication and work, as students must fetch the water from a bore hole in the village every morning when the library opens. There is no running water in Asisiriwa. For all washing and hygiene needs at the school, the teachers have to send the students into town to fetch water, sometimes interrupting their classes. After one year of operation, however, we’ve noticed something about Kasadwini Atenaeɛ.

We have a big roof, and it catches a lot of water when the torrential tropic rains come. For the last year, it’s just been sheeting off this slanted roof, doing more harm than good in the form of erosion. We came up with the idea of capturing all that water in a water tank (referred to here as a poly tank) so that the center and the school could benefit from free, clean water. After doing the measurements and coming up with a design, we went to work.

After consulting masons and welders about the advantages of doing a concrete poly tank stand versus a metal one, we hired a welder to make the thing from 4-inch galvanized steel pipe. The men of Asisiriwa then came out to uproot two tree stumps, level the ground, and dig four holes for the legs. Next, we’ll fill the holes with concrete to anchor the legs. Then, we’ll need the poly tank itself and the gutters, which we unfortunately don’t have the funds for yet. We’ll need about $700 to finish this project. Like I said, we’re at the end of the dry season and the rains are going to come soon.

If you have a heart for giving kids and teachers easy access to clean water while keeping kids in school at the same time, please consider becoming an Untold Dollar subscriber and asking all your friends and family to do the same. The Untold Dollar is a community of people from all backgrounds and income levels giving only $1 a month. With the right numbers, it will drive forward projects like this and many others we’re dreaming of.

If you’re already subscribed to the Untold Dollar, let me take a moment to say thank you. You’re the glue that’s going to hold the library together, no matter how many eager hands come at it.