If you’ve been following along with the exciting events of the last few weeks, you know that we finally opened the library at Kasadwini Atenaeɛ – a community language arts center in a rural village in Ghana – a couple weeks ago. As thrilling as an event like that is, the question that was hanging over my head was: what happens to it now that it’s open? Will people use it, or just let it sit and rot like so many libraries in Ghana? Will the novelty of it fade away once the white people have left?
Apparently my fears were unjustified. I’ve spoken to Kumi, our full-time librarian, and he’s told me some stories I’d like to pass on to you.
Apparently, the primary school kids are coming in droves, and they’re bringing their friends. They come to the library during their one-hour break in the middle of the day to pull the plethora of books off the mighty bookcases and read, then they come back after school lets out in the afternoon, and then they go home to change before coming back again for story time at 4:00 and games at 5:00. Kumi has been keeping count of the number of library visits per day, and on Monday he told me that he had 96 visits by 3:30, even before story time. That’s incredible for a village of this size, which has only 1,000 people in the town itself and another 500 to 1,000 in the outlying farms.
Part of that number are junior high school kids coming with their classes. It seems that the headmaster at the JHS – a great guy named Noah Boateng – has worked with the teachers to schedule “library time” into the students’ timetables now that they have access to a library.
The JHS students are also coming by after school to study because most of them can’t afford the textbooks that the curriculum prescribes. In fact, most of them have probably never opened one of the textbooks they’re supposed to be learning from. They came to the library asking if we had those textbooks. We didn’t, so Kumi helped them with their homework one-on-one and then called me. Thanks to some generous gifts from friends in Germany, we were able to get one copy of every current JHS textbook so the kids have access to them, but one copy isn’t ideal for serving a bunch of students coming to do their homework at the same time. Also, once word gets out, we expect that JHS students from the surrounding villages will come to do their homework at Kasadwini Atenaeɛ too, and we’d love to be able to serve them. If you would like to help us get more textbooks for the JHS students (and maybe for senior high school students coming from the village down the road), go here to donate.
One more story for this first entry. Kumi’s previous job was as a math teacher at a private school in a nearby village called Brodekwano. He was apparently an excellent teacher, using various methods to explain a single topic to young students with various learning styles. In fact, he received two commendations from the district office during his time there, which earned his two raises to his frankly tiny salary (private schools can pay teachers less than government schools here). Well, when he announced that he was leaving in order to be a librarian in Asisiriwa, his students actually broke down in tears. They were losing their favorite teacher. He invited them to come visit him at Kasadwini Atenaeɛ sometime.
Lo and behold, soon after the library opened, three of his former students trekked from Brodekwano to Asisiriwa to ask for help with their math homework. Kumi helped each of them and, once their homework was done, the kids grabbed books off the shelves and sat down to read – an option they never had before. I suspect they won’t be the last of Kumi’s former students to take up this practice.
There are more stories coming out of the library every day, but I’ll save some of them for future blogs. Let me take a moment to thank everyone who has supported this project for the last four years, including the people of Asisiriwa who were so patient and welcoming. Kasadwini Atenaeɛ is now a real place that’s serving people in real ways.
