One of the difficult things about having a blog is that it offers a fractured and fragmented view of the life or lives it is meant to reflect. Like a stop-motion animation, it creates a sense of movement and growth from singular moments and preserved experiences, distilled into the timelessness of words on a screen.
Because of this, what I’m about to announce may seem sudden, when in reality it has been growing steadily from the small seed of its discovery for weeks.
We are going to found a library in Ghana.
Here is our plan:
- Fundraise until (and beyond) our departure on February 10th (also our 3-year anniversary).
- Bring as many books with us as possible, and leave them with one of Brady’s connections in Accra.
- Spend 1-2 months exploring the country and finding a rural community with a passion and excitement for a library.
- Get in contact with the local district assembly to acquire a space (a room, a building, land) for the library.
- Retrieve books from Accra.
- Open the library.
- Find a local community member with enthusiasm for the library and literacy and send him/her to Accra for a three-week librarian training.
- Bring in traditional African oral artists to perform literature (epics, poetry, etc.).
- Begin offering English literacy classes to adults and children.
- Leave the library in the librarian’s hands in September and head to England for my master’s.
Needless to say, I am both excited and terrified. This is by far the largest and scariest undertaking I’ve ever endeavored, and there are about a hundred ways it could fail. Brady and I certainly have the passion for it, and the support of both our families, but the fact remains that we’re still just a couple 20-something American kids with stars in their eyes about Ghana and literature.
But it is all of these things that excite me as well. When going forth into what, for me, is quite literally the great unknown, there is necessarily an element of fear, of trepidation, of a weighty understanding of what could (and, to some extent, will) go wrong. But there is also a liberating idea of what is possible. And the truth is, when venturing out into a world full of uncertainties, anything is possible. And I mean that fairly literally. The bad is possible, but so is the good.
In the interest of fundraising, we are launching a GoFundMe campaign, and for that campaign, we asked a couple of our close friends and family to participate in a video in which they were interviewed about our project. While we chose this format for the realness and humanity it was sure to produce, listening to their candid answers offered us something I never anticipated: a resounding and buoyant hope. Sure, our families voiced concerns about Ebola and civil unrest, but most of their worries were about the two of us falling in love with Africa and our mission, and never returning to the US. They didn’t worry about failure–they worried about success. And that, to me, is a huge vote of confidence.
One thing I would like to make perfectly clear: although our decision to build/plant this library in Ghana was prayerfully made, this library is not a mission. We are happy to let our faith take us along the path we believe God has laid for us, but each person’s spiritual journey is his/her/their own, and while we would love to be a part of it, it is not the purpose of this library.
In fact, here is the purpose of the library:
- to foster literacy.
- to spark a passion for literature.
- cultural appreciation – going both ways.
- cultural preservation – because Ghana has a rich literary tradition that is overlooked or forgotten because it is primarily oral.
- to build a nexus of community focused on communication.
For me, the library has an extra purpose: love. Sharing my love of literature and literacy with others is pretty much what I want my life to be about, and the prospect of learning more along the way fills me with a joy I can’t really describe. And maybe joy isn’t really the right word. Perhaps the word is alignment–I feel myself aligned in my purpose and my desire, and I feel an unrelenting hope for what is to come.
In order to do this, we are asking for donations. Blessed Are The Vagrant is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization/charity, fiscally sponsored by the Center for Personal and Relationship Counseling, which means that these donations are tax-deductible. There’s a PayPal donation button here on the blog, or you can donate through GoFundMe. If you want to donate by mail, that’s also an option!
I’m excited for what 2015 will bring. If 2014 is any indication, this library will not go the way we expect it to, but I hope that whatever surprises lie in store for us will make us and this library better than we could have imagined.
