Building A Library
Rosetta asked me to clear my schedule this week so that I can help work on the community library that Mildred’s Community Based Organization, iThembalethu is building in Swayimane. It will be the first library in Swayimane!
All that we needed to do was paint a little and put bookcases together. There were three of us: me, Wellington, and Brandon, a Peace Corp volunteer. Brandon just got in Swayimane at the beginning of April and will be working with Zimele and with Mildred’s organization.
I met a wonderful lady by the name of Dorothy who is working on the library in Swayimane with the help of Mildred and Zimele. Dorothy is a retired librarian/teacher from Illinois and instead of spending her retirement years in Florida (or wherever retired people go), she’s spending it out in South Africa trying to build libraries for underprivileged children. She plans the library, buys much of the materials (paint and the wood for the bookcases), buys many of the books herself and also catalogues all of the books that are bought and donated.
Books are extremely scarce in Swayimane. You don’t really think about it much because they’re so plentiful in the States, but they’re extremely expensive. For the price of one book, you can feed a family of four for a month. Brandon told us that one of his housemates (who is native Swayimane-an) who has only been able to read two complete books in her entire 19 years.
The painting was easy and it only took a day, but making the bookcases was considerably more difficult than I imagined. By the end of the week, we only managed to finish ten out of the twenty bookshelves that we needed to make. I could tell you the details of our blundering antics, but I think it would be a bore. It was difficult because none of us had much experience making something from scratch. I’m used to the IKEA bookshelves that come nicely packaged with clearly marked instructions. They gave us a pile of wood, screws, screwdrivers, wood glue, and a drill and told us to make bookcases out of them. Umm.. ok… how? Nobody really knew. It took us an entire day just to figure out where everything went, but in the end, I think we did a good job. I was the “drill guy” because I had the most experience with a drill even though I can count the amount of times I’ve used a drill on one hand (which shows you how much experience we had between all three of us.. not much).
Although initially very frustrating, I really felt like I was doing something worthwhile. I can see why Dorothy travels all the way here from Illinois, just to make libraries. In a year or two, if I come back to Swayimane, I can point to this library and say that I helped build it. It’s really is a satisfying feeling, knowing that you’re part of something that will contribute to changing an entire community for the better.
