Shana and Friend
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Unexpected
by Shana
| "Shana Do You Remember
Mwansambo In Malawi? Steve Librarian Have Missed You.
May
God Bless You June 9, 2014" |
A Jewish realist of an idealist, I hope for the
best and expect the worse. So how is it possible that the
Mwansambo Village Community Library is still open? The best
thing I did during my two year Malawi, Africa Peace Corps
service was to help some villages build and open public
libraries. It started with my village of Mwansambo in Central
Malawi.
The nearest library that existed for my mountainous community
was a four-hour drive away (and nobody owned a vehicle). None of
the nearby elementary or high schools had any books or school
libraries.
And so in 2008 I worked with elementary and high school teachers
and students, village chiefs, and the Malawian National Library
Service to help the village start — from scratch — their first
public library. The library was run by all Malawian community
volunteers, including the volunteer librarian, Steve, featured
in the photo below and quoted in the Facebook box above.
A local non-profit donated newspaper weekly and each school in
the area contributed furniture, like a table or a chair. A local
carpenter, Luca, donated wood and made simple book shelves for
the library. Together, the village did everything from creating
the library rules to stamping each book and organizing them in
classes on the shelves.
There are a lot of people listed in the above paragraphs. What
works is that they are all Malawians. People help themselves
better than anyone else could ever help them. Perhaps that is
why the library still exists.
Receiving the above message on Facebook from Steve made June
feel like a very good month for development. The Mwansambo
Community Library is now six years old, having been planted by the
Mwansambo village in the June of 2008.
Steve, the librarian, sent me another message.
| "Opening days are now as follows: Teusday2:00pm Wednesday 2:00pm
Thursday 12:30pm
Friday 2:00 Sataday 9:00-1:00pm" June 10, 2014" |
I have learned to be very careful about future expectations for
development in Malawi. So little is economically reliable and
hardly anything is permanent. As they say in the Malawian
language of Chichewa, "pon'gono pon'gono" — little by little or
step by step. Change is the addition of many small days and
moments that equal something large in the end.
So you focus on what IS, and this is what is – the village came
together and almost entirely on their own and with their own
resources, built themselves a library. And now they keep it
going.
It's possible I am more proud of creating this library than of
creating my own children. Am I a bad mother or a good worker? I
guess a bit of each.
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