Take a look, it's in a book,

READING. FREAKING. RAINBOW!

The library is (basically) done! Look at it!!! :D

Ok so maybe it doesn’t look like much, but look at it before!

Did that help impress you?? >:)

I knew it was going to be a good day the moment I woke up.

Let me derail for a sec and tell ya about that because it’s still just so unreal to me. Picture this: I’m lying in bed, my eyes open, and I’m instantly confused. Can you guess what I hear? ….absolutely nothing. It’s TOTALLY quiet! Not that where I live is absurdly loud, but it’s Uganda, there’s always some noise somewhere. I immediately go outside to see if the apocalypse happened overnight and I just didn’t get the memo, then proceed to sit and enjoy the silence. I’m there for 15 minutes before I hear the voice. Whose voice? Couldn’t tell you. There’s always someone lurking behind some bush somewhere. “Mzungu, bye!” And it’s like the universe was waiting on that signal! All of a sudden everything’s happening normally again. The rooster crows, the wind hits the leaves against my tin roof, the hens come to peck at my compost, music starts playing in the distance, and I also hear a baby. I bring myself back to reality and get to work.

So this library. My school doesn’t have one. As you can see in the before picture, the room was being used as a staff room with books put on broken desks as shelves along the walls, never ever used or touched by teachers or pupils.

I had some small funds for library purposes and I knew I wanted to use it for shelves, but that’s expensive, so after brain storming with a fellow PCV, I came up with a cost-efficient way to do it!

Two and a half weeks ago, my friend and I began tearing it up, literally! We broke apart the already broken desks to use the timbers from them.

Safety 1st

His family sells bricks so we acquired some and began constructing.

Neither of us had used cement before,
but they turned out strong!

Then we found a place that sold timbers a bit on the cheap side, so we got some of them and constructed ourselves some wooden shelves.

Look at me now, Sharits!
Using a book and a ruler as a square because
these carpenters don't know how
to make anything straight :P

One of my teachers showed me where to get the cheaper paint, lent me his brushes, and even did the painting for us.

Next came the daunting task of organizing the books, cataloging and numbering them, then placing them on the shelves.

and we'll be getting 1,000 more in a month or so!

Don’t forget printing & cutting 1,000 library cards and making a log book!

Today I swept up the room, straightened out the desks, put labels on the shelves, and hung up a few posters. I declare that as basically done ;)

There’s still a lot of small things to do, (tidying up, making rule charts, what) but I’m so very excited for Term 2 to start on Monday! Gonna get right to work on doing trainings with my teachers on how to use a library so we can bring the knowledge to our pupils so they can start reading and checking out books :D

Kids and adults have been shuffling
in everyday since we began!
Some just to see a white girl doing
"man's" work, but some are
actually excited for it! 

**I’d like to give a special shout out to my amazing friend, Tonny, who will never see this post, but still deserves recognition. Without his help, none of this would have been possible! He’s a 15 year old student struggling to find school fees for his S1 year, but he still refused to accept any payment from me because all he wanted to do was help, which he did in more ways than I could ever name! :)