A Library in Loukatai

A small view of the small Library at Loukatai:

This weekend the one and only Doctor on Tanna (who is here on behalf of VIVA, a Canadian NGO that provides a doctor every 6 months to Tanna) stopped by Loukatai with his family, and asked if I wanted to join them on a ride across the island to a black sand beach. Of course I jumped on the opportunity, as transport here can be really expensive if you want to go to a remote spot and even after a year I had never been there. And honestly, it’s refreshing to hang out with some westerners every once in awhile. So we ended up going to see a great waterfall and then we spent the afternoon at the most incredible beach I’ve been to so far in this country. A great surf beach with sand rather than coral, and a river running right into it, and, aside from a few local boys on horseback, we had the whole place to ourselves all afternoon. A fabulous day.

(My little friend Nerry got to come along and try out the boogie board. She was so excited she even sprayed herself with perfume before heading out in the truck. And below, an awesome waterfall tucked into the jungle of Middlebush, Tanna)

On the ride back, I sat in the back of the truck with the Doctor’s 7-year-old son, Nelson. Nelson was telling me about his Magic Tree House books that he only likes reading by himself, and the “Pippi In the South Seas” book his mom had just read to all three of the boys, and on and on and on about reading. And it occurred to me that this kid was in fact a better reader than every single one of my 14 and 15-year-old students in Class 7 at Loukatai School. But of course it’s easy to understand that this has everything to do with all the exposure Nelson has had to reading, and the total lack of exposure all my students have had (none of them have had the experience of being read to by a parent; none of them have ever taken a book to bed at night; most of their teachers never did genuine read-alouds or gave them level-appropriate books to read). Which leads me to the library…

By far the biggest project I’ve been working on as a Peace Corps Volunteer at Loukatai School is the Loukatai Library. When I first arrived, the library looked more or less like a big rubbish room. A few books on the shelves, more books on the floor, a handful of books in the hands of children… Maybe we had about 30 reading books. We had a ton of “School Journals,” a New-Zealand-made reading magazine for kids, most of which were dated from at least a decade or two ago. We also had a number of copies of some small red books distributed by the Vanuatu government that tell stories written by local people. All of the books were battered and no one seemed to see any correlation between this and the fact that they were also thrown about, left on the floor, left on shelves frequented by the volcanic ash that flies through the air and settles on absolutely everything.

I knew the only way to really address the literacy issue at this small school would be to figure out how to get the kids stuff to read and more importantly, to get them and their teachers to look after whatever it is they’re reading, so maybe we could keep whatever books we had around for awhile. Library project: the kids needed books to read and a place to keep them and the skills to take care of them. The Principal cleared out a space and gave me the go-ahead to do whatever I wanted with it. Every step of the way he has been completely supportive, from getting fabric to line the shelves front and back; from getting mats for the kids to sit and read on; from allowing me to remove the Organic Chemistry and 18^th Century Australian Field Guide books from the collection. This last one may seem trivial, but I know another volunteer whose school council refused to let these books go and so they now fill the few shelves at a school where the kids can hardly read the sentence “I am from Vanuatu, not Australia.” More than 700 books have come from the US from so many amazing people. Another few hundred have come from Australian donors like Kiwanis. The students have gotten to open box after box and have written numerous thank-you letters. Every book has been labeled and then stamped with our official Loukatai Library stamp. The library has actual sections in it. There are reading folders that all books will go home inside to protect them from weather, dogs, dust, ash, and all those other tropical goodies. We have a check-out system in place. Fabric covers on the shelves will keep the dust and ash off the books when kids aren’t in the library. I even got a handful of walkmans and tapes to make a “Listen-to-Reading” section of the Library (my Class 7 kids have already tried this out and LOVE it). The Teachers’ Library Workshop took place just this week, and that officially began the use of the library. The kids are so excited! It has taken the better part of my whole first year here to get this going. Slow-slow, but I guess that’s why we sign on for two years. In 2 years this library should be running straight, and I’ll probably be the lead librarian for the better part of it. And so I still have the job of making it sustainable. And again I am so so so grateful to everyone that has helped by sending books or helping to have books sent. It has definitely made all the difference!

(checking out their first library books in their reading folders)

The general attitude toward education here is interesting. There seems to be some interest in change and progress, but it’s not a very prominent attitude at all. I have met only one person who I would say is really passionate about education change, and she’s now working for the Tourism Office, which on Tanna has nothing at all to do with education (before she was working with Unicef and did all sorts of work for education change). There are many villages on Tanna where the custom is so strong that people will not send their kids to school at all. And in a place where everyone has food to eat and a bed to sleep on, where there are no real drug problems, where crime and violence is rarely spoken of, where the life is pretty good pretty much all the time, change is a tricky thing to tackle. No one is really begging for change. And sometimes change isn’t such a good thing, which is why some villages hold so tightly to their custom and learn their children in it rather than in traditional schools. That being said, the value of an education here, just like anywhere, is so important. Everyone sees life here changing, as more land is leased by expatriates, and more people have money to spend from their government jobs, and more tourists are coming, and more goods from China are around (you want a pack of MSG? only 50 cents!), and there are starting to be some areas where the local population has grown such that the ground they own is no longer enough to sustain themselves as subsistence farmers. And to be honest, although you seldom hear of it, there is violence here, there are children who are neglected, and there are many, especially women and children, who could really benefit from having some options that only an education can provide. So the fact that no one is begging for change in education maybe means we just have to try and get the ball rolling as volunteers. And besides, everyone who has seen the change in the library is thrilled with it. Everyone is so excited to start really using it, kids and teachers alike.

(teachers and a baby waiting for the Library Workshop)

(reading some good ol' Mo Willems on Tanna)

(listening to books on tape and reading a pop culture magazine)