It was a busy busy summer at our Reading Mentor project in Mangochi, Malawi.
We
teamed up with UK charity School Aid and delivered more than 18,000 books and other educational resources to 10 local
schools in the Lake Malawi area.
The books arrived in a huge container after
travelling more than 5,000 miles by sea from the UK to the port of Beira, Mozambique
and another 500 miles onward by road across
the border to Malawi.
The 20 foot container was packed full of
books and other educational resources kindly donated by UK schools and publishers as part of School Aid’s book
partnering programme.
With only four hours to offload 18 pallets of
800+ boxes of books, the whole Book Bus team set to work accompanied by a huge, willing
and enthusiastic team of local children
from the nearby village.
We quickly set up a book carrying
production line and managed to offload all the books within 3.5 hours.
Whilst the children were waiting for the
next pallet to offload, they sat under trees and couldn’t resist a sneak
preview of the books. For many of these children books are a rare site.
Joseph Makwakwa runs local community group
CISER said:
“Lack of good quality engaging books
presents us with a real challenge in Malawi. If a school has a library at all (and
very few do) they are often full of outdated
books with no relevance to the children. These books from School Aid will make a real difference. We have English text books, dictionaries,
science books and reading books. Partnerships like School Aid and the Book Bus
are fantastic as they work together to help communities access good quality
relevant books. This really will help promote a reading culture. A big thanks
goes out to everyone who has donated and helped.
The fact that almost every child from the local village turned out to help carry the books shows our real and genuine commitment. Zilkomo!” exclaimed Joseph.
Every child who helped carry the books
received a pencil and exercise book to take to school in the new academic year.
After the shipment was offloaded, our Book Bus librarian Rhoda got to work
cooking the largest pot of Nsima (a local and very popular Maize dish) the
world has ever seen to share a special meal with the children to say thanks.
Food for the belly, food for the brain - a lovely combination.
