What Am I Doing Here?

Many people have asked me, “What exactly are you doing there this year?” I hadn’t been able to answer that question very well when I was back home in December. Although I knew that I was doing a project involving libraries in Omusati Region, my precise role had not been defined. But the The Ministry of Education, which runs libraries, had indicated that they had a project for me to develop school libraries in the region, so I figured that’s what I would be doing.

When I got here in January, it became clear that the Ministry of Education didn’t have a very clear idea of what I was doing either. They attached me to the Outapi Community Library, which is the main library for our region. This particular library occupies one room in the Youth Center, a large building with a weight room, pool table, meeting room, craft center, sewing room and computer lab.

The library itself is overstaffed: there are four people, excluding me, who work full-time in a one-room library that’s only open from 8-5, Monday to Friday. They are currently advertising for one more clerk as well. The head librarian is Gregentia Nakwalondo, a squat, quiet milquetoast of a manager who is often resistant to change and indecisive. Underneath her are the two library assistants. Meme (Miss) Emily is a tall, smart, broad shouldered woman with a sweet daughter named Steffi who attends Power Station Christian primary school. There’s no power station nearby, so I assume the name refers to the power they get from God. Meme Pea (pronounced Pay-ah) is a sweet, short, chubby woman who is quite friendly but picks up on some things a bit slowly. Finally, there is Tate (Sir) Sackaria, the cleaner. He’s a nice guy, enthusiastic about his dead easy job. Each morning he opens the windows and sweeps the library, then sits around reading books and playing with the computers until it’s time to close down. There is also an adorable three-year old named Ntipiwa who hangs around the library all day long. Her mother works in the youth center, but this little girl seems to love hanging out in the library. Sometimes I read her a story in English or Oshiwambo. She also loves playing spider solitaire on the computer, although all she knows how to do is watch the cards deal themselves out!

Meme Nakwalondo didn’t seem to have much of a plan for my work, which is unfortunately a fairly common problem here for non-teaching volunteers. Volunteers who are doing administrative, community health, or youth development roles frequently complain of not having much to do. It’s as if the various Ministries of Education, Health, and Youth all want the cachet of having a volunteer without having a specific task for them to do. My Peace Corps neighbor, Carly, is struggling with the same issue. She is also based at the youth center, but many days just sits in the library reading books. Anyway, after spending the first two or three days with no direction, I began to develop a series of workshops to train teacher-librarians in the my state, Omusati.

In Omusati alone there are 271 schools, and each one supposedly has a library. A few of these libraries are nothing more than a box of books. Most are comprised of maybe 300-500 books in a dark storeroom. Some lucky schools actually have a classroom which has been converted to a library. In almost all cases, none of these teachers had received training in how to run a library. Well, to be honest, neither had I when I was appointed the librarian at Canisianum last year. But I knew what the Dewey Decimal System was, I knew how libraries were supposed to work, and I reread many times the usefully-titled book, How to Run a School Library.

My colleague Emily and I planned eight one-day workshops in different parts of the region, with about 35 teachers invited to each workshop. Getting from Outapi to each workshop site was an ordeal. The workshops were all located between 15 and 60 miles from Outapi, but several were on gravel roads far off the main track. The Ministry allocated me a 4-wheel drive bakkie, or pickup truck, which was great. The only problem was that the starter on the truck didn’t work. At all. Each morning, the staff of the youth center had to push-start me so I could get to the workshop. If I couldn’t get it started on the first push, the men would mutter about how the oshilumbu (white person) didn’t know how to push-start a car. Each afternoon, the workshop participants push-started me so I could go home. Although I would have liked to do a little shopping on the way, once that bakkie got was running there was no way I could turn it off until I reached my destination.




The workshops themselves went very well, although it was a little scary to see how little the participants knew about libraries. I always opened each workshop by asking people to tell us their name, school, how long they had been the teacher-librarian, and what they wanted to learn from the workshop. Several times, an experienced teacher-librarian said, “Today, the one thing that I really want to know is what the difference is between fiction and non-fiction.” Seriously.

During each workshop, we created a small library in the confines of the meeting hall. We brought about 60 books with us, and taught the participants how to classify them, arrange them on the shelves, check them in and out of the library, and so on. By the end of the day, we had a mini-library in each workshop room. Judging from the workshop evaluations, I’d say it was a success.




After the workshops finished, however, I was at a bit of a loss. At first Meme Gregentia had nothing for me to do, but when I suggested that I design a database to help them keep track of their books and circulation, she thought that was a good idea. As a result, I’ve gotten in a bit over my head in programming a database for the library. I’m making progress, but it’s slower going than I hoped. I’m no database programmer and sitting in front of a computer all day is driving me crazy. While it would be nice for the library to have a database on the computer, it’s not really essential. I keep feeling that what I’m doing this term is just not very necessary.

On a final note, this is my first non-teaching job since March of 2001, and I’m finding it pretty hard to adjust. I don’t like the slow pace at the library, and to my complete surprise, I even miss students. The first weeks in particular were very hard, when I would see students from Canisianum and wish that I could be working with them. I like the lower stress levels, but it’s a bit boring too. I’m not sure if what I miss is teaching, per se, or simply feeling useful. Either way, something will have to change soon. It’s not worth being so far from friends and family to be spinning my wheels like this.