Book burning
I finally found an internet connection!
It has been a very busy week. Now that Diane’s here, things are getting on track. We found the keys to the library and unlocked the door, and walked in to a mess. A thick layer of dust coated everything- the books, the shelves, the tables. We went straight to work by sorting through the bookshelves, weeding out books that are of no use to the girls. There was a whole row of encyclopedias from the 1940’s, children’s books from the 50’s (Cowboy Sam), poorly-written snowmobile guidebooks (why?!), contemporary non-fiction on Soviet Russia, sunday school pamphlet cast-offs, and painfully useless human resource manuals. I even found a Latin-English dictionary from 1880 (pretty awesome).
What are all of these books doing there? Who donated them? This school gets most of its books from a charity called Books for Africa, but the majority of them are of no use to the students or teachers. Which leads me to my main point: if YOU wouldn’t read or teach your own children from an outdated and pointless book, WHY would you think it would be even the slightest bit helpful to someone in Africa? It’s useless. It costs hundreds of dollars to ship crates of books to Africa, and it takes a lot of work to distribute them to schools, so why waste time and money like that? Bad books deserve to be thrown away or recycled. You don’t have to donate brand-new or expensive books, but if you have something good you’ve read and don’t need, or if your school is done with text books no more than 7 years old, it would be amazing to donate those to a charity.
Diane and I are starting a giant Book Bonfire. We’re going to rid the school of useless books by dumping them in the flames. I’ve never burned books before, it should be fun.
I know this post is just a huge lecture, but let me end with one last point: SUCKY BOOKS ARE SUCKY ALL OVER THE WORLD.
Tags: Tanzania, Travel
afretheim
January 24th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
WOW that’s crazy! That’s so stupid….don’t they need, say, FOOD? Not books?
How was the bonfire by the way?