You can help us set up a school library

Internet access is much patchier than we had in Zambia so we don't expect to be able to update so much so often (and certainly not so many photos) - but we will update you when we can.

In the meantime...

We arrived at our Malawi school this morning. It's called Ulandi Primary school and its on the shores of Lake Malawi. It's a lovely setting and we were made to feel very welcome.

We are teaching Standards 5, 6, 7 & 8 and the students have responded well to our classes that we gave this morning. We started the morning session by singing lots of songs to make the children giggle and relax before breaking into our teaching partnerships for three, 1 hour lessons. The girls are doing fantasticly well as teachers and all of their hard work last week really showed this morning when they gave all of their lessons plenty of enthusiasm and energy.

We've made arrangements to pay for the children to have lunch every day this week whilst we are with them at school. It's their summer holidays but they are so keen to learn and are walking long distances to be here. We paid for a local woman to come and make porridge for the 100 'learners'

We noticed a number of the primary school teachers were interested in the craft activities to aid comprehension of the stories and were amused to see them joining in and gluing sparkly shapes onto paper. One teacher we spotted had never seen a glue stick before and was intrigued as to how it worked.

The head teacher introduced us proudly to his librarian who showed us round their existing school library. It was a brick built room with some wooden tables and second hand books donated by the Book Bus two years ago (photos below). There is a small book cupboard which is full and the rest of the books are spread out across the tables in a random order. The children choose their book and then the librarian marks down what they borrow. When it is returned a few days later the librarian asks questions to check they have understood the book.

With our donation from RR Donnelley we have been able to organise a local carpenter to start building some shelving which will house the books we purchased with their funding and a few more books as well. It will be finished by the end of this week.

We wanted to give our blog followers the opportunity to support our project and pledge any money so we can build even more shelves for our improved library. We have already started today sorting through the second hand books here and will have it all ready before we leave. We will add our brand new books as well and all the teaching staff are very excited to have a much improved library. 

If you would like to pledge a donation for this specific request please either email us at africabookbus@gmail.com or fill in the "send us a private message" form on the right hand side of our blog and let us know how much you would like to donate.... We can then add it all up and discuss with the carpenter and perhaps have enough to build even more shelves for Ulandi school.

We will then send you account details of where to transfer the money or send a cheque. We just need to know in the next 24 hours how much we can spend on wood, nails and labour!

Thank you in advance for your support in helping us set up a library which will help the teachers here in Malawi continue enthusing about reading and build on all our hard work.

Heron Ranger Guides