Another Busy Month: November at a Glance

The month of November continued the trend for growing numbers of library members, visits and borrowed books. This past month we:

 

·         Signed up 40 new library members (34 students and 6 adults)

 

·         Had 348 books borrowed and

 

·         Had 2767 library visits!

 

A Little Late But Still Grand Opening

As many of you may already know, we first opened our library doors in June of 2008 and have been signing up members and lending books since then. Throughout the summer months the majority of community members, adults and children alike, were out working in their fields and government employed teachers and officials went to larger cities for vacation. And so we never had an official opening ceremony.

 

 

With vacation over and everyone back in village now, the library committee and librarian were thrilled to host a grand opening at the library on November 9th. Village officials, teachers and members of the parents’ school boards, students, friends and family were all invited to join us for the celebration. The mayor, librarian and I gave speeches on how the library started and how it would serve the community and the librarian organized a short theatre skit with several regular library visitors. Local musicians performed for the audience between speeches. And then we had a ribbon cutting by the mayor and school inspector.

 

 

 

        

 

   

 

 

Everyone invited came to the ceremony and many people who weren’t “officially” invited stopped by to join in the festivities. All of the speeches and the theatre skit were done in the local language so that everybody present could understand the benefits of the library. Once speeches and the theatre performance were finished, I was pleasantly surprised that everyone who came waited around to get a tour of the library with Moussa (the librarian).

 

I couldn’t have been happier with how the ceremony turned out, and the most gratifying part of the day was when over an hour after we had finished four older ladies from the community were still sitting in the library reading over our collection of books in local language! These women have just recently learned how to read as part of an outreach program going on throughout Burkina Faso but they had never been to the library before then. I’ve told them about the library many times in my limited local language but apparently they never understood what the library was for. But now they know! They know that the library is there for them and the rest of the community and I can’t wait to see them back reading.

 

 

A Very Busy Month: October at a Glance

The school year started back up again for primary and secondary students the second week of October and as expected…more students returning to village equals more students visiting the library. I am happy to report that in the month of October we signed up 46 new library members (36 students and 10 adults), had 193 books borrowed AND 2,232 library visitors!!!

 

 

Moussa visited all of the secondary school classes to talk about the library and we announced November as the first month of reading competitions for the 6th grade class.