The Wait Is Over!

After three months of waiting, the books are finally in our possession! We’ve never been so happy to see cardboard boxes in our lives. We say “in our possession” because the books have actually been in Kenya for more than one month now; two weeks on the freight in Mombasa port, two weeks going through customs, and another week sitting in a warehouse in Nairobi. We finally have our books and it only took 3 months of waiting, 50+ clarifying phone calls and emails, and frequent visits to the courier’s office…TIA.

Despite the irritation of having to wait to do our library projects, we’ve had a great couple of months. Other than a couple great weeks in Mombasa and Zanzibar, we’ve spent the majority of our time at the Malia Children’s Home, improving our Swahili, getting to know the family, and mastering our Kenyan cooking skills. Because of the unforeseen delay with the books, our last two months will be extremely busy in trying to complete our library projects.

This morning, while we were sorting the books, we received a visit from the pastor from the Buru Buru slum, who will also be the acting librarian once we leave. He was amazed to see the room filled with 50 boxes of books. We arranged to start building bookshelves tomorrow with the help of him and other community members. We’re also going to enlist the help of local private schools in holding annual textbook drives so that we can provide a way for kids in the slum, who can’t afford school, to learn the curriculum.

We’re really excited about how this project continues to evolve, and we’re hoping to be able to keep up the momentum once we’re gone. Once we’ve actually put up the bookshelves and arranged the books, loosely by genre and age, we plan on splitting the kids up into reading groups based on age and literacy. We’re also reaching out to local student volunteers to help lead reading groups. We hope that once we leave, we’ll have established a group of people to continue to volunteer at the slum in Buru Buru.