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Fifty kids, ages 1-17 were feverishly playing with wooden trains, pop-up books that look like bouquets of real-life splendor, magazines published just for kids, and electronic word puzzles that sing the alphabet in rhythm. It was a cacophony of excitement, curiosity, and pure learning pleasure, a free-play session in a high altitude library set up to bring pleasure to children through the written word.
The Khumjung School Magic Yeti Library was established less than a year ago and it's evident that the enormous effort - from dusty bookshelves in family homes in the USA to a busy one - room library in the largest Sherpa village in the Everest region -- has paid off. The children are no longer afraid to take books off the shelves and, in fact, the biggest challenge for the new librarian, Pasang Doma Sherpa, is that the kids tend to put books back on any shelf they can find, leaving a confused jumble of unorganized, mis-shelved books in their wake.
For the better part of 10 days, volunteer Stephanie Graham, and I sat in the bitter cold January confines of Sherpa homes, cataloguing 10 yak loads (700 lbs) of books and then shelving them in the library with the help of Pasang Doma and volunteer students from Khumjung. We could only stand about 3 hours at a time in the library, as the temperatures were well below freezing. We understood, only later, why we got strange looks when we wanted the floor mopped up. It created a slippery ice-rink effect atop the newly laid linoleum.
This is the time of year when the school is closed (January and part of February) due to the unbearable cold, providing kids and families a chance to find warmth in Kathmandu or by their fires. We thought we could handle the cold, but I admit it got the best of us, ("This is colder than I felt in Antarctica!") and we consumed countless cups of hot tea to keep our cores warm. Electricity was brought in for the first time to the library and a small heater made the work go a little faster as the students huddled around, filling out catalogue cards.
(click here to see the video). I don't think I've ever seen such excited faces - learning how a wooden train can glide across wooden tracks, plunking out Rasampiri, a Nepali folk song, on a small glockenspiel, and opening up a world of pictures, characters, and ideas within the hundreds of books in the tiny Magic Yeti library.
Our future plans? We'll continue to augment and supply the Khumjung library with the best books we can provide. Next year, duplicate books and excess supplies will be carried up to the village of Phortse, our next location for a Magic Yeti Library. Here, children go to school until 4th and 5th grade at which point they go to Khumjung for higher education. A community library space exists in Phortse now, but there are few, if any, books. We plan to bring books up, build new shelves, paint the library, and finally shelve the books in the early spring of 2009. Any volunteers? Fill out our volunteer questionnaire here.
Liesl Clark -Director
A very special thanks to our Sherpa Student volunteers: Lhama Phuti Sherpa (Class 6), Nima Lhamu Sherpa (Class 7), Ang Phuti Sherpa (Class 7), Dawa Passang Sherpa (Class 8), Nawang Fingo Sherpa (Class 8), Gourag Mangar (Class 7), Bumeka Mangar (Class 5)
Magic Yeti Libraries and the Future
The success of our first library effort in Khumjung means that we are now poised to start three more, in a collaborative effort with Room to Read, volunteers, and the people of upper Mustang. In 2008, the Magic Yeti Libraries team plans to return to Khumjung, Solukhumbu, to bolster library programs for the kids, deliver a Magic Yeti Libraries manual with our simple cataloguing system outlined for anyone to follow, and begin setting up a trekker-volunteer reading hour program where volunteers from around the world can join in the fun of getting kids interested in what books have to offer.
Tsarang Ani School Library
Tsarang and Lo Manthang
Community Libraries
Budgets for Libraries
Volunteering
Click here for Frequently Asked Questions
February, 2008
We looked around at each other nervously, wondering "Have we done a good thing or not?"
Magic Yeti Libraries
A small nunnery in Tsarang, the second largest community in the restricted area of upper Mustang, has recently been built through donations and the hard work of the villagers of Tsarang. With 28 students, from 8 years to 18 years old, this is the first girls-only school that mirrors the well-attended monastic school associated with Tsarang's ancient monastery. Students come from villages near and far to partake in what the Ani school has to offer, with its three teachers, multiple languages (English, Tibetan, and Nepali), and a rigorous curriculum that includes mathematics and grammar. We want to augment the school's resources by turning one of their large upstairs rooms into a children's library, like the Khumjung School library, to be used by the girls as they grow up.
As a compliment to the Ani School library, we will be donating books to two new community libraries that are being built by the people of Tsarang, Lo Manthang, and READ. We plan to bring children's books, reference books, books about womenÕs health and adult education. The library is meant to be a resource for the whole community. In collaboration with READ, we hope to set up a volunteer system that will bring trekkers face-to-face with children interested in books. The trekkers will be encouraged to come to the libraries during special designated village "story hours", in which they can read to children. .and also help with library related maintenance
From our experience, the largest single cost is incurred in shipping books from the U.S. to Kathmandu, then paying for porterage of loads, by yak, horse and humans to their remote destinations. And, transport is where the donations we receive can most quickly be put to use.
Next, buying wood to build shelves is extremely costly in the high Himalaya. Carpenters are not expensive, but the supplies they use (considering transport, again) cost the equivalent of home building supplies in the U.S.
Also, we try to provide a salary for a librarian or two to keep each library open to the communities during school hours -- and at times convenient to the communities. This requires paying for someone's time and training them in library skills.
In summary, each library has its own needs and special costs, but we've found that a start-up cost for a single childrens library (including shipping books) comes to approximately $6,000 U.S. dollars.
We are looking for volunteers in Nepal and in the States who are interested in working with us to conduct book drives, raise funds, set up the libraries and do follow-through work on keeping them sustainable. Each library has its own character and set of challenges, and we try to match volunteers with each community. To learn more, please email us at clarkliesl@mac.com.
