Preparing the Library

One of my main jobs while I've been at NWC has been to buy books for the community library that will open in January.

I love buying books, so this was hardly work for me. But it was a surprisingly difficult task. Me and Marie Aimee went to different publishers, often multiple times, and found new book shops, trying to track down the best range of fiction we could find in Kinyarwanda, English and French, for those with low levels of literacy, to more advanced readers.

As the library grows the center will be able to adapt the selection of books to what people like to read. But for now, I enjoyed carrying boxes of new shiny books, staking up piles as I walked around the store and seeing some of the books I read as a child with new covers and pictures ready to enthrall another generation.

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” 
― Albert Einstein

Getting on

My posts on the blog are going to be a little backwards and a little different.

My name is Claire and I’m actually just about to finish working at Nyamirambo Women’s Centre. For various reasons I’ve only just got access to this blog, and I leave in 6 days. But I’ve been here for 5 weeks, so I’m sure I can find a few stories to tell you, just forgive me for doing them in a funny order.

This week, my last week, things are quite quiet at NWC. It’s weeks like this that you see how an organisation slowly ticks by, doing the tasks it needs to, without much show or any real attention.  We like to hear the stories of great battles, big events, angry words or ugly accusations, but the real story of any organisation, any movement, is to be heard when everything is quite, the truth whispering on the breeze.

In the office Marie Aimee, the President works away, popping out to meet people when she needs to, and trading the internet stick with me when one of us needs to get online. The computer class sat around the tables in the office this morning, new pine tables ready to go into the library when it opens in January. Marie Aimee and I kept working as the gentle noises of the lesson drifted past. Next door in the class room the ladies are working away at the newest sewing project that I’ll tell you about some other day. Their hands stitch feverishly and they chatter between themselves as they work.  At the back are two of our volunteers, cutting fabric and hatching plans for the next big sewing invention to sweep through NWC.

Getting on is what we’re doing. And in some ways that’s just what the people of Rwanda have been doing these past fifteen or so years. Getting on after your world is turned upside down. Even though we like the stories of big events and angry words, the real change happens when everything is quiet and the people get back to the business of getting on.