30's not so bad...

Here's what I did during the week of my 30th birthday!

Map THIS!!!   

...don't forget South Sudan

The World Map Project... a Peace Corps Classic

 We moved walls... here is our new blank dirty canvas. The primary school is near the first wall we picked but those young whipper snappers with all their energy can be some what of a disturbance (imagine that). 

The Headmaster and I shifted the World Map Project to a wall on the other side of the secondary school campus.  This area is covered in shade most of the day making it a popular hang out during break time. A better choice indeed!

First things first, we cleaned the wall and then slapped on a fresh coat of white. It took about 4 liters to cover the entire wall. 

Here is my apprentice/ cousin/ small father, Jonson, up on the ladder.

We finish up the White Wall on Friday and let it dry over the weekend.

and then we did some math...

Total area for the map: 252 cm x 504 cm. 

Since we are using the grid method to aid our drawing efforts, each grid square will be 9cm x 9cm. 

We used a meter stick to measure the map area and started to paint the ocean blue as our map base. This was a excellent suggestion from the World Map Project Book, we won't have to worry about painting the water around all those tiny islands later on!

All the students are excited to help out. 

They wouldn't let me paint for more than a few minutes at a time.

Last touches of blue on Monday afternoon.

... So Fresh and So Clean!

We got back to work on Wednesday by drawing the GRID lines. 

We used white chalk to draw the lines so they can be easily erased later on after drawing. 

Our grid is made up of 28 rows and 56 columns, with a total of 1,568 squares.

Coming Soon... Drawing and Painting THE WORLD MAP!!!

Yum a Liberry... Even tastier than a strawberry!

So as we wait for the library structure to be completed we are in process of requesting book donations, creating a floor plan for the furniture and organizing our current inventory. 

There are so many NGO's that give used books but most of them send in Sea Containers. 

With 10,000- 25,000 books inside they can be very difficult to manage at customs and with transport to the village. We have decided to avoid the hassle and focus on small donors and maintaining the books we do have.

Here we are making a plan to organize our current room that houses the few beat up books we have.

Each student was given a different course subject and tasked to write down the author, title, publisher and quantity of books in the book room.

We had a lot of work, but about 10 students volunteered to help.

...and it got worse before it got better... YIKES! 

Starting to get things in order... Mwalimu (Teacher) Shabani was a great leader for this task! Bravo!

Much Better and ready to get moved to the NEW Library when it is finished.

Here is the current state of the new library... 

and a peak inside!

Next set of tasks: follow up with small scale book donors and the Tanzanian Library Board Services for librarian training.