Constructing a Library in Sierra Leone
Joseph Kaifala proposed a Project for Peace in cooperation with Skidmore College's International Affairs Club. His classmates Peter Brock and Danielle McCourt accompanied him to Sierra Leone for the library's opening.
For over a decade Sierra Leone was ravaged by a civil war that left the country completely devastated with over 50,000 killed, 60% of educational institutions destroyed, and thousands of children maimed and orphaned. The civil conflict was greatly fueled by illiteracy and unemployment. Illiteracy made it easier for the rebels to coerce the children and unemployed youths into aiding their destructive cause. In 2004 the United Nations Development Index ranked Sierra Leone 176th out of 177 countries, and the adult literacy rate as 122nd out of 177 nations; an immense indication that the country is in dire need of educational advancement.
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| Students and their parents watch a film in the new library. |
Our Project for Peace sought to address this issue through the construction of a library in the Conakry-Dee region of Sierra Leone. Most humanitarian assistance to Sierra Leone over the past years has focused on the capital, Freetown. Though helpful, it has led to the neglect of the more rural areas of the country, including the western province town of Conakry-Dee, one of the areas where poverty has been entrenched since the end of the war in 2002.
The rationale behind our project is the belief that education grants individuals the ability to reason, negotiate, determine, and choose their identities and futures. One of the reasons why violence and killing usurped peace as a priority in Sierra Leone during the Wars of 1991-2002 was the youth’s lack of access to proper and adequate education. It was very simple for the rebel leaders to conscript illiterate and idle youths who had nothing else to hope for in a country that was submerged in economic emergency and political disorder.
In the region of Conakry-Dee, there is still limited access to educational resources such as the basic necessity of books, forcing parents to prioritize farming and other household chores over the educational expenses of their children. This lack of resources restricts the educational opportunities of approximately 6,000 children. Even though there are now some schools available to the children, they are still limited in their learning capacities because of the lack of affordable resources to further their studies. Even the teachers sometimes find themselves incapable of acquiring the necessary materials to better prepare them for teaching their lessons.
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| St. Joseph's Junior Secondary School Library of Peace |
I was already engaged in an initial library project in Sierra Leone with personal funds before applying for the Projects for Peace Fellowship. After I applied for the fellowship, in conjunction with Skidmore's International Affairs club, I took a trip in December 2006 in order to make further arrangements for the library construction. I asked a mason to make an estimate of what a full library of a specific dimension would cost. He came up with a plan that fell right within the range of $10,000, which was the funding a Projects for Peace Fellowship would provide.
We decided to build the library at St. Joseph's Junior Secondary School (SJJSS) in order to keep it close to students and to minimize the cost of maintenance and security. Even though it is intended to serve the general public, too, it was necessary to grant proprietorship to SJJSS. The library will not only provide a fundamental addition to school facilities; it will also be secured from misuse or physical damage. Another positive aspect of placing the library at SJJSS is the fact that I was able to minimize corruption and misappropriation of funds.
We expect that the availability of free text books and reading space will encourage students to remain in school. The library will also provide reference materials for teachers who are facing some of the same social constraints as their students in a country ravaged by war.
When we proposed our Project for Peace, the physical foundation and frame of the library were already in place, so what remained to be completed was furnishing the library and supplying it with educational materials, such as books and equipment.
The library is also intended to promote leadership and responsible development among students of the Conakry-Dee area. It is expected that students will be responsible for running the library and making it useful to their education by protecting and maintaining the resources. We hope to later link the library and students in Conakry-Dee area with other students around the world so that they can share information, and students in the more prosperous areas of the world can contribute to the sustainability of the library through book drives or fundraising for additional educational facilities.
There were loads of obstacles that we hadn't anticipated when proposing to construct a library in the second poorest country in our world today. I've learned that one should expect to face corruption, dishonesty, and cronyism as people struggle daily to make ends meet. It is therefore important to maintain flexibility and the will to change plans and ideas wherever possible.
The process of constructing a library took three months. I worked with the principal, Fr. Peter Mansaray, a vibrant and meticulous priest with the goodness of his community at heart. While we could not succeed in making the entire project totally free of corruption and dishonesty, we were able to reduce the amount of money that could have been stolen or misused by local workers and merchants. It is rather difficult to eliminate corruption in a country with no fixed prices nor tradition of processing receipts for monetary transactions.
A technical problem we encountered during the project was that most masons in Sierra Leone have no formal education in construction or architectural science. Most house plans and constructions are done manually, leading to the possibility of many unforeseen problems. One such problem was that the foundation of the building turned out to be larger than initially anticipated, hence we had to increase our budget. I had to change several preliminary plans in order to accomplish the most basic and necessary library requirements.
Fortunately for the project we were able to secure additional financial support from Seventh Generation; The Church of St. Peter, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; Elizabeth Shafiroff; and from other private contributions. Even though most of these funds were initially intended for a girls' scholarship program I created, I used some of the money to supplement the library project. We were able to pay more contractors and also cover the extra cost of the construction project.
Sierra Leone is a country in which prices can fluctuate overnight depending on the nature of factors such as the political situation in neighboring countries, road conditions for transporting goods, availability of commodities, and internal politics. Between December 2006, when we first conceived of this idea, and June 2007, when the implementation started, the prices of construction materials had already risen beyond the initial cost. The primary reason for price fluctuation with respect to our project is that it coincided with the 2007 presidential elections in Sierra Leone, which took place on August 11. Another reason could be the dishonesty of contractors and local construction materials vendors. In Sierra Leone, sometimes prices are charged in accordance with the client’s position in society, and coming from the U.S. with two white Americans only raised the vendors’ perception of my status. But with the aid of Fr. Peter, who was put in charge of purchasing construction materials, some of these obstacles were removed.
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| Danielle McCourt teaches data processing to St. Joseph's Junior Secondary School teachers. |
The months of June, July and August are part of the rainy season in Sierra Leone. Most of our work was delayed by heavy rains and limited sunshine. As a result of poor housing in the Lungi area, where the library is located, Peter Brock, Danielle McCourt, and I also had to commute daily between Freetown and Lungi to teach and supervise the project. As for the funky ferry linking Freetown and Lungi, it serves one better to pray for manna from heaven than to expect the ferry to show up. Sometimes our only options were the local pampers or wooden canoes. The canoes can be very dangerous, as they are not insured and there is no emergency rescue brigade when they capsize at sea.
Alongside the library project we offered general training in computer science and basic data processing for the staff of SJJSS. It would have been totally impractical to furnish the library with computers if no one knew how to use them. I was extremely happy to have the company of Peter and Danielle as assistant teachers, as it is rather difficult teaching adults how to use a machine that most of them had never seen before. But their eagerness to learn inspired us. We trained them in basic computer operations and the use of programs such as MS Word and Excel. Another positive aspect of teaching computer skills to my compatriots is that they were constantly motivated by my presence as a Sierra Leonean who can manage a computer. Most Sierra Leoneans think of computer science as exclusively a white person’s domain. So part of their eagerness to learn came from their admiration of my abilities, which they wished to emulate.
In addition to offering computer training, Danielle offered a day of training in basic photography, at the end of which she distributed a few disposable cameras for the teachers to practice their newly acquired skills. Our aim was not to develop the second poorest country in the world overnight, but to encourage, motivate, and empower Sierra Leoneans to at least start thinking of what they are capable of. There are many areas in Sierra Leone that need absolute reform before the people can even embark on the challenging process of organizing what already exists in the country. But we can begin by bringing some light to the extreme hopelessness that already places limitation on the country’s potential.
In the end, most of our intended goals were accomplished. The library was completed with most necessary modern elements and facilities in place. There are currently all required textbooks of the government of Sierra Leone, calculators, a TV, a stereo, an automatic stapler, a pencil sharpener, a DVD player, and an electrical generator to facilitate the operation of electronic gadgets. Students and teachers can now watch movies, listen to music, and computerize their data in the library. The onus of putting the library to use will remain with the beneficiaries. My intention is to provide future assistance to the school, but I also made it clear to them that such assistance will depend upon their ability to maintain the current facility. We intend to link the library to schools and individuals in the U.S so that we can continue to equip it and keep it up to date.
Although the school at which the library is located is in desperate need of a senior secondary school to accommodate the increase in demand, the library at least serves as a step in the right direction for providing a much needed educational facility and social amenity. We hope that it will help promote the significant need for education and play an important role in the lives of Sierra Leoneans, guiding them away from violence and conflict and contributing instead toward their intellectual development and peaceful coexistence, which in turn could lead to greater tolerance, reconciliation, and accountability in their communities.
Education is a key component of sustainable development in Sierra Leone, which will contribute to poverty reduction. The primary aim of assisting in the educational reconstruction of Sierra Leone is, as Kurt Hahn rightly summarized in his own efforts in the reconstruction of Europe after World War II: "to enable young people to effect what they have recognized to be right, despite hardships, despite dangers, despite inner skepticism, despite boredom, and despite mockery from the rest of the world."
Implementing this project has enabled me to understand better the problems and failures of my country, Sierra Leone. I have also realized that it is not from a lack of resources that my people continue to struggle for survival; it is rather more from a lack of conscientious leadership and organization. Most Sierra Leoneans don’t leave college thinking, “How am I going to help my country?” Most come out thinking, “How am I going to enrich myself to recover from the past years of struggle?” Hence, corruption has become very rampant and development is crawling at a slow pace. As I said during an interview on the United Nations radio in Freetown, African development will only become a reality if Africans themselves learned to tackle their own problems with the available resources. This is basically the kind of thinking that I hope to emphasize among the youths of Sierra Leone. The burden of our development is primarily our responsibility. Such is what I refer to as a pragmatic developmental approach in Africa.Joseph Kaifala was born in Sierra Leone and spent his early childhood in Liberia. He later moved to Norway, where he attended the Red Cross Nordic United World College before enrolling at Skidmore College. Joseph is an International Affairs & French Major, with a minor in Law & Society. He speaks six languages and is very much interested in learning Swedish. Joseph is also a Human Rights activist, a Rastafarian, and a votary of ahimsa. He upholds a philosophical belief that the highest state of love is experienced through dancing or singing, and every human being is capable of one or both. He is a filmmaker and loves to play scrabble, when not hibernating in reggae music.