Projecto Ossuwela

In Mecua - “ossuwela”. In Portuguese - “saber”. In English - “to know”. Projecto Ossuwela has become the overarching name for the library project we have begun here in Murrupula.  Happily, the library is now officially open to the community!

It had been such a long process, filled with many ups and downs, that I had no idea what to expect for this opening - How many people from the community would come? Would the books actually get used? What about more volunteers to help run the project?  These were all questions that we have yet to answer, but that we couldn’t begin to answer without actual execution and initiation of the project. 

So, Saturday, September 21^st was the official opening ceremony for Projecto Ossuwela, the Community Library of Murrupula.  Over 80 members of the community including neighbors, students, children, teachers, a secondary school director, representatives from the government and several other Peace Corps Volunteers came out to support the project. 

We began the ceremony with a cultural dance presentation from REDES, followed by a short speech from Iassito, the director of AJUDEMU, the organization responsible for the library.  Iassito spoke of AJUDEMU’s goals and how the library fits in with those goals, of the community’s contribution of over 40% of the funds for the project, and called the community to help in maintaining the library for future generations. 

 

Following Iassito, Professor Shek, the director of the library, read a message explaining the library’s objectives.  Speaking passionately, Shek spoke of the library as a democratic institution for learning and culture, a free service to the community as a forum where books can be actively used for educational and informative objectives, also calling on the community to maintain, organize, and care for the library so that future generations can benefit from it. 

 After Shek, Rilton, the coordinator of the Mobile Library Project read a short children’s Portuguese book entitled, Boas Maneiras na Biblioteca(Good Manners in the Library). 

After, some students from my English group sang a song “We are happy to be together, we are happy to be together” and then JUNTOS presented a short play about the need and importance of a community library.  Finally, the representatives from the schools and government were invited to speak, generally expressing their gratitude in answering the community’s need for such a project and the important impact it could have.  The invitees then ceremoniously cut the garland draped across the door of the library, signaling its official opening, the beginning of Projecto Ossuwela!

 

It was a project that began with student’s asking for dictionaries, witnessing children 10 years and older unable to read or even recite the alphabet yet loving to learn, imagining growing up without ever touching a book or reading a story.  To now stand inside the library, looking at the shelf of books, the brightly colored walls, the handprints of those who helped develop the project, I couldn’t help but get a little emotional.  I really have poured a lot of myself in to it.  But, more importantly, I have tried to set aside my control freak tendencies in an effort to truly make it a library of the community, involving my counterparts in every step of the planning and now handing over responsibility to them and the community for the library’s hopeful growth and future success. 

"Thank you to everyone involved in the Library Project"

Handprints of everyone involved

Iassito, me, Shek, Adrienne, Rilton

Unfortunately, some naysayers accused me of providing a handout, investing time and resources that would have better been applied elsewhere to make a “bigger” impact, of arrogantly dumping my ideas and “Americanisms” on a community, furthering white homogeny. 

Some parts of their attack addressed points that I think every Peace Corps volunteer goes through at some point in their two year service. You wonder why you are here in the first place, teaching computers to students, the majority of which will probably never again use a computer.  You doubt your purpose or any sort of impact you might have in helping anyone.  You notice problems that are bigger than you, that you want to help change.  And sadly, eventually you accept those problems as just how things are, for right now at least, and you feel really guilty.  You are forced to take the humble and somewhat selfish approach, because what else can you do, knowing you are just one person, here for only two years.  You can’t just do nothing, so you choose to pursue things you are passionate about, knowing that you are at least growing from the experience, gaining skills that you will take with you the rest of your life.  Pursuing cultural exchanges, sharing traditions from your culture and learning about another, hoping to fragment some stereotypes, open some eyes to the big world that is out there, make relationships and integrate in to a community to understand the people in it on a more personal level.  Unfortunately, I will always be seen as the white girl and with that comes a sense of hierarchy, but hopefully you can find ways to rework that to benefit those around you, showing them they deserve to be heard or providing opportunities they otherwise would never experience.  Of course some of my American-ness is attached to each project, but that’s not something I can escape.  It’s what I know and never have I even thought of presenting my ways as “better” or “correct”.

Though no one ever approached me explicitly stating that Murrupula needed a community library, illiteracy and education are huge problems everywhere and I stand by Projecto Ossuwela, as a valuable project, truly of the community.  It was an opportunity that I presented, yes, but it never would have been accomplished by myself alone.  I am not going to feel ashamed in taking pride in the success of its inauguration and I think the community would agree with that.  On its very first day of operation, over 20 students used its books!  Some of my English group arrived almost an hour late to our practice because they did not want to stop reading their book in the library!

The term "ossuwela" can be expanded to apply to my entire Peace Corps experience, where I have grown “to know” so much.   Admittedly, I arrived in country as a somewhat ignorant American, not totally prepared for what was in store for me and definitely unsure what to expect.  After just two years in a country, one could never say they are truly integrated or know everything about the culture, but I certainly know more than I did when I arrived!  I know enough Portuguese now to stand in front of a classroom of students without using a previously written script, to talk with neighbors and colleagues on a deeper level.  I know more about myself, my strengths and weaknesses, how far I can extend beyond my comfort zone.  There are many things that I still don’t and may never truly know - I don’t know what impact I’ve had on the country, on the development of even my town, on perhaps a handful of students.  But I’ll never really know those things.  In each project from teaching to the REDES girls group to the library, I tried to approach them with the goal of giving an opportunity, an opportunity for learning, travel, development of personal attributes, etc.  How those opportunities were or were not taken is something beyond my control.  One thing I do know, and perhaps the only thing I can really know, is the impact this experience has had on me.    I know that when I return home to America, I will carry a part of Africa with me, always.  I know Murrupula as my home and the experiences I have had here, I know, have changed me forever.

The distinguished invitees