Economic Growth Nepal Project #1560

Increase safety and incomes for Nepal climbers

by The Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation

Project Report | Jul 14, 2008
Bringing books to Kids at the base of Everest

By Liesl Clark Athans | Magic Yeti Library Update

Kids read and enjoy!

We looked around at each other nervously, wondering "Have we done a good thing or not?"

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.

"This is a good sign," we try to convince Pasang Doma. Improperly shelved books shows us the kids are actually using them. This is a start, for promoting literacy.

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.

Finally, the books were all shelved and a new reference section and small children's interactive toy area was complete. We invited the community's smallest children to come and see their new library (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 Magic Yeti Libraries

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)

This MYL Library is in the village of Khumjung, Nepal

LIesl, Phoebe and Mahendra at the opening MYL ceremony

Links:

The community visits the Magic Yeti Library

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Apr 12, 2007
EPIC Magazine features the ALCF Projects

By ALCF Coordinator Pamela Hainsworth | Link to KCS stories

Mar 6, 2007
Dispatches from the field

By Liesl Clark - February 8, 2007 | The Magic Yeti

The Magic Yeti Libraries are about to become a reality, thanks to the benefit of having time on our hands while in Nepal, many books (which are still in transit), Phoebe Coburn as our tireless partner on the ground in the States, and some funding from our friends, colleagues, and family.

Pete (Athans), my husband, the kids (Finn (3) and Cleo (1) and I have just returned to Kathmandu from 3 weeks in Khumbu, living in the village of Kunde (12,600 ft) while searching for the perfect place for the first Magic Yeti Library. Hands down, the best existing space is at the Khumjung School, established by Sir Edmund Hillary, for the Sherpas of Khumbu, in 1963. Khumjung/Kunde is home to the largest Sherpa population in Khumbu, and where a once top-notch school is now struggling to attract Sherpa kids for enrollment, as many families are now sending their children to school in Kathmandu. The headmaster, Mahendra Kathet, has an uphill battle maintaining the high standards of the original Khumjung School as the school is now government funded and resources for the kids are quite slim.

We met with Mahendra on a cold and windy day in Khumbu, all the teachers in down jackets, kids wrapped in scarves while studying in freezer-like classrooms. Even with a space heater, the cinder-block walls seem to suck the heat out of the room.

Mahendra has been headmaster of the school for 9 years and a teacher there for 30 years. I was surprised to learn this, as Mahendra looks quite young. According to 2006 records, the school has 374 students, 95% Sherpa and 5% from other ethnic groups (mostly Rai and Tamang). I explained our mission to Mahendra, to find a library space for English and Nepali children’s books that would be available not only to the students, but to the whole community, and Mahendra immediately understood what we were looking for. He said, “ We need books, mostly for teaching in the classroom, and have few books that the students are interested in in our library.” I was intrigued to see what books kids might NOT be interested in.

The next day, we returned to see inside the library. Mahendra let us into the locked building and we found it to be simply a room with shelves on the wall: 1960s textbooks were mixed in with modern-day board books for pre-schoolers. Nepali and English texts were commingled in places like one big twisted alphabet soup combined with years of dirt, dust, and benign neglect. This library has books, but many of them are the school's own publication that they use to sell to trekkers interested in supporting the school. I saw Dr. Seuss books with spines ripped loose, adult English dime store romances along with non-fiction informational manuals. If I were a kid entering this library, I'd be overwhelmed, confused, and disinterested in books as a result.

The good news is that the Khumjung School’s library is in a newly constructed building (unheated and without electricity). There are shelves there, even some sky lights, and with a little effort, we can turn the space into a bona-fide library, combining the school's existing collection (minus the 60's textbooks – there was even a complete set of the 1962 World Book Encyclopedia ) with ours, getting some present-day magazines committed (hey, that would be a nice contribution, a subscription to several great magazines). We'll need about 5 days of gutting, cleaning, painting, ordering some benches and tables to be made, a heater to be purchased and carried up by porter, and then an opening celebration for the community to learn what the library can do for them. Mahendra promises that the library would be available to the entire community and open during school hours.

Our work is cut out for us, as we need to catalogue all of Mahendra's books and ours, color code each into our 4 color system geared toward reading levels, and then decorate practically. So, it seems the Magic Yeti Library may actually come into being and our hope is that we can do this in other high Himalayan communities, setting up Children's libraries while working in conjunction with schools and communities. The hitch is that the community must have the space available for our books and funding.

Many thanks to Room to Read, of Nepal, for donating English-Nepali Children’s books, and for their offer to train a librarian in library science skills.

Our target date for the work party will be mid April, at which point we hope most of our books have arrived by post, and then porter or yak, up to the school. Anyone interested in helping us, hands-on, with the library work should contact me at: lclark@mos.com.np

Happy Losar!

Links:

Read more about The Magic Yeti Library

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