Books: a Campo Commodity

Most people here in the campo have never seen any other part of Nicaragua – much less the world – besides Esteli and Managua. But even if they don't have the resources to travel, if they had access to books, as I see it, they could experience the entire world.

When I would go to the library when I was little, I remember feeling so much possibility in the shelves upon shelves of books staring back at me. I would come home with a huge stack of books and an unrivaled sense of anticipation – a magical kind of hunger.

Here in San Nicolas, the library is three cases of books housed in a dark, cramped garage, with a few hard wood benches taking up most of the space. Kids wander in and out, but they come mostly to get help with their homework, not to check out books.

The librarian Valerio, a quiet-voiced man with a limp, sits down with these kids every afternoon to help them with their homework. As a venue for homework help, the library is invaluable. But I also wish that these kids could experience the magic of reading just for the fun of it. In the next year and a half, I want to help Valerio get more books for the library, make the space more welcoming, and encourage kids to check books out for fun.

These are some pretty lofty goals, I know. And since I don't really know much about how libraries generally work around here, I've been checking out another local library project based in Esteli, called Bibliobus. Unlike the San Nicolas library, Bibliobus is a library on wheels. It's an old renovated bus, with comfortable couches on the inside, that takes boxes of books around to different communities in the campo where there are no libraries.

Last week, I volunteered with Bibliobus two days. We drove to some communities north of Esteli, stopping at five different primary schools over the course of the two days. In each class, Ligia (the program's coordinator) read a picture book about a ladybug to the kids. She passed out colored pencils and pieces of paper so that they could draw their own ladybugs, and then invited them to the bus. On the bus, we had laid out all of the age-appropriate books on a table. Each kid chose one book to read and they all sat on the couches, reading their picture books.

It took some kids ages to choose which book they wanted to read; they would pick one up, flip through it, put it down, and pick up another. And when they finally did choose a book, they would sit there on the bus, murmuring the words under their breath, unconscious to everything except the book on their lap. When they finished the book, they would dart back to the table for another.

Having grown up surrounded by books, for me it is incomprehensible that places exist where books are such a scarce resource – such a commodity for kids. But so it is here in the Nicaraguan campo. If I can help bring even a few books to even a few kids before we leave San Nicolas, I will feel that I've helped pass on the joy that books have always brought me.

Thanks to my parents, who brought a bunch of bilingual books down when they visited us, just today the San Nicolas library got 20 new books. If you have any Spanish or bilingual books lying around or know where you might find some, let me know and we can figure out a way to get them to San Nicolas. Or if you just want to donate some money to buy books, we can work that out too!