12/11/01

With a crowd of more than 500 people, Building With Books and the villagers of Tegela, Mali inaugurated the Ecole Fondamentale de Tegela (Tegela Primary School) on November 16, 2001. It was only 7 weeks earlier that construction began on the three-room schoolhouse, an amazing feat considering the hard labor that was involved. Tegela is a two-hour drive from the nearest main road. The village has no electricity or running water, and there were no modern tools involved in the construction. Sand and water, which are necessary to make cement, were needed in massive quantities. Sand was dug from two kilometers away and water was hauled up from wells. Every day, men and women carried these materials, bucket by bucket, to the work site.

It was no easy task, but the villagers were determined to build their school and build it quickly. Most people in Tegela are Muslims, and so it was a race against time to finish the school before the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when celebrations are prohibited by Islamic law. It took long and hard days at the work site. While we ask for 30 villagers to work every day, more than 50 came out every day for a total contribution of more than 2,000 work days. With this commitment, the villagers succeeded in meeting their goal. The school was inaugurated just one day before the start of Ramadan!

On the day we began construction, we held a community meeting before breaking ground. We asked every adult villager to show their commitment to the project by signing their name to a covenant between BwB and the village. BwB would purchase construction materials if the villagers would volunteer their time to build the school. Out of the 180 people who signed, practically every person had to use their thumbprint as their signature because they had never learned how to write their name. Tegela has never had a school and, consequently, most people are illiterate. Now that the school is built, not only will it be used to educate a new generation of children, but it will also be used in the evenings for adult literacy classes. For the first time, many of Tegela's parents will learn how to write their names and become literate.

On the eve of the inauguration, I met with a group of village elders outside of the school. One old man told me that the school has brought honor to Tegela. "I'm so happy that my head is almost touching the sky," he said, "This school will fight darkness and ignorance out of our village."

The first class of students, some of whom you can see in the pictures, will put the school to use immediately. So on behalf of these smiling faces, thank you for your support!

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