Well where do I start? Delivering books to a school was a very different process than handing them out like last time to the children who lived on the street where I was staying. Our first hurdle was getting the books to the school. There are no taxis or cars on Lembongan so we hitched a ride with a ferry pickup ute into the centre of town. From there we asked four different lots of people working for ferry companies to drop us off at the school but an hour later we were still standing there. A man overheard me asking for a ride and offered to take us out on his motorbike but I told him that we have lots of luggage and showed him two suitcases weighing 20kg each. ‘No problem, I call my wife’ he said. I love this attitude that the Balinese have nothing is ever too hard or too much trouble. We arrived at the school unannounced as my contact on the island was away in Bali. The students, who were at recess, were very excited just to have visitors. Two of the older boys offered to carry the suitcases and we were ushered by all 100 students to the staff room. We were treated like royalty, the air conditioner was turned on and we were given bottled water. The teachers were amazed when I opened the suitcases and showed them all of the books. The students were cramming at the doorway and looking through the window in order to see what was happening. Once the bell rang for class to go back Matilda and I were shown around the school, into the classrooms and chatted with the older students who start learning English in year 4. Although it was an amazing experience I was left feeling disenchanted and quite down for the next couple of days. Its hard to explain but I felt like what I had achieved was nothing more than a drop in the ocean and there is so much more that could be done to help. This experience was a massive learning curve for me. The students and teachers were so happy and grateful I cannot wait to return with more books and help them established a better library. I wish I had taken more photos but I was so involved in the moment I completely forgot. And finally a BIG thank you to everyone who donated books! Without your donations none of this would have been possible.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 04:56:21 +0000