Nara Village is a tiny village located in West Flores. From Labuan Bajo, one needs to take a car/motorbike and drive for about 2 hours, continued by walking for another half hour, passing a dirt and rocky path.

My friend Andreas from Germany still joined us on this trip. Pak Avent, our coordinator for mountains area and his wife, also joined the fun. Today’s agenda was… opening a reading garden for the kids in this village! Yeayyy!!

Nara Village has around 70 families inhabitant. The village is cute and lovely, surrounded by trees all around. There is only one elementary school in this village, with around 40 students, ranging from 6 to 12 years old.

We got together in front of a house in the small hill. The children sat nicely on a mattress, waited for our “speech”. Just like in any other villages, these kids got very excited when we opened the boxes of books! The girls’ eyes were wide open when we saw them the Barbie books! Haha.. so cute!!!

Andreas got a little surprise for them. He gave each of them a book, a pencil and a set of crayons! OMIGOD… the kids was sooooo happy receiving the gifts! For them, a set of crayons is a luxury! They couldn’t take their eyes off of the crayons!

We also had a little game, in which, we asked them to take pictures from a pocket camera. After explaining how to take a picture, they used the camera in turn and each of them took 1 shot. They had so much fun with the camera and we couldn’t wait to see the results! Andreas promised to print the pictures and send them to them. They must be happy, I’m sure

Rainbow Reading Gardens in Nara Village opens every Saturday and Sunday at 3pm-5pm. Enjoy the books, kids!

ps: photo courtessy of Andreas Schuck