Yesterday was the last day I spent living in Pongkor. For now 2 weeks the pretty beautiful village which is located near Iteng was my home.
Near this village you can find two more libraries; in Kaca and Paka. All of them are part of the local elementary school.

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Because of that I had to make sure every school will include their library in their weekly school-schedule. So I travelled to Paka and Kaca and we luckily managed to find a way that each class could enter the library once per week during school-time.

 

In addition to that I talked to the coordinators about the library, informed the teachers about the upcoming workshop of Taman Bacaan Pelangi and did some activities together with the children in the afternoon. Doing that stuff full-filled my first week completely.

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After that week I had to do my Singapore visa trip to extend my visa for another half a year.

 

The day I arrived again in Labuan Bajo I already joined the workshop. We had a great time there. It was pretty amazing to see all the coordinators together at one place. I already knew most of them because I visited them in the last few months.

 

After the workshop I got to spend one night on Henrik’s island Papagarang and I really have to admit: ”Great work Henrik!” The library on Papagarang is definitely looking magnificent. The most I like is the fence in the front.

 

That day already passed I got on the way back to Pongkor. Since Monik wanted to visit my village as well I just joined her car. On the way there we had to stop in Datak to transmit the unfortunate news of closing a library.

 

But now after already 2 years since Lukas Beerman left Datak the library was not running well and during our visit in November we found half of TBP-books eaten by bookworms.

 

The day after that we arrived in Pongkor. We talked to the teachers in Pongkor and Monik did some after-workshop-work. We did the same procedure in Paka and Kaca.

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Then I had one more week alone, now just focussing on Pongkor. In that time I had to make the library ready, which meant to get stickers on the books, create library rules, rethink the schedule, fix it and organise the whole library, including the schoolbooks. Everything done I got back yesterday.

 

Pongkor, Februray 2016

Leon