Work began on the library the day after my return from Conakry and within a week we tore down the rotting ceiling, fixed all of the shelves and woodwork, brushed down the walls and floors, and cemented the cracks in the ceiling. The Librarian told me that he prayed to God that we would continue helping them. The funds were allocated to the project within 24 hours of its commencement. The effectiveness of working with a multi-national allowed for rapid deployment of resources, and immediate action to be taken on the ground using subcontractors like cement workers, carpenters, etc... The hardest task was motivating students and the administration to volunteer to help rebuild their own library. They all ask for books, and especially for me to photocopy documents, but in the end, few of them really care about being part of the solution. I called for volunteers at the flagpole one morning, with over five-hundred students present, only two showed up to help. Drawn by curiosity, some kids from primary school who were walking by helped me scrub down the entire library. The same happened at the base: all the employees had asked me for English classes, and when they began, thirty five signed up, 6 attended the first class, and now on average I have four employees taking classes twice a week.
It’s hard to understand why the people here aren’t motivated to make changes or improvements in their community. Talking with the youth, it becomes apparent that they want things to be different. But they often say that they simply don’t know how to go about implementing change. But there is always an excuse. Are people discouraged by the appearance of a vastly more modern constituent in their community? Or are they too reliant on tradition? When you ask them why they don’t add broomsticks to their brooms, they say it is because of tradition and that it’s easier without. People simply don’t believe they can be responsible for bringing about change. They live thinking that it is not up to them to make a difference. Often things can only be solved by divine intervention, or by the presence of an outside motivator, such as our company. Consequently we become the miracle and have trouble handing over responsibility to the locals.
According to their traditions, society and religion, the woman are responsible for the household, and the husband in providing for his family. According to Islam, each man may have up to four wives and over a dozen children. These children in return, may provide benefits to the family in the long term. Using traditional methods, a woman has to spend an entire day accomplishing the basic tasks of washing dishes, preparing food, cleaning clothes, fetching water, and taking care of the children. Prior to the development of technologies that accelerated each of these processes, women in our own society use to be trapped often because of the same responsibilities. Modernization and outsourcing has allowed women to dedicate their time to other things like creating businesses and pursuing higher education. Because in Kerouane women’s work is so demanding, they often don’t have time to go to school, and their daughters are kept at home to assist in the daily tasks of grounding rice, sweeping, cooking, and cleaning. The girls’ volleyball team represents a huge shift in their culture and traditions, but the players struggle to balance the sport and their personal lives. Students, both boys and girls struggle to do their homework and keep up with classes because of their important obligations at home. Although tradition is important in maintaining an identity, technology has allowed new opportunities to flourish within a family. To understand the difficulties of motivating a community, one has to recognize the religious and traditional roots of many of the setbacks that restrain progress from thriving within a society.
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