It is Wednesday, the last day of my three-day volunteer work in the Book Project’s basement. We are all busy with the tasks that have to be done: sorting the books from the big heaps of boxes that came from the Bank’s warehouse, stamping textbooks and library books, encyclopedias and dictionaries, piling them up according to their content and level, packing them into boxes, making boxes, flattening the discarded ones, taking calls, making calls to office movers, to the warehouse, to donors etc., writing thank you letters, receiving requests from schools around the world, producing labels for the shipment and doing all the organizational stuff in the office.
One quarter of the shipment to India is done, and the packed boxes are being neatly stacked. Today, in early March, is a most beautiful spring day in Washington. So we have decided not to have our lunch in the lunchroom of our office as we would normally, but rather at a nice restaurant around the corner.
Unexpectedly, a tall, distinguished gentleman, a staff member from the Ivory Coast, enters our office. He tells us that he has a fantastic chance to send our French books, which have been sitting in one corner of the packing room for months and months, to his home country next Wednesday. Next Wednesday??? This means three and a half days for packing! That makes 48 to 64 boxes? Impossible! Nicolas Nianduillet is pleading with his eyes, waiting for our reaction. Could it be done? The only answer we have is “we can try.” Okay, after lunch.
Before you know it, he’s back asking if we could possibly have it done by Monday, please! So, we rush back from the restaurant after lunch. We plunge into the work at full speed. One of us makes boxes and labels them, two are packing the stamped textbooks as fast as they can, one is carrying boxes of unstamped books to two “stampers” and two are multitasking. This is true teamwork! It creates an astonishing feeling of community; we all want to reach a worthy goal together…but this time quickly.
Of course we didn’t stop at 3 o’clock that Wednesday as we would normally. But by 5 o’clock one skid was completed, the second one was half done, and we were exhausted but happy. Some of the volunteers returned to the Book Project on Friday with Nicolas and additional helpers he brought along to finish the job.
On Monday, March 12, 2012 the wrapped skids were moved to the loading dock and loaded onto a truck to be shipped later on to Cote d’Ivoire, Africa.
Our work—which is normally not done in such a hurry—exemplifies the essence of our mission at the Book Project: assisting the education of children in developing countries.
by Antje Liese-Muentinga