July 17th- The Library Opens!

Today, we had the pleasure of seeing the Bird Land Library open officially. As some may know, for the past 3 years the SAAS Zambia Club has been raising money to fund the construction of this brand new building for the school. The day was wonderful and special for everyone on the trip, but I found myself especially happy to see the library open because I oversaw a great deal of this fund raising when I was the Zambia Club president for SAAS middle school in 2008. For my entire 8th grade year, I organized bake sales and shamelessly tried to encourage my classmates to buy as many cookies and cupcakes from the sales as their wallets would allow. Needless to say, the small fortunes spent on treats helped Sonja and I raise a large amount of money to start the building of the library.
So on the 17th of July, I was overjoyed to be marching around with the Bird Land students who carried a banner announcing the opening of their library up front. This banner was even carried in front of the local police band. After marching back to the school, we sat in seats under tents and happily listened to guest speakers praise all of the hard work that went into this opening. Our MC was a comical man, always making jokes about names or throwing in stories, so it seemed like only a short while until Olive and Sonja cut the ribbon at the door of the library. Parents, students, and government officials alike flooded onto the freshly waxed green floors of the library. People admired the shiny new plaque that was out on the veranda of the library. Bird Land primary students grabbed our hands and made us sit down with a book from the shelves. The local TV crew even made it out to capture the day’s events.
Dancing ensued the book reading but we soon had to leave on our buddies and travel to Olive’s house for a fabulous lunch on her lawn.
The entire day passed very quickly for me and I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that 3 years of work just opened before my eyes. I am so proud of the work that SAAS has done to open this library and I look forward to hearing from other Zambia trip students about how its shelves are filling up with books that can “transport them to another world” – Stacia Cammarano 8th grade poster advertising another bake sale