To get there, we volunteered to travel with a group from St. David's Episcopal Church in McMurray, Pennsylvania, to the LaCroix New Testament Mission in LaCroix, Haiti. St. David's Church sponsors a trip to the mission each year; volunteers bring supplies, offer medical assistance in the clinic, and engage in special projects at the mission. The purpose of this trip was to organize and establish a library for the LaCroix school and community; the mission had received a large book donation from a French-speaking Catholic school which had been closed in Quebec, Canada. St. David's parish community covered the costs of our food and shelter on the week-long trip to Haiti. Out of respect for the Haitian culture, we were required to wear long skirts. We did attend church services with the mission community, but we (as student volunteers) were not focused on the religious mission. Our mission was library building!

We arrived in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, in the late afternoon and stayed overnight at a guest house in the city. LaCroix is 85 miles north of Port-au-Prince on Route 1. This is the only major road in Haiti, and it is crudely (if at all) paved. In addition to its poor construction, it also lacks lights. Our host, Pastor Pierre, feared for our safety and did not want us traveling on the road after dark.

Pastor Pierre deserves high praise for realizing the need for a library in his community. He envisions an educated population able to achieve self-sufficiency in the future. To this end, Pastor Pierre emphasized that all library resources be made available to the community He wants the collection, in his words, "to have something for everyone."

After a three-hour ride on Route 1, we finally arrived in LaCroix and found a huge task awaited us. The library, which we had been told was completed, was not, in fact, finished. There weren't any stairs to its second floor location, and the masons were still building the library walls. We couldn't believe what a mess the room was! We had such limited time down there and we felt like we would never get things finished. In addition to the library being incomplete, the carpenter who was supposed to build the shelving for us had gone to the United States.

The books had been shipped in a large metal container the size of an eighteen-wheeler, and the donated books had been sitting in there for over a year.

When we opened the container, our task appeared even more daunting: The books were in shambles. They had been dumped in the container, and now they were covered in dust. LaCroix is on the arid side of the island of Hispaniola and it had not rained in LaCroix since October 1998. Thus, everything there was dusty and dirty. The books were no exception. Our first step was unloading the books from the container and moving them to a sorting room. Students and members of the mission work crew helped us with this process. The best part of this experience was seeing the absolute joy on the children's and workmen's faces when they saw the books. They kept stopping and reading while they were unloading! It was such an eye-opening experience to see them handling these books--which we often take for granted in our society--as if each were precious.

In the sorting room, the missionaries, Sue and I hoped to make some order to the books. The LaCroix students were so enthralled with what we were doing; we were like television to them! We hadn't anticipated this reaction. They all crowded into the room and would take any book we put to the side because it was damaged or because we felt the title was irrelevant for them. For example, one child scooped up a 1972 Canadian college catalog, and it was as if he had found a brand new toy or a computer game. To keep them from getting under our feet, we kept giving them books to keep them occupied. Their reaction was amazing! They were so enthusiastic and happy just to have the books in front of them that they seemed entranced. We recruited two older children, Denis and Woody, to work with us through the process.

Once the books were in the sorting room, we began by dividing them into very general subject categories. Most of the titles were in French. Many were textbooks with duplicate copies. We had to discard some out-of-date materials such as the 1970s-era college catalogs, and we had to throw away a few items that had been irretrievably damaged in transit from Quebec. We even had a first-hand lesson in cultural sensitivity and intellectual freedom, when one of the St. David's missionaries began censoring collection, feeling that books on mythology and women's health were inappropriate for the Haitians. We disagreed with this censorship, and appealed to Pastor Pierre who indicated that he was pleased to have ALL kinds of books in the school's library. After about two days of sorting in the hot, dusty, cinderblock room, we had the basic organization of the books complete. The next task was to process the books.

Before we left Pittsburgh, Sue and I had the idea that we would be able to develop a basic catalog card for each book title with a corresponding color dot for each subject. (Carol Hoffman of the University Library System at Pitt donated library card stock--nearly 100 pounds worth--and the hundreds of colored dots in eleven different colors were donated by Dr. Ellen Detlefsen of the School of Information Sciences.)

Once in Haiti and faced with the reality of LaCroix, we quickly realized that a card system would be too complicated and not necessary for the needs of this community. The community had no understanding of how a library works because they have never been exposed to one. However, we found that the colored-dot classification system for each subject was appropriate for this library because the students understood broad subject headings from their classes in school. We divided the books into categories with a corresponding color for each subject. Each book was assigned a subject and the appropriate dot was placed on the book's spine. (Even though we didn't use the 100 pounds of library cards in the library, they were put to good use. We donated them to the LaCroix Medical Clinic, where the staff at the clinic said they would use them to write medication instructions. They have no paper in the clinic, so this was a great item for them to receive.)
To see a larger view of the "dot" classification system, click on the image to the right.

The books were placed into the following categories: Reference, Health, Science, Religion, French Language, English Language, Stories, Readers, Mathematics, History/Geography, Music/Art, Teachers' Aids, and Adult. The books were then shelved within the same color scheme.

After we finished processing the books, we then had to get the books from the sorting room up to the library -- without the use of stairs. We were able to get most of the books up to the library by loading them into a big duffel bag and having Jack, one of the Haitian workers, lift them up by rope to the second floor. Two volunteers from St. David's were able to complete rough shelving for us around the still-wet plaster walls of the library room.

The library was finally finished on our last day there, the masons were still cleaning up and taking away the tools, boards, and concrete blocks as we were bringing books into the room. We could not have done this without the help of the LaCroix students. They were eager to help organize their school library; and gave us daily inspiration.

When we placed the first books on the shelves, it was a gratifying experience. We all felt we had come such a long way in a short amount of time. We just wished we could have stayed longer to finish the entire library. Before we left, Sue and I trained Harold, an older student selected by Pastor Pierre, to oversee the library. We are hoping that future volunteers who visit LaCroix will continue the work on the library we started. We hope that this story of "building" a library will encourage others to donate their time to projects such as this.