Donate Books!

(the promised post)

Keywords: Free shipping. Five bucks. Easy.

If you would love to have a hand in our work here, or impact loads of Ethiopian kids, we’ve got one word for you: books. Daniel and I know from experience that reading as a child is crucial. It not only develops literacy and vocabulary, but also a love for reading as you grow old. We are lucky: reading is engrained in the culture of America. Unfortunately, that’s not the case everywhere.

I’d start a bet with you that in our two years of service, we won’t be in a family’s home that has a book for enjoyable reading. Textbooks? Sure. A picture book? What is that? Well, since the kids can’t read at home, good thing their schools have libraries, right? Wrong.

Adi-Mahleka, a school where I have English Club every Friday, has not a single children’s book in their library. Not in Tigrigna, not in Amharic, not in English. Zero. They’ve got textbooks galore, but what child is going to read those? Adua, another of my schools, has maybe 10 children’s books: a feat I nearly jumped and sang for.

Betterworldbooks.com is a website that works much like Toms shoes: you buy a book online (free worldwide shipping!) and they donate another to someone in need. We know firsthand that this donation process is legit; just two months ago, a handful of our volunteers received 500 boxes of books from this donation program (some of which were given to us for Adwa schools, when they had overflow). Daniel and I have created a wishlist for the schools in Adwa: which means, if you buy one book (average cost 5-7 dollars, again no shipping!), another is still being donated. That’s two books for children who have none, for the price of two Starbuck’s drinks.

In other words—pretty please?

Here’s how it works: Below are the list of books we’d like. Repeats are great too, but we’d prefer a versatile library for Adi-Mahleka, versus 10 copies of Green Eggs and Ham. So peruse the list below, email me at danielle.luttrull@gmail.com, and let me know what books you want to buy. This way, I can tell you, “Aunt So-and-So just emailed me that she bought such-and-such. Can you choose a different one?” Then go to betterworldbooks.com, click Used Books from the categories on the left, type the book you want in the search bar, find your best price, and buy! Did I mention it’s free shipping?

Please have the books sent to:

Daniel and Danielle Luttrull

P.O. Box 227

Adwa, Ethiopia

Also, if there’s a children’s book not on the list that you really like, have at it! All books are welcome. When in doubt, the authors we’ve chosen below are great starts. When your book arrives to us, we will write on the inside cover: “Donated by __(name)___ from __(city)__, __(state)__, USA.”

And, God-willing, if we have an amazing response, we’ll make another list. Meles Zenawi is a tiny school in my district and given the size of their campus and their newness, I’d venture to guess they too are bookless. We surely can’t be sent too many: the need is great.

Where the Wild Things Are: Maurice Sendak

When I Get Bigger (Little Critter): Mercer Mayer

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly: Pam Adams

The Very Hungry Caterpillar: Eric Carle

The Mitten: Jan Brett

The Little Engine that Could: Watty Piper, George Hauman

The Foot Book: Dr. Seuss

The Cat in the Hat: Dr. Seuss

Green Eggs and Ham: Dr. Seuss

Oh, the Places You’ll Go: Dr. Seuss

Hop on Pop: Dr. Seuss

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish: Dr. Seuss

Rootabaga Stories, Part 2: Carl Sandburg

Just Me and My Dad: Mercer Mayer

Just a Dream: Chris Van Allsburg

Jumanji: Chris Van Allsburg

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie: Laura Joffe Numeroff

Goodnight Moon: Margaret Wise Brown

Corduroy: Don Freeman

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs: Judi Barrett, Ron Barrett

Clifford’s Manners: Norman Bridwell

Clifford’s First Autumn: Norman Bridwell

Clifford the Big Red Dog: Norman Bridwell

Clifford and the Big Parade: Norman Bridwell

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom: Bill Martin, Jr.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?: Bill Martin, Jr.

Are You My Mother?: P.D. Eastman

All By Myself: Mercer Mayer

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day: Judith Viorst

Go, Dog, Go!: P.D. Eastman

If you decide to participate, thank you a million times over. You’re lovely. You’re making a difference.

Other things:

-Christmas in Bahir Dar was amazing. It was wonderful to be with friends; to watch Rudolph on the big screen; to swim at a gorgeous resort; to make and enjoy donuts Christmas morning; to eat injera with fish from the Nile; to eat stuffing, yams, cranberry sauce, ham, and turkey (thanks to a volunteer’s dear mother who sent her visiting son to her other son with a suitcase full of cans); to make instant snow from a can; and to even record an Ethiopian rap. (On our route home, we stopped in Gondar and saw castles!)

These are our closest friends we spent Christmas with (among several other volunteers): Sarah, Amanda, Aaron, Tyler. Sarah & Aaron are the married volunteers in Bahir Dar.

 

-We finally bought a fridge! Here is a photo of its home-delivery:

While we could do American things like play with the fridge box with our neighbor kids (it quickly became a bajaj, and we dragged Meron in the box around the yard), there were some non-normal things: like the loads of cockroaches who were living in the box, because of an infestation at the fridge store (this is no Home Depot, people). We hope we got them all; we want a fridge, but certainly not cockroaches. But now we can have ice, cold water, mayo (deviled eggs and candied orange peel for New Year’s!), and our fruits and veggies will last a lot longer.

-Our friend Sarah’s aunt (married volunteer in Bahir Dar) sent her three black baby dolls. Unfortunately, two of Sarah’s neighbor girls moved away hours before the package arrived. Fortunately for Meron and Rodas, Sarah is generous and gave them to us. Here is a photo of Meron after opening her gift (which was the longest gift opening ever, complete with 3 nose-blowing-and-carrying-tissue-to-the-garbage intermissions; we believe it was her first time opening a wrapped present):

-We were super pumped about the fact that a new cobblestone road is being constructed outside our house: this will mean a much less dusty living room, once the dirt road is covered. However, when you put three teenagers on a bulldozer who don’t know what they’re doing, bad things happen. They broke a water pipe outside our house, which meant no water for five houses. We left for Bahir Dar the day after it happened; but of course, when we returned, it still wasn’t fixed. It took one week to be fixed, with very little help from the city workers (we had to hire our neighbor boy to dig out the pipe so the city could see it, because they arrived and said, “Where is it?” then lazily left). Thankfully, we can hopefully shower today after 7 days of dirtiness; we only had to live out of a bucket, and fetch water, for 2 ½ days. Could’ve been much worse. But I sure miss construction and city laws in the U.S. Why should our landlord have to pay and hound the city workers to fix what they broke in the first place? What was once unbelievable is now the expected, ridiculous norm.