Books for Nepal

My dear old, as in known for a long time, friend Kathy and her husband Eric just informed me they are "gifting" HANDS in Nepal shipping fees for us to mail to Kathmandu books for our school. The books have been donated by many friends and I've been storing them not knowing how we'll get them half way around the world, but somehow feeling a way would reveal itself. The books are like treasure to the children over there, who seldom have the luxury of a book. When we had our fund-raiser, we asked that children "pay" for their meal by donating a book for the school, and we had a nice selection by the evening's end. Now the books have been turning up on our doorstep. A friend just emailed that she had some books to bring over. There seems no end to gathering this precious commodity that will be so gratefully accepted by the children in Darkha, as they come to their new school. Now my mind turns to bookshelves in the school house. How will the books be stored and what will be the best way to manage the books? Can we actually have the school opened during off-hours, so children can come in and read. This would be especially lucrative during the wet monsoon season, when there is little else to do in a remote and soggy village. How wonderful to give the gift of literacy and the books that will make this gift all the more relevent!

So Kathy, Eric and I are planning our first "book boxing" party, sometime next week, to box, tape up and send off to Kathmandu our first parcels of books. I hope they will arrive about the time I will, June 22. Then I'll be able to receive the books and help escort them on the next leg of their journey-from bus top to jeep to donkey and finally to the hands of Darkha children-from our HANDS to theirs!