Talking about library, we always taught and thought a nice comfy place under air-conditioned room with books lining up in the shelf. But not this, totally different! No comfy seats, no air-conditioned room, no tasty fast foods, just books. Just books… nothing else. Plus with bunch of kids learning how to read. That’s our library, Tunas Bangsa Library.
At start, we don’t have any names for the library. We just thought that we want to start library as soon as possible, provides books to surrounding children, so they have their own interest in books. But lately we felt that name is important, since we requested books from National Library in Singapore. For them, it is for their records who asked for book donation. Then why we choose Tunas Bangsa as the name?
Tunas (Indonesian) means sprout, a new-born plant. While Bangsa (Indonesian) refers to nation. This library dedicated to a new pupil of the nation.
The place is in Lampung Province, Indonesia. It’s in Dayamurni village in Tumijajar, to be precise. If you are there, you will not find any library nearby. As the library is inside one of the villager’s house, not a fancy one but it is good enough to cover a few pupil trying to learn something from books. That villager’s house is our friend’s house, where we put all books inside their house. Children, they would want to come and read over there for any books.
Don’t think any places like a common library. Like what you can see here in the image, it is just a simple house without air-con, they can sit literally everywhere and read the book. There is no such common activity in library where we can find people reading books, some register for reading the book at home then return it at some specified date. This is just a simple place where anyone just come, sit, read, then they can continue on their activities.
Children, they don’t come often, nor never come. They occasionally come to read, then go. Some quite busy with their “activity”, playing with their friend, or just go to the mosque learn about religion. Some come not to read, but they want to study together, solve some Maths, and some other major in their study. So, our friend’s quite open, and sometimes they provide a free simple tuition for children.
