By Shifa Bi Khan
A task much thought of at our Chimbel community library was to make the front sit-out more inviting. What could be done to bring children in? What would scream out loud that it is their library? A discussion with the MOP (Mobile Outreach Programme) team and many ideas in mind, we took up the task of beautifying and personalising the Chimbel library balcao for our community children. A task which I must say, turned out to be quiet exiting and personal.
It began one Thursday as I accompanied our MOP (Mobile Outreach Programme) team to the community library. I was as nervous as I was excited. How were we to begin it? How were we to include children? It is quiet easy to just paint yourself, especially when you can control every outcome but to involve the children is a difficult task.
The first session began with the circle song to bring the children together. We gave them all a sheet of paper and asked them to draw their visualisation for the wall outside. And, oh my, what a turnout! They were quiet imaginative, happy. The young ones scribbled away their ideas and the older ones asked for more colours. As the session progressed, we got a lot from them that we could do. It was a pleasantly fruitful exercise. Now the task was to choose, for which we combined many drawings together but what we lacked was to make it library themed. Then the idea evolved to make a book tree and one with their fingerprints as signatures for leaves. And so we decided to go with that.
The painting commenced at the next session with chaotic excitement from our library children. In order to involve all, we allowed batches of five children for every 15 minutes to paint the background scene, not starting with the trees yet. I demonstrated the technique of holding and applying paint, making the brush moist enough to not give rough strokes. And the painting went on to the next session as the base coat of paint needed drying. The next session saw coat 2, added on the base layer. And then the next session was going to be it. The final session.
We were apprehensive of children not being there as we decided of a weekday morning to start work hoping the children would show up as it was Christmas break. And to our joy, they did. I started with the trunk of the tree, a thin hazy outline with paint, letting them take charge of their own trees. They took turns and spaces assigned to them to fill paint. With a lot of chuckling and giggling, the girls accomplished their task, the trunks were done. Now the thinner branches were taken up by the older children. I demonstrated the technique so they could fill paint without making the brushes too dry. Then came the difficult task of doing the books on the tree, hanging upside down as leaves. The idea was to let them do it so pencil outlines were drawn and they were to fill paint. It was quiet tricky in the beginning but they got the hang of it. And our books tree was complete.
And now for the exiting task of hand stamps as signatures. The oldest of them took it upon herself to paint the hands of the younger ones as they were directed to make a stamp of their hand on the wall. We had beautiful tiny hands all around our tree with so much laughter and joy. It was their joy of a task fulfilled. The final touches were given by the older children’s hands on top of the trees. A few young ones decided they wanted frog stamps along the ground line and so we have a lot many fronts around the tree now and a few butterflies as well. The idea was to encourage every idea coming from them to make it a personal space for them. And so we did it. The children of the community library of Chimbel had painted their own welcoming balcao, inviting all to visit their library.