School Supply Room Reorganization

Most people that know me would (I hope) use the word “organized” if asked to give a description of my best qualities. For me, organizing things isn’t a chore; it is an enjoyable activity – like skiing or cooking for other people. In any case, since the day I arrived at my school, I have wanted to help organize the storage room where they keep all of the stationery (aka: school supplies). The place is the size of a small office – in fact the door to the room says “Deputy Principal” because apparently back in the day it actually was an office – and simply put, completely full of shit. It was essentially 18 years worth of half opened boxes piled up to the ceiling with random other garbage on shelves and in cabinets. No one in the whole school could have told you what was in there. Or even if they could, it was absolutely impossible to find. I wish I had taken a picture.

The new and improved school supply room.
Enough exercise books for several lifetimes.

I had casually mentioned about a hundred times last year that I would be happy to lead the way in cleaning out the room, but there never seemed to be a good time, and I knew I was going to need a lot of help. At the very end of the year, when the school supplies were delivered for the next school year, there was absolutely no way to fit them into this storage room, so I was asked if they could be put into the computer lab. I semi-reluctantly said yes, knowing that the only way they would ever get out of the computer lab is if the storage room was cleaned. So when school started this year, I took a stand and said that there was no way I could have students come in to use the computers until everything was cleaned up. Now, this was obviously a lie, but it is the kind of lie that works quite well here. Having things be neat and orderly in your work area is highly valued in Zulu culture, so everyone fully believed that I could not possibly do my job with a bunch of boxes piled up against the wall. Whatever it takes.

More exercise books, as well as basic school supplies
like pens, pencils, glue, and chalk in the cupboard.

After weeks of moving boxes and discovering supplies that teachers have been asking about for years, at the end of the first week in February, everything was finally finished. I was able to clean out one whole cabinet and then fill it with basic school supplies like pens, pencils, erasers (I found over 1000), chalk (nearly 400 boxes), glue (maybe 700 sticks), scissors, markers (at least 600 packs), and the list could go on and on. When the principal saw it, she immediately declared, “We are rich!” and then had a lock installed on the cabinet door so no one would steal anything. Classic. On the same side of the room as this cabinet are two tables that now have quite a few art supplies under them (think hundreds of paint brushes and buckets of paint) while on top of the tables sit 25-30 boxes of notebooks sorted by size and number of pages. And on the other side of the room sit more boxes of notebooks (60-70) sorted by size and number of pages. What I found most interesting is that when teachers came in to see the room, they commented on what a good idea it was to put all the boxes with say notebooks with 72 pages, size A5, together (there were 16 of them) and then next to those boxes I put all the boxes with notebooks of 48 pages. Since this seemed like the only logical thing to do, in my opinion, I had to ask what they would have done instead. They said they would have piled the boxes on top of each other in whatever order they picked them up. And there you have it.

This may sound crazy, but of all the things that I have done here, I actually think that organizing this storage room is one of the most important and sustainable projects I have completed. For starters, the principal has already said that there is no reason for the school to spend any money on supplies for next year, or maybe even the next couple of years, so they can use that money for other things that they have been wanting to buy – like a new copy machine and more tools to use in the school garden. Second, I think that the teachers are generally excited that they have the access to the supplies they need to do their job. We shall see. I gave the LTMC (Learning and Teaching Materials Committee – yes, that exists) a tour of the room and said my job is done. It remains to be seen what it will look like in a few months. I’ll have to make sure I keep in touch with the next volunteer to see whether it deteriorates back to its former state by the end of the school year. I do hope not.