Living by the Book
Books were scarce in our village, Naqelewai, in Fiji. All material possessions were scarce because of the village’s remote location. Despite the two-day journey involving dusty bus rides and a muddy Land Rover trek, I brought in five cartons of books, many of them Peace Corps issues with titles like Small Business Projects for Rural Villages and Raising Chickens in the Bush. I also tucked in books for comfort, like The Joy of Cooking, The Tao Te Ching, and War and Peace. Later I picked up junk, mystery, and romance novels from other Peace Corps Volunteers and from bookstores in the capital. During my two years in Naqelewai, I read everything I could find, including Newsweek, furnished by the Peace Corps, and National Geographic, sent by my parents.
Despite the almost irreplaceable pieces of Fijian tapa cloth and a war club hanging in the house, they reached for my books first. They recognized my values even though they did not share them.
“Change is not scary, but what’s scary is you have no idea how you’re going to change.”
— Donna GessellIt is ironic that, of all my projects in Naqelewai, the primary school library is my lasting legacy. When the school was being rebuilt, the headmaster requested a library. He set aside the space in the building, and I contacted agencies that collect and distribute new and used books. Ten chests of books arrived, and some fifth and sixth graders helped sort and process the books. When the new building was finished, the headmaster declared the library the most important part of the new school, and he predicted a long future of reading for his students.
“Living by the Book” was written ten years after Donna’s return from Fiji. Of all her academic writing, it is the piece that has reached the most people — drawing emails from strangers around the world long after its original publication. In 2007, the Peace Corps featured it as a podcast on PeaceCorps.gov. It remains one of the truest things she has ever written.