Kuuliza si ujinga

Books are a valuable commodity at my school. Most students don't have them, and if they do, they're generally dog-eared, taped, well-used books. We do have a school library, built by the last volunteer, but it's small and has little space to sit down and flip through books. Also, book-lending by the library is unfortunately on hold, as a very large number of students have taken out books and not returned them.

Some examples of how valuable books are:

-I've been doing after-school chemistry question and answer sessions once or twice a week. I always bring a large pile of chemistry books with me. As soon as I put the books down at a desk, students race forward to take them. For the next hour and a half, there are three to five students clustered around each book, sounding out the English words and staring at the color pictures. I generally sit and read a novel or write a letter while this is going on, and wait for them to bring me questions. There are maybe two or three questions per session. But 20 to 30 students come, and I almost always end up staying late because they don't want to give up the books.
-Sometimes I bring textbooks to my biology class to show them pictures of the things I'm teaching about. Whenever I do this, I end up staying late, as the students invariably want to continue flipping through the book and asking me questions about it.
-And the half life of books in my hand has become alarmingly short. I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for lending out books. If my students want to learn, who am I to deny them? But this can be a problem when I lend out rather useful books such as my English-Kiswahili dictionary, and the students are late to return them . . . I'm still trying to think of a better lending system.