"I didn't come into Peace Corps saying, 'I need to build a building,' but I really wanted to empower the people to be self-sustainable," she said. "If my mom had one job raising me and my sister, it was to empower us to care for ourselves." To jump-start her project, Rachael bought boxes of books from a southern Catholic priest last year for $30. Villagers swarmed in excitement. The proposed site for the library has changed four times, but with a farmer's donation, Rachael said the king and seven elders have finally signed a contract. The area's concrete shortage is the latest roadblock. Materials must be imported from seven hours south. Rachael hopes to have ground broken within two weeks and an inauguration before she leaves in September.
Rachael Miller could live for months on Twenty dollars in the West African village of Guinagourou, where she is a Peace Corps volunteer
Coffee with Rachael
Sandra M. Klepach
SKlepach@News-Herald.com
03/27/2008
Painesville mom makes, sells mugs to fund daughter's West African library
Twenty dollars can go a long way.
Rachael Miller could live for months on it in the West African village of Guinagourou, where she is a Peace Corps volunteer.
But the cash can't buy books. There are simply none to buy.
"The concept of leisure reading was nonexistent" when she arrived in the nation of Benin in July 2006, she said. "I said the word 'novel' in French, and they were like, 'What?' "
The avid reader's heart broke. So she decided to engage private investors to build a library through the Peace Corps Partnership Program.
"I get to come home for a short vacation in May, and I think I may cry when I walk into Morley Library," she said. "I grew up with it."
Back in Painesville, Sandy Miller speaks with her 23-year-old daughter once or twice a month. She misses their conversation. And in the wake of her own parents' deaths, she
couldn't keep her hands off Rachael's project for long.
The successful potter, who has a studio in her garage, began crafting mugs to sell for $20 each. Her "Mugs for Rachael" project will be the primary contributor to the Guinagourou Library.
"Once I explained (to the villagers) that she was giving her time and materials for free - because that's what they understand - and it was my mother doing it, they were floored," Rachael said.
Secondary education is
neither free nor expected in Guinagourou. It is a rural farming community with no electricity, and with foot pumps for water.
People climb trees or hills for cell-phone reception. Rachael held numerous meetings with elders just to define the word "library."
"I didn't come into Peace Corps saying, 'I need to build a building,' but I really wanted to empower the people to be self-sustainable," she said. "If my mom had one job raising me and my sister, it was to empower us to care for ourselves."
To jump-start her project, Rachael bought boxes of books from a southern Catholic priest last year for $30. Villagers swarmed in excitement.
The proposed site for the library has changed four times, but with a farmer's donation, Rachael said the king and seven elders have finally signed a contract.
The area's concrete shortage is the latest roadblock. Materials must be imported from seven hours south.
Rachael hopes to have ground broken within two weeks and an inauguration before she leaves in September.
The building will never look like Morley. It will be a concrete structure with a tin roof, 10 meters by 6 meters, with shelves and screens on the windows.
"But hopefully it will give kids a tranquil place to study," Rachael said. "The city, with livestock and families, is a pretty hectic atmosphere to try to conjugate verbs."
Rachael travels to a region with better cell-phone reception to speak with her family once or twice a month.
The table space in her mom's garage studio is filled with items for the National Clay Conference, tiles for her kitchen and stacks of pottery literature. Ironically, dyslexia restricts Sandy's own leisure reading to audio books.
Drying mugs are already claimed, with 100 percent of their cost benefiting the library. Her first batch, worth almost $400, sold in 24 hours. Most of another batch of 88 sold at Avon Lake Public Library. Ten more will soon go to a sorority at Miami University. The project's original fundraising goal of $1,000 has hit $2,500.
With a pound and a half of clay, she fashions a mug with "soft lips" and the ideal thickness for toasty hot beverages. The "Mad Potter" can throw 25 a day, but her mugs take a week to dry, 18 hours in a bisque kiln after glazing, another 22 hours firing at 2,200 degrees, and another day to cool.
"People think they're saving the world a $20 mug at a time, and they are," she said. "Honestly, this whole project did help me. And it empowers the people that buy."
Sandy, a 56-year-old former park ranger, said she empowered her girls by taking them globetrotting and teaching them how to use public transportation. She's essentially stopped making "dustables," or nonfunctional pots since Rachael's been away.
"We've always been the tree-hugging family," she said.
"The one thing I always told my kids was, 'Don't take up space on the planet. It's not your God-given right to suck up air.' Who knew they were listening?
"I miss my daughter, and I would do anything I could to sit in my back yard and have coffee with her. So for every mug I throw, it's like having coffee with my daughter."
To order a mug, visit www.sandymillerpottery.com and click on Mugs for Rachael.
To read about Rachael's Peace Corps experience, or learn how to donate in other ways in the coming months, visit her blog at www.rachaelinbenin.blogspot.com.
