What teachers in the US and Madagascar have in common.

My producer, Jullian Androkae, did something unusual and remarkable when he was 19 years old: He opened a library in Bekitro, his ancestral village in southern Madagascar.

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That was in 2018. The library is alive and well today. Which you’ll hear about, because this episode is all about Jullian’s Vahombey Project, which built the library, furnished it, stocked it with books, and hired (and still pays) two prodigious librarians, Mme Raissa and Mme Hary, who not only serve hundreds of children a day but have turned the library into a community center.

I call the librarians prodigious because these women are anchors in a somewhat chaotic educational sea. The educational context they work in is quite different from that of the U.S. But the individual situations they deal with are similar — and damn! Raissa and Hary are ON IT! Their voices, which you’ll hear in the episode, inspire me from 10,000 miles away.

Jullian and I discuss

* Giving Back: How he came up with the idea for the project

* Eating Crow: How the village school handled the parents of a disruptive student

* Living on Air: Some pretty incomprehensible differences between teaching in the US and in Madagascar

* Holding the Line: The value of being a “harsh” librarian

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Call to Action

I love this special bonus episode, and I love the Vahombey project. So I hope you listen and enjoy.