PHOTOS: Improvised Library Brings Joy Of Books To Kids Living In Gang Territory

Terence Crowster, a development worker who has been an avid reader since he was young, solicited donations to start the Hot-Spot Library in Scottsville, Cape Town, so kids would have a safe place to connect with books.

Tommy Trenchard for NPR

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They call it the Hot-Spot library: a ramshackle building of plywood and sheet metal set on a crime-ridden street corner in Cape Town, South Africa. With its threadbare couches and mismatched carpets, the place looks somewhat dilapidated. On winter days, rain leaks through holes in the corrugated zinc roof and drips down onto the tables and bookshelves.

Built around a pair of aging shipping containers, it may not look like your conventional library. But for the residents of Scottsville, a neighbourhod torn apart by drug abuse and gang violence, it offers a safe space to escape the harsh realities of daily life and to explore different worlds in the pages of thousands of donated second-hand books.

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The Hot-Spot Library is made of used shipping containers connected by wood and metal. It sits between two gang territories.

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The «Library Rules are stuck to a painted window in the Hot-Spot Library. Kids who borrow books must submit a book review when they return them.

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Tommy Trenchard for NPR

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Decorative books hang from the ceiling in the Hot Spot Library.

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Kids learn to knit at the Hot-Spot library, which offers regular classes for the community.

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Bernalee Victor, 12, is a daily visitor at the Hot-Spot library. Her favorite book so far, she says, is an adaptation of the TV movie High School Musical.

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Librarian Abigail Cloete reads Ena Murray’s Heartbeat in Hawaii. «I like to feel the emotions, she says. «I like reading books that make me cry.

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Former gangster and reading advocate Sabelo Ngxola will help run the second Hot-Spot Library, in Scottsdene, which will open to the public in the coming weeks.

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A shipping container in the Scottsdene neighborhood of Cape Town is being transformed into the second Hot-Spot Library.

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A shipping container in the Scottsdene neighborhood of Cape Town is being transformed into the second Hot-Spot Library.

Tommy Trenchard for NPR

«We want to create a safe haven where they can escape into another world, he says, as rain drips through a hole in the roof and collects in a puddle on the plywood floor, «where they can see themselves, and see what they can become.

Tommy Trenchard is an independent photojournalist based in Cape Town, South Africa. He has previously contributed photos and stories to NPR on the Mozambique cyclone of 2019, the Ebola outbreak and Indonesian death rituals.