Wendy Lee’s blog posts from Cameroon bring a little perspective to modern life. How valuable is a hot shower or running water or reliable electricity? Their value to a 22-year-old from St. Charles living in a mountainous village in West Africa might give you pause if you consider how readily available they are here.

Wendy Lee

But what Lee wants more than creature comforts is for 2,300 people to donate $5 each so she and other Peace Corps volunteers can build 28 bilingual libraries. She’s also looking for donations from organizations and small businesses.

Lee, a graduate of St. Charles High School and St. Louis University, traveled to Cameroon in June 2008. She will be there until June or July of next year. Early in her Peace Corps service, she taught English, only to discover children in her classes didn’t know how to read. “They were not even able to follow along with the words as I read them,” she said.

So, Lee contacted Books for Africa, an American organization that promotes literacy across the African continent. She received an all-or-nothing proposition for one 40-foot container holding 22,000 books.

Books for Cameroon was born.

The going has been slow, Lee said in an e-mail interview. She and other volunteers have raised about $1,000 of the $11,500 they need for the first container of books. They’ll probably need about the same amount to bring a second container — this one holding French books — to Cameroon.

It’s a massive project for a woman with big goals. Lee wants to live on every continent — except Antarctica — and speak six languages. She lived in Taiwan until she was 12, spent the next 10 years in the U.S., and studied abroad in France during college.

She speaks Chinese, Taiwanese, English and French.

“People always told me I can work for jobs that allow me to travel, but I want more than just living in airplanes and hotel rooms,” Lee said. “I want to be integrated into the culture and learn different ways of life in the world.”

Meanwhile, Lee is pouring her heart into the library effort and using all kinds of social media to send out her message. Aside from her blog, you also can follow her efforts on Facebook and Twitter. For more information on the project, or to donate, visit this site.