Great success : I now have a door to my compound! Turns out my landlord is known for not really accomplishing tasks that he has promised. So, I ended up dealing directly with the builder and everything got sorted out in no time. Now Butternut can run around freely in my yard! The only problem is that there’s a bit of a gap between the bottom of the gate and the ground where she likes to partially wiggle through, so I’m worried I’m going to come home one day and just find her totally stuck in there….

Additionally, Moussa (the builder) is very nice and my new friend. He has replaced the window screens on about 90% of my windows. When he saw my “shower” situation which is basically just all my soap etc. on the cement floor he said he’d make me something to arrange this, a cadeaux!

I just came into Maroua to attend a librarian’s conference…. I had been hoping they’d give us some information about obtaining more books, best practices, etc. but instead we spent in inordinate amount of time learning how to catalog books. So I was getting in heated arguments with the other bibliothecaires about identifying the publishing date, sub-titles, etc. of random books. I was like I have done this for every research paper since the fifth grade… blurgh. However, there are a few things I’d like to try. Right now, my students aren’t allowed to borrow the books, they can only use them in the library. So, I think if I can make out cards for each book then there could be a sign out system and hopefully that’d provide greater access to the books.

This week is exams at school so I’ve got lots of grading to do. I also need to “harmonise” the next sequence with the other English teacher so that we can cover the same topics - not my favorite activity. This sequence was the first time we harmonsied, and even though we agreed on topics we ended up spending different amounts of time on everything and had a really difficult time putting the tests together. Next year I just want to have both sections of each class I teach.