September News

Dear friends,

Well, I've now been back in Mongo for a month and it's high time I sent you all some news from the Guera. The highlight of August was being back in bonnie Scotland for my brother, Gordon's wedding to Jenna - a truly wonderful day! Check out some photos here.

Work-wise, the main focus of the last month has been helping various literacy coordinators (Pierre, Exauce, Michel, Adam) getting their new publications ready for printing in time for the coming literacy campaign. This will continue to take up a lot of time over the coming months. Here are some of the titles they are working on - The advice of Mariam Bay on childcare, 2008 Diary, Maths book number 2, Animals of the Bush, Transition reading book from the local language to French, Multilingual Picture Dictionary, Traditional Tales, Proverbs, and also some easy reading stories. As you can see, it's very varied stuff. My role is mainly to help them with layouting, inserting the pictures and generally making sure the finished product will look good and be attractive to the readers. Some of them have no or little practice at using a computer, so I am helping them improve their skills in this area too.

You may remember the Mogum initial reading book which I was working on with Youssouf. Well, this has now been checked by our literacy consultant and we are now in the process of revising it and getting it ready for test classes early next year.
I am now sharing a house with Milli, a young lady from Germany who has come to teach the Sauer children for a year. She has a real fear of spiders, of which we have a fair number, so I am giving her lessons on how to kill them and she is making good progress! :O) One highlight of this last month has been that my friend, Djoua has been back for the month. She has been studying this past year in a different town and came back for her holidays. It's been a lot of fun spending time with her and her son over the last few weeks - and great for my arabic too!

My colleague, Sakine, who is doing a training course in Cameroon just now, had some hard news this week. His father has been diagnosed with the start of cancer. However, as there are no hospitals in Chad which can treat cancer, the family are arranging for him to go to a hospital in Cameroon for treatment, a time-consuming and costly process. I know we may complain about our national heath service, but this situation has just made me think how lucky we actually are! Do pray for Sakine's dad and the wider family at this time.

It is still rainy season here in Mongo, but we've had no rain now for nearly three weeks after a month of torrential rain in August. This is not good news for people's crops, but locally that seems to depend on what people have planted and when. We'll see when harvest time comes around.

When I was home, many of you were asking when I would be coming home from Chad. Well, I've decided to stay here until May or June next year, so a few months longer than originally planned. What happens after that remains up in the air!
Well, that's about all for now. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers and continuing support in one way or another.

Take care, love caroline :O)

Click here for previous news from Caroline.