Many thanks to my readers for their kind comments – most of which seem to be about how much time I spend riding round the country and how little time working! I’d just like to point out that you’re all being very mean and to remind you that I will be looking for a job in England next year so please, just in case there are any prospective employers reading, could your comments be more along the lines of, ‘I’m glad you managed to take a short break to travel round the country. I know how hard you’re working and I was beginning to get worried that you might damage your health.’ Believe it or not, I have actually been doing a little bit of ‘nose to the grindstone’ lately. It’s quite a busy time in the office as the school year nears its end: the official closing day for schools is 10th July, but evidently as soon as the rains arrive (anytime from early June), many children drop out as they are needed on the farms. The biggest job at the moment – which fortunately is not my responsibility, although I am helping with it – is sorting out next year’s teacher postings. The majority of teachers in the country prefer to work in the coastal districts where there is 24 hour electricity and water, and the climate is generally cooler. This means that it is difficult to find teachers to work in the ‘up-country’ schools. A recently introduced ‘hardship allowance’ has helped a little, but in general teachers still prefer to be in the more developed towns. To overcome the teacher shortage away from these areas, there is a rule that, once they have qualified the Ministry for Education can send teachers anywhere in the country. They have no right to appeal against these postings for the first 3 years, after which they can apply to transfer to a different school within the same region. After 5 years they can apply to move to a different region. As a consequence of this, in the summer term the office is inundated with requests for transfer from teachers who have served the minimum time requirements. Working out how many teachers a school needs next year and which teachers can be posted there, and which are allowed to move away from the area is a mammoth task. In fact, the job is so complicated that in most years, many teachers do not know where they will be working in September when the schools break up for the summer, and schools are not sure whether they’ll have sufficient teachers to cover classes at the start of the year. As well as this job, I have also been working on next year’s academic calendar (putting in regular holidays so I can go travelling of course). This is another tricky endeavour as I have to take account of the many Islamic festivals which are on different dates each year, but I also have to try to build in sufficient days to allow for the many unexpected extra public holidays which can be declared at any time in response to important events. Last week Ivo and I spent a lot of time on the bikes again. This time it was work though: we were travelling around schools assessing the impact of some region-wide phonics training for teachers earlier in the year. This involved questionnaires for heads and class teachers, as well as conducting quick reading tests with sample groups of pupils. It was an interesting experience as the youngest children in the better schools were able to decode and say English words that they didn’t even know the meaning of! I wish I knew more about this area of teaching as it seems very odd to me that children who cannot even speak a language are taught to read and write in it. It seems to go against current ideology in English primary schools where children are immersed in oral language before being expected to learn the written form. Anyway, as you can see, I do occasionally do a little work to earn my crust and life isn’t all one big holiday! That said, I’ve just signed up for a trip over the border to a coastal nature reserve in Senegal next weekend – I promise I won’t take any time off work though!