On Monday we went to check out the construction progress and it looks amazing! The director decided to donate floor tiles and our contractor donated the labor cost of putting them in which makes the place look even more finished. All that remains now is the electrical fixtures (lights and fans). Our contractor has already purchased them all and they are on site, but the principal of the school insists that his electrician friend who wired the school put them in. That should have gotten done yesterday, I will be going over today to check on that as well as discuss the schedule we've come up with for library use with the principal.
When we arrived to look things over afternoon classes had not yet started so we ran into most of the 9th grade who were very excited to see us again and very very excited to get their pictures taken with us. Even though we're pretty sure 99.9% of that excitement is just about having toubabous (white people) at their school and getting to be in photos with them, we're hoping we can use that to get them excited about the library itself.
Otherwise things continue to go pretty well. We have hit a minor snag on the furniture front because the place where our carpenter buys his wood is currently out so he has to wait for another shipment. Given the number of places one can buy wood in Bamako this seems a slightly dubious explanation, but Baïssou is negotiating that conversation today. We're still hoping to open next Tuesday, though Robert pointed out that going to full scale operation probably doesn't make much sense because next weekend is the Tabaski (Eid Al Adha) holiday so a lot of students will be absent and class schedules will probably be disrupted. We'll keep you posted.
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