How I Adopted Rita: and endured the pandemic as an unemployed teacher in northern Nigeria

A young teacher in Nigeria ekes out a day-to-day existence in a county where education is respected but where most teachers cannot support themselves on what they earn. His education in the sciences has given him the information to rise above the folk treatments and superstitions others may follow in their understanding of the pandemic. He knows his mates, at the House of Jinger, a loosely formed social club, do not have the education to understand these things, so he rarely corrects their assertions. His only confident is a stray cat, he named Rita, who showed up, one day, at his rented room.