Nouvelles de Sabce: Lessons in SCIENCE!

After much camera-download-finagling, I have finally appeased the Gods of technology, and attached things for your viewing pleasure. Let us all rejoice!

I will proceed to elaborate bit by bit the back stories to each pic, as they all tell a bit about life here in Sabce.

First three pics are a series taken at the auto mechanic’s in my district capital of Kongoussi.

One pic has a fun shot of the CoGES president, Msr. Bartholemy Sawadogo, returning from the street in his patent blue shirt that says simply ‘Premier’. I don’t know where the shirt came from, but perhaps he takes his post seriuosly. Now then, to explain:

Kongoussi is my district capital – I think we’ve established this already. Like any good municipality, Sabce is not afloat in a sea of random villages, towns, scrubby trees and/or large beautiful mango trees. Tis instead liased (is that a word? like liason, only verb-ed) to a larger city center, from which various administrative oversight activities are carried out – for example, did you properly vaccinate all the newborns in your 17 satellite villages this month? To make a US comparison, Sabce is to Kongoussi as West Amwell is to Trenton.. . . by which i just mean it’s equivalent to a state capital. For those of you who don’t know West Amwell….don’t worry, you’re among the majority of people who don’t know small towns exist in New Jersey.

But back to Burkina Faso. I typed the acronym ‘CoGES’ up in that other paragraph there. CoGES are neat things, and integral to the whole decentralized infrastructure of the public health system. I forget what the heck the letters stand for (‘Comitte de Gestation … blahblahblah …Sante), but they are basically the community health board for a given area. In the case of Sabce, our infirmary covers about 17 satellite villages (‘satellite village’ = e.g. if you live in the village of Souryala, 20km away from Sabce, your designated infirmary is in Sabce, 20 km away from Souryala.). Ergo the CoGES is supposed to be at least reasonably aware of the health concerns/problems/requests of these satellite villages, and likewise if any info needs to get out to the satellite villages, tis often the CoGES what needs organize the dissemination thereof (though each village has a specially appointed person – outside the CoGES, which has only 6 members – to act as a health-town-crier). In addition, tis the CoGES who reviews all the sales and inventories of medication in the pharmacy in Sabce, and makes runs into Kongoussi to restock on supplies at the district health center.

To make such restocking sorties, we use our handy-dandy Ambulance, which you can see in a second picture… the one with three people looking under the front. You might note it doesn’t look like a US ambulance. It hath no siren. Also, it is not equipped with many fancy gadgets; there is in fact a gurney (or whatever they’re called) for transporting patients, and a little hook for hanging IV bags on. That’s really about it. Oh, and an inflatable plane-toy from ‘AirMalaysia’, that I guess is there as a morale booster but otherwise serves no immediate medical purpose.

The ambulance frequently breaks down. I have helped push three times now. One time there was smoke coming from inside the dashboard, which was exciting. The pushing is good for exercise, but not so good for the transporting of people who need urgent medical care for serious malaria complications. Luckily the ambulance has not broken down while transporting people to the district hospital – only on return trips, or on non-people-related sorties.  In any case, the ambulance is there in the mechanic’s getting much needed and quite expensive repairs, so that it can continue its many trips over questionable roads doing the good works that ambulances do.

The other picture from the mechanic’s is just a pic that I like, of some of the workers there doing repairs on a pick-up. They were doing some gas welding (acetylene + O2… I think… someone with practical experience tell me if that’s right) from gas cannisters that I’m guessing would not be up to safety par in the states, were not attached to a stable work surface, and which arrived on a bumpy two wheeled cart.

Moving on:

The next three pics are from one of the primary schools in Sabce, where, somewhat amusingly and par hasard, I hae already done a bit of teaching. Nothing like tackling science class in a second language in front of 80 or so students. At least they’re nice, and enjoy being entertained.

The indoor pics are from two different classrooms, for students in (I think) the equivalent of 4th and 6th grades. I keep thinking to myself, ‘hey aaron, this is kind of like those pictures you see from aid organizations saying that primary education in many parts of africa is underfunded and overcrowded’. Well, it does indeed look that way. And some recent test results from the schools in Sabce are a bit disappointing – about an 80% failure rate. 80%.  yes, that’s an ’8′ and a ’0′. Daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn………

Now, my little bit of pedagogical studies (which basically involve thinking about the institutions I’ve attended, the teachers, the students, etc, plus a few odd articles in the New Yorker or what have you) says that a good teacher can do wonders perhaps not *regardless* of class size, but that said teacher’s ability to convey information, excite curiousity, and retain attention, are more salient factors than simple class size. So I watch the teachers…. and, as I say, I’m no pedagogical consultant, but the couple I’ve seen seem pretty good. They’re active, they use examples of daily life/culture to illustrate points. But the one thing that seems to fairly consistently lack, is having the kids ask questions themselves. I’ll be the first to say that even in the states, one can easily find a classroom full of dead space as a teacher attempts to get discussion started. But, I dunno, my initial reaction is that there is a lack of curiousity that strikes me as odd and a bit unnerving. But, I have a lot more time to find out if said initial reaction is reasonable, so bear with me on this, yes?

So as for the teaching bit – the 6th grade (CM2) teacher said they were teaching respiratory illnesses during the science class int he afternoon. I said I liked science. And respiratory illnesses (well, the info and biology of them, not so much the actual having of inflamed broches etc.). So he said ‘ok you can come teach it’, sort’ve joking but definitely making the offer. So I came back in the afternoon, and he let me go at it – teaching respiratory illnesses to 12-14 year olds, in french, without any pre-planning or having reviewed the lesson in any way. It was amusing, and I pulled some volunteers from the class in an attempt to demonstrate microbes entering the body; was more of an attention-grabber than a useful and intelligent analogy, but hey. Did any useful info actually get into their brains, such that can be recalled in a useful manner later on? No idea – I did not, sadly, do a pre-post-test. But I did definitely do some good integration, and I think I might even like teaching 6th graders. . . .I mean, it happened a second time, again completely unplanned, because a teacher in the OTHER primary school was out taking care of his sick wife. I was actually only visiting the kindergarten in that school for the day, but I stopped in to see how students conduct themselves in a class without a teacher; someone said they were doing a science lesson. . . . and things just kind of rolled from there. Damn you science!! You’re just so interesting!! Solids, liquids, and gas, taught using a bucket of water, and a soccer ball. I probably explained how gas exerts a force in a somewhat roundabout and unintelligable manner, but hopefully they got an idea of why a soccer ball might explode. Perhaps the most amusing part was stopping and asking the kids to help me out with various vocab I didn’t know.

Ok, wow, this is really long and I have to run and I didn’t get to talk about the STI / AIDS games we did. Oooo!! Plus a condom demonstration (again with sixth graders). Some of them were pretty competent.

I think I might do some real ‘health’ work soon, and dig little filter/well thingers such that we avoid standing water and mosquito breeding grounds.

Gotta jet – weekend softball tourney in the capital. Oh, burkina, will wonders never cease.

Best

Aaron

PS-  as always THANK YOU for letters, e-mails, and packages. You blessed souls who update me with your daily goings-on back stateside play a big role in making my days here a bit easier to handle. Same goes for the granola bars, tea, and packets of tuna fish.  I even got oatmeal recently, which was a spiffy surprise.