Before I begin writing about work and teaching, I must give a quick update of our weekend escapades and the humor brought about by my paranoia. Robby and I spent our Friday afternoon hiking in an area of Maseru. As we descended near dark and returned to our drop-off point where the taxi had agreed to pick us up, I noticed a few occurrences in the surroundings that made me uneasy. There was a car that rather awkwardly circled us and another parked a visible distance away with its lights off. In the distance I saw two figures being led by a dog. I turned to Robby and said, “I sure hope everything turns out all right.” Low and behold, the figure in the distance was a fellow who works at Baylor, John Dudley, and a colleague of his we had met earlier that day. The dog was a 5 month old, heartily jolly, rather rotund, bulldog by the name of Beef Wellington. As I laughed with John about my worries, I did not hesitate to tell him of my slight uneasiness about the cars. He responded by revealing that many people come to the field to learn how to drive a stick shift, and some adventurous youth often park their cars in the field and, well, do what teenagers who park their cars in a field late at night do. Clearly a new place is not always as dangerous as one may think :D.

In the area of work, though, Danielle and I have finalized our review course schedule at both S.O.S. Village and Koalabata, and on Tuesday we returned to Koalabata to work out some of the finer details. After speaking with the 7th standard teacher, we decided to stay and teach the children for a little while as the teacher had some business to attend to. Needless to say, I was nervous, but the students were extremely responsive, though initially hesitant to ask questions. Not sure what to expect, the students performed well in the time we had, and I am confident that when I actually have materials and a clearer idea, we can tackle some of the issues that these students may not be nearly as comfortable with. I had a ball teaching the kids, who could not resist the urge to teach me as well, giving me quick tutorials in Sesotho. (I’ll use it later, but Khotso is “peace”)

Math and science are topics that the children struggle to learn at Koalabata, but it is not for lack of effort on the part of the students or the teachers as I saw when I sat in on a class. There is a problem with the questions the standardized test uses to quantify knowledge in these topics. The lack of application, at least in the primary school books and tests I have seen, makes it far more difficult for students to be able to understand what these topics mean in real-world situations and to be able to apply them critically. Danielle and I believe that our course will address this issue well, helping students that are having difficulty see the applications for themselves.

One thing I found interesting at Koalabata was that roughly the same number of students obtained the lowest score on the math and science PSLE’s last year. Nonethless, there was a seemingly unanimous decision on the part of the students to focus on math for review since math is one of the three “core” subjects, while science is not. What I thought when I observed this was that the one folly I do not want to make is “teaching the test”. Danielle and I have the opportunity to apply these topics, help the students make it to high school, and stimulate their interests in these fields as careers that have the tendency to be overlooked because of their perceived difficulty. If all we do is teach the test, we fail.

On the other side of things, today at Baylor we began one of our assigned projects. Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) is the clinic’s way of treating those who are malnourished. For those that are moderately or severely so, there is a nutritional supplement I am sure many of you are aware of, Plumpy-Nut. Up until now, the clinic has put data for patients on Plumpy-Nut on paper cards, but the system is beginning to break down. Danielle and I are working on a computerized version of the card that will allow doctors to have forms that they can continuosly update and that can be analyzed in the computer. Once we figure out how to do that, we will get a chance to analyze the data and assess how effective Plumpy-Nut is among the malnourished patients at the Lesotho center. Still, working with a program we are not familiar with led to 6 hours of general confusion, head-scratching, and “I got it!…..No, no I didn’t, there’s an error, the program shut down.”

On another note, Danielle and I have begun to brainstorm a project we hope to implement a few weeks from now. This past weekend Baylor had a HIV/AIDS testing/awareness event in a rural area of Lesotho. This began a thought process in which we realized Koalabata is an area that is about 20-25 minutes from the clinic, and thus still may have a population that does not make it out for testing or treatment that they may need. So, we spoke to the Princeton fellow at the clinic that organized this past weeks event, Stuart, and he told us that Baylor could provide the supplies and the help to do the testing, we would just have to get the word out, organize, and make sure people showed up.

I have been loving my time here, as busy as it is, and I hope you enjoy the photos.

Khotso,

Amit