Fun with Atlases

There is something really cool about being a PCV in Africa, and looking at a map of North America with my students. (It also makes me a little homesick.)

Last Friday my Library Club met and we learned about atlases. We have a great big atlas with a hardcover as well as five  small paperback atlases. Just like in America, these books are restricted to in-library use only. The students had never used them before, so I showed them the different kinds of maps and information located in the atlases, and how to use the index to find different countries. The atlases are localized so they featured a few African countries like Zanzibar and Malawi, then had maps and information about north, central and southern Africa, each of the other populated continents, and then a section on the whole world.

I showed them where the U.S. is and where California is. I also showed them Scotland, since we have a partnership with a Scottish school. And then I had them all find Moldova on the map, where Colii is!

These students were the first ones to find Moldova on the map. I had to help some of the others because, you know, Moldova is kind of small. To be fair, Malawi is really small too. The kids actually laughed when they saw how big the U.S. was in comparison.

After teaching them how to use an atlas, it was time for the competition! Each team received two atlases and had to answer the following questions:

1) Name the country that is directly north of Chad

2) Name the type of vegetation that covers the largest area in Malawi

3) Name a city in North America that has over 10,000,000 people

4) Name one of the countries in Africa that has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infections

The winners got stickers which they were really excited about. But everyone left with a little more knowledge about the world and the library. Librarian success!

Scottish Invasion

Yesterday we had some special visitors at my school. A group from our partner school in Scotland spent the day with us.

Scotland and Malawi have a close partnership. There are so many schools and aid organizations from Scotland in Malawi. On my site visit last August I met a Scottish couple in the Boma that was raising funds to build a girls hostile. A couple weeks ago I met three university students from Scotland that were teaching Expressive Arts at the local primary school for six weeks. (Now all their students know the words to that song "And I would walk a thousand miles." A group of kids came up to me and started singing it, and were delighted when I joined in. It was pretty funny.)

Our partner school (which is not affiliated with the PC) is a Catholic high school in Scotland. They provided funds to build a laboratory at my school, provided books and science materials and sent sports equipment like footballs. They also fund a program at my school called Girls Go for Health which provides support for girls to stay in school, including free menstrual pads, tampons and ibuprofen.

We had about 25 visitors from the school, mostly female students. When their bus arrived, it created quite a stir at my school. So many azungus in one place!

First things first-- gotta take snaps. Cameras and photos are universally loved by teenagers, no matter what side of the world they are from.

The visitors observed classes in the morning. In my Form 3 Bio class we were finishing up our unit on Reproduction. The topic was problems of the reproductive system, which include sterility, maternal death and sexually-transmitted infections. Fun topic for a day we are having visitors, right? After my lecture I had the students work in their groups to answer questions about  STIs. The Scottish students assisted them.

After that, classes were suspended for the rest of the day so that everyone could play sports. There was football, netball, races and even volleyball. All equipment was provided by the Scottish partner school.

Below you can see some of the girls playing netball. Netball is like basketball except you don't dribble the ball. Also it is almost exclusively played by females.

In Malawi you always feed your guests, so our visitors were treated to a traditional meal of nsima with ndiwo (side dish). The ndiwo was some kind of local leafy green cooked with tomatoes and onions, maybe rape? I don't eat much nsima now that I cook for myself, so I always enjoy it when I have it. We also had Coca-cola and biscuits (cookies). Yum!

After that it was time for our visitors to be going. It was a really nice day and my students enjoyed spending time with the foreign students.

Fun fact-- did you know that the National Animal of Scotland is the unicorn?