(Katherine)
I arrived at the hospital 20 minutes early today for my
first day on the job. This happened more out of necessity than anticipation,
due to the fact that the Bishop’s house where we are staying has only one key.
The key is an old fashioned skeleton key which can lock the door from either in
or outside. Since Derek needed to begin school at 7:10AM, and he would be
finished before me, he needed the key and so to be able to leave the house at
all, I had to leave early!
When I reached the hospital ground after a 2 minute walk, I
noticed that it was still very sleepy from the night. The two night nurses and
one orderly sat outside waiting for the shift change which would occur after
morning prayer around 8AM. Before prayer, I entered the maternity ward to scope
out the patients. One patient had delivered a fine baby boy in the night! The
other, had been admitted the day before with anemia and she had been under
observation for the night, after receiving two pints of blood. The new mother
and grandmother showed me the baby boy wrapped in his thousand blankets (every
person on Likoma Island except Derek and me think that the 70-80 degree weather
is cold and so wrap their babies like there is 5 feet of snow) and placed him
in my arms to admire. Looking at him, I asked his name. His grandmother said
that he had not been given a name yet. Without a pause, she looked me in the
eye and told me to name him!
Protesting, I quickly realized, was useless. True to the
Malawian spirit of hospitality and friendship, I was invited, demanded, to give
this child a first name to match the middle name chosen by his father. After
thinking for a while, I went outside the ward to speak with the father. We
settled on Jacob George, Jacob after my younger brother, and George after a
relative. What a privilege to be trusted to name a child of a family I have
only just met! I asked the father what he thought of his son. He told me he did
not know, because he had not yet even seen Jacob. So, on top of choosing the
boy’s name, I presented him to his father for their first post-delivery meeting.
The rest of my first day followed suit. With no laboring
women, I left maternity and I worked with an intelligent young lab technician
named Charles. St. Peter’s lab performs 5 regular blood tests: HIV screening,
malaria screening, CD4/3 (to show how well the immune system is working in an
HIV+ patient), hemoglobin count, and a blood sugar test. Charles taught me the
details and processes of each test while I recorded patients in the log book.
Normally, almost every single patient that passes through the hospital’s urgent
care is tested for HIV and malaria. Though the HIV tests are given in a
separate office, Charles and I administered over 60 malaria screenings today
between 8:30AM and 3:30PM! To perform the screening, the tech pricks the
patient’s finger, squeezes a drop of blood into a test specific strip, adds a
reagent, and sets the timer. Within 20 minutes, we can read the tests to
determine if the person is positive or negative for malaria plasmodium: two
lines indicates positive, one line indicates negative (the procedure for an HIV
screening is the same, but uses a different testing strip and reagent).
Another of my tasks today included writing entrance reports
for the hospital’s pre-natal records. On Monday’s the hospital has a community
nurse who comes and holds an ante-natal clinic which includes pregnancy
education, health screenings, and preventative care (for anemia, malaria, and
worms). Each patient seen on Mondays in the ante-natal clinic is being seen for
the first time in her pregnancy, so the nurse has to determine her expected
date of delivery based on measured gestation age. Though Nurse Sarah and I only
logged 4 new pregnancies today, she told me that last week, she logged over 20
new patients!
Even with all of this, I still had a two hour lunch break
today! Following Malawi culture, lunch includes a time for relaxation and rest
so that people are fresh for the afternoon. For those of us at St. Peter’s
hospital, that means until 4PM.
(Derek)
My Monday, as Katherine described above, began at 7:10am for a brief morning assembly, where announcements for the day are read, and a short prayer or two is read, before the students head to their classrooms and the teachers to their offices. Speaking of offices, I have my very own office!! At Bishop Biggers Secondary School, there are a total of four classrooms (one for each form, aka grade), a building for offices, and another building which houses the library and computer lab. Another building on the campus is being renovated for student housing and a kitchen so that the school can become a boarding school within the next year or two.
After the assembly, and after the students were dismissed to their classrooms, I headed back up to the office building with my fellow teachers to finish preparations for the day. Being Monday, my only subject to teach was English grammar to Form III students, equivalent to 11th grade in the U.S. Specifically this week, we have been working with punctuation. Next time we meet, we will move-on to subject-verb agreement. The students do fairly well with the written English, but as with any student learning a second language, it seems, they are better on paper than when having to think of everything "on the fly" when speaking. And when I say second language, it isn't really a first language, but it isn't really a second either. English, being the official language of Malawi, is widely spoken by educated individuals, along with the government. Many of the older individuals we have encountered cannot speak any English, probably owing to the fact that English wasn't mandated to be taught in schools until after the British decolonization. Go figure. So, my students have been around English their entire lives, have heard it spoken quite widely, they have seen most government documents and most store signage in English, but at home, it is quite likely that they have been around Chichewa, the local language. What I am doing, then, is helping to teach them formal English. That seems to be a more fitting description of what is happening rather than English as a second language. At Bishop Biggers Secondary School, the language of instruction for all classes is English. Mathematics, physical science, geography, social studies, religion, history, etc. are all taught in English. But, it is only in English class that the students are able to really work on their formal English. For students coming from primary schools that were taught in Chichewa, which are most students, Form I English can be a bit of a challenge, being their first exposure to formal English.
After my English class was done, I returned to my office to begin preparations for my Tuesday class. Tuesdays I teach social studies for Form III. The new chapter we were starting was on "Social Services and Development." I also prepared my English lesson for Wednesday, along with computer lessons for Form I students. Computer lessons will not be anything extravagant. The students have a beautiful computer lab with about 20 functioning newer model PCs, but nearly all students have never used a computer before, except perhaps for a previous time at school. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the teacher that taught computers died last year, and since then they have received no instruction in computers. So, I am going to do what I can, which for this week will consist of reviewing with them basic terminology of the computer, such as what a mouse is, keyboard, monitor, etc. Then hopefully we will be able to log on, and use "Microsoft Student" to help reinforce concepts learned in other courses. From what I've seen of Microsoft Student, it is a great program for students here in Africa. It has a wealth of useful recourses, from all sorts of geography resources, to all sorts of readings and videos on history topics (from ancient to modern), to help with foreign languages, and even a high quality scientific calculator. This is all ideal for students with no access to the Internet.
(Derek)
My Monday, as Katherine described above, began at 7:10am for a brief morning assembly, where announcements for the day are read, and a short prayer or two is read, before the students head to their classrooms and the teachers to their offices. Speaking of offices, I have my very own office!! At Bishop Biggers Secondary School, there are a total of four classrooms (one for each form, aka grade), a building for offices, and another building which houses the library and computer lab. Another building on the campus is being renovated for student housing and a kitchen so that the school can become a boarding school within the next year or two.
After the assembly, and after the students were dismissed to their classrooms, I headed back up to the office building with my fellow teachers to finish preparations for the day. Being Monday, my only subject to teach was English grammar to Form III students, equivalent to 11th grade in the U.S. Specifically this week, we have been working with punctuation. Next time we meet, we will move-on to subject-verb agreement. The students do fairly well with the written English, but as with any student learning a second language, it seems, they are better on paper than when having to think of everything "on the fly" when speaking. And when I say second language, it isn't really a first language, but it isn't really a second either. English, being the official language of Malawi, is widely spoken by educated individuals, along with the government. Many of the older individuals we have encountered cannot speak any English, probably owing to the fact that English wasn't mandated to be taught in schools until after the British decolonization. Go figure. So, my students have been around English their entire lives, have heard it spoken quite widely, they have seen most government documents and most store signage in English, but at home, it is quite likely that they have been around Chichewa, the local language. What I am doing, then, is helping to teach them formal English. That seems to be a more fitting description of what is happening rather than English as a second language. At Bishop Biggers Secondary School, the language of instruction for all classes is English. Mathematics, physical science, geography, social studies, religion, history, etc. are all taught in English. But, it is only in English class that the students are able to really work on their formal English. For students coming from primary schools that were taught in Chichewa, which are most students, Form I English can be a bit of a challenge, being their first exposure to formal English.
After my English class was done, I returned to my office to begin preparations for my Tuesday class. Tuesdays I teach social studies for Form III. The new chapter we were starting was on "Social Services and Development." I also prepared my English lesson for Wednesday, along with computer lessons for Form I students. Computer lessons will not be anything extravagant. The students have a beautiful computer lab with about 20 functioning newer model PCs, but nearly all students have never used a computer before, except perhaps for a previous time at school. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the teacher that taught computers died last year, and since then they have received no instruction in computers. So, I am going to do what I can, which for this week will consist of reviewing with them basic terminology of the computer, such as what a mouse is, keyboard, monitor, etc. Then hopefully we will be able to log on, and use "Microsoft Student" to help reinforce concepts learned in other courses. From what I've seen of Microsoft Student, it is a great program for students here in Africa. It has a wealth of useful recourses, from all sorts of geography resources, to all sorts of readings and videos on history topics (from ancient to modern), to help with foreign languages, and even a high quality scientific calculator. This is all ideal for students with no access to the Internet.
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