Malaria is a terrible disease

Our last week at Nansana has been focused on Health. Each of the classes studied one of four themes - Water & Hygiene, Healthy Diet, Malaria and HIV/AIDs. Emily prepared some colouring /worksheets for each theme, she and Bex worked with 6 classes teaching songs and supporting the teachers with their work on the themes. I rewrote the popular childrens ditty about vegetables "Cauliflowers fluffy & cabbages green" to fit in with the fruit & veg available here and taught it to 2 classes. Jayne & Kate worked with the older classes on HIV/AIDs which brought a number of unexpected challenges and issues to light. Kate concernedly followed some of these up by contacting some NGO's and making introductions for the school with organisations such as Hope after Rape, (connected to Save the Children) who hopefully will come in and provide some teaching and counselling for the children.

So on Friday afternoon we sat in the shade of a large ugly fruit tree whilst the children all performed the songs, plays, morals and stories that they had learnt. It was really encouraging to see and hear what they had taken in and entertaining to listen to what they had written. "Malaria is a terrible disease, we should sleep under a treated moquito net to prevent malaria" was one of the catchy numbers, talk to me nicely and I'll hum it too you :)
As we sat a storm brewed and by two & half hours into the performance (they like to string it out with lots of singing and dancing) we rushed to the relative safety of what passes for the school hall. Wooden stake walls with a corregated iron roof give very little protection from tumultous rain and when the noise of the lashing rain on the tin became so loud that we couldnt hear ourselves think, we handed out bananas and water melon to the excitement of the children.

But that was only a rehersal for Sunday. At 2pm we dutifully arrived to lead a Health Seminar. Gordon was chilled whihc was just as well because although we had recieved frantic phone calls from Charles the headteacher to find out where we were, at 2.30 they were only just putting up the marquee (dont know how else to describe the structure) and by 3.00 some of the invited audiance of parents had arrived! Eventully we started and Gordon used the childrens wonderful performances and presentation as a basis for talking about the range of health issues. There's nothing like learning from your children. I did my Debbie McGee bit, a sort of walk on part providing entertainment and illustrations! whihc included teaching the parents to sing "The Wise Man built his house upon the rock..... and the rain came tumbling down" !! Our new friend Baker the Netman (from who we had purchased 100 mosquito nets) joined us and explained the use of the nets and helped to dispell some misapprenshions about them. It goes like this, on average a person will suffer from 5-6 bouts of malaria in a year. The treatment for this is expensive - 5000 shillings a bout meaning that they could pay out 30,000 shillings (£10) per person per year. Bearing in mind that a teacher at Nansana earns £40 a months that is a large expence. Sleeping under a treated mosquito net reduces the number of bouts they suffer to 1 or 2. A net cost 11,000 shillings (£3.70) - the maths was not lost on them!! After the show, we sold nets bought from Baker using a large donation from Woolstanton Rotary Club for 5000 shillings each (£1.60) and the schools health project will use the income this will generate for them to provide water for handwashing and medicines to treat malaria.

At the end we were presented with certificates from the schools management committee in appreciation of our work and then Gordon started again witha group of women who had many questions about Family Spacing (contraception to you and me!)

Finally we were ready to leave by about 8pm and then it rained again...... it is after all the rainy season. We caught a taxi back driven by Larry who it turns out had been an illegal immigrant in the UK and had worked in homebase! Still it meant that he was able to entertain us on the life threatening journey home through muddy swamps and lakes of dirty red water.... scarey trip, no-one seems to know the rules of the road, if indeed there are any! We counted our blessings when we returned in one piece to the guest house.