Happy birthday Mohammed! And some sad news ...

Carol writes...

Tonight the Muslims are celebrating Mohammed's Birthday (Mawlid). It is 10pm and the local Muslims (about 10 of them) are gathered around a microphone about a block away and have been singing continuously over the loudspeaker for 90 minutes. I'm wondering if I call the police if they will arrest them and shut them down for making a disturbance on a worknight. ;-)

Our sad news is that Lisa had to leave us for a family emergency. After getting word mid-day yesterday, and a night of reflection, she decided to go home and has just left to catch her jet. Kathe and Tom went with her to make sure there was no problem getting on the flight on such short notice. We wish her and her family the best and will pray for them. All of our students have been very empathic also and have blessed her as she leaves us. We did squeeze in her topic of "Education" this evening so she had the opportunity to encounter them as a teacher. She has been invaluable with her teaching experience for us all and has been lavish with her praise and we all hope that we have an opportunity to work with her here again.

Our experiences with this class of students have been extremely positive. Even the women have been outspoken and engaged from the very beginning of our classes yesterday. We are teaching dialogically so the students get ample opportunity to relate their experiences and contribute feedback. We continually urge them to teach back what they have learned.

Today was our most "hands-on" day, with Jean doing a very engaging program on caries and tooth decay--she used "disclosing" liquid to show them their plaque, Nutella on her fingers to demonstrate flossing and nail polish remover and Karo syrup on a strofoam cup to show how caries are formed. Pretty advanced teaching for an Occupational Therapist! We also had our SODIS day for Judy and Jean to teach water purification, and Jean and Lisa taught Tippy-Tap for handwashing, both of which were enthusiastically received. Tom did his usual, excellent techning about human waste problems and latrines, which triggered lively discussion about how the villages were dealing with these problems.

Last night Dr. Bashir had the class in an uproar as he taught malaria. He talks so fast that he seems to forget whether he is speaking English or French and I think at one point Pape was translating French to French. Finally Pape gave up and just came over to our group to translate "privately" into English. Both Nancy and Lisa want to marry Pape. They have not yet proposed to him but I think it may be the first time two women would ever have agreed to share one man from the outset. Unfortunately he is Christian, so it isn't going to work.

The students seem to be very appreciative of their learning experience. Today I was trying to ascertain what the "norm" of education was here in Senegal and was surprised when I went around the room and found that almost all of them had "lycee" experience--some of them as much as 13 years of education (though in some cases they had had to repeat years because of not passing the exam. This seemed to be very common.) I commented that they all seemed to be very dedicated to education and they agreed that that was certainly NOT the norm in Senegal.

I am so very pleased with how the Community Health program is going here at the United Methodist Church in Senegal. I hope that we can continue to support it.