For me, this experience has been so much more fun than I thought it was going to be. I honestly thought I would do one activity just to "check the box," but I am glad my life has been so hectic! Even though the group of students I've been working with is only about 10-15, I have gotten to know them much better, and they have gotten to know me as well. I have learned that my students as a whole LOVE trivia, that fewer of them like football (soccer) than I had thought, and that I just have an amazing student body!
So what have I we this month? Well, let me tell you. We started out with Malaria Football Freeze Tag. The combining of the two games was my students' idea. It was seriously the most fun I've had in Uganda. We had five "mosquitoes" and one "doctor" in addition to the 30 or so players on the field. We were playing just-for-fun, no points even, so the teams were a bit muddled, but that worked to our advantage. When a person was "bitten" by a "mosquito," s/he had to freeze and wait for the "doctor to bring the medicine and cure them." Then the mosquito name tag was passed on to the one who had been tagged so that they became a "mosquito." This gave everyone a chance to both be a "mosquito" and to play football. The students were overjoyed when I joined them as a mosquito, although I had almost no chance of catching them. I finally caught someone who had fallen, and then I went back to taking pictures. After the game, I asked them who owned mosquito nets. Nearly every hand went up. Of them, though, only a handful had brought their mosquito nets to school with them. They already knew that sleeping under a net is the best line of defense from contracting malaria at night, so I asked them why they had not brought them. It’s not like they take up much room. They had no answer for that, but it definitely got them thinking.
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| Trying to get 30+ people in a selfie with my short arms.... |
The other things we did this month unfortunately don't have pictures. We put on a trivia event about Malaria, Uganda, and Music, which my students absolutely loved. I'm definitely going to be putting on another trivia event in the future. It was fascinating on my end to dispel myths like that mangoes cause malaria or, the most common one, that Ugandans are immune to malaria. Most people in the room thought they were immune! I hope they realize now that they are not, even if they have a much lower chance of getting it than I do.
For me personally, I posted quite a bit on Facebook (because what other medium do I have?), chatted with a classroom back home about malaria, and helped said classroom to learn about malaria on their own. It has been a good month, and I hope my Malaria Team and I will be able to complete the activities we have in the works!
PS: Not friends with me on Facebook? Here are some facts about malaria:
--Malaria kills more than 70,000 children in Uganda each year.
--Even Cleopatra slept under a mosquito net!
--Many Ugandans believe they are immune to malaria, and so they do not take the proper steps toward prevention.
--There is no vaccine for malaria! (Check out my previous post for more info.)
--Malaria is indistinguishable from the flu and even typhoid without a blood test.
--An average of 320 Ugandans die EACH DAY from from malaria.
--Malaria, like Zika virus, is transmitted by only female mosquitoes.
--Malaria and Zika virus are transmitted by different types of mosquitoes. Malaria is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito, and Zika is transmitted by the Aedes mosquito.
--“Malaria” comes from the Italian “mala aria” meaning “bad air.” The term come from the smell of marshes, where people originally thought the disease came from.
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