My First Class in Malawi

My first class in Malawi ended last Wednesday - I had over 10 students, and ended up dividing them into two groups - those who were new to computers and those who had some background.

Here I am with the two groups combined - we are standing outside the CRWRC office:

 I was amazed at how eager everyone was to learn - and how quickly they learned new things. My students gave me permission to share some photos with you:

One group of students worked on the balcony - what a great place to have a class! They are working on creating an Access database to manage information related to the Malaria Community Program. I hadn't expected to teach anyone Access, even though it's one of my personal favorites. Even learning about database joins and primary keys etc. didn't faze these guys!

On the right-side is Frank, the student who wrote about his excitement about being able to develop computer skills. (I wrote about him on a previous blog entry.) Here he and a friend work on writing a report using Word - prior to class, they were writing these reports longhand.

Two of the eight MCP Supervisors are women - here are Madalitso on the left, and Florence, on the right, working on data entry in Excel. Each month, they submit an Excel report. The report is used to collect information about the volunteers who go out to villages and educate people about malaria, and distribute items like mosquito nets and anti-malarial medication. The report collects information like:

• Number of households visited
• Number of households with children under 5 years of age
• Pregnant women who received SP injection once (a preventative treatment)
• Households with one ITN (ITN is "Insecticide Treated Net") 

Since I've read that more than 3000 children die daily from malaria, in sub-Sahara Africa, these efforts save lives. What I didn't realize was the quantity of reports associated with all of these programs. On a monthly basis, the MCP Supervisors submit the detailed Excel spreadsheet, described above, as well as a lengthy anecdotal report in Word. There are many different international agencies providing funds here in Africa and each has a myriad of reporting requirements - filling out the required forms and reports can take many hours.

Really, I had no idea that I would be encountering as much paperwork here in Africa, as in my own little cubicle back in Canada!

Speaking of malaria, at least so far in Lilongwe, I haven't encountered many mosquitoes. Since the Mcauley's don't have any in their house, I didn't use my net. At night, I have used repellent - I seemed to get one bite so far - the MCP Coordinator, Chipi, gave me a package of treatment for the net which Lisa Anderson gave me - it makes the net lethal to mosquitoes on contact.