Update Two: Arrival in Lusaka

Week 1

Our team arrived in Lusaka as planned and on the Sunday we drove for 9 hours to Mansa in Luapula Province to the North East of Lusaka. We were missing one team member (Peter Kanja, CE Kenya) but had arranged for him to join us there.

The first two days were national holidays, but Ernest Ngoliya (Director of Outreach Programmes, CE Zambia) succeeded in arranging for us to visit boarding schools on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. He also managed to book two schools on each of Thursday and Friday.

Volunteer O'Brien shows students a core sample from this tree (blue boring tool visible at bottom of picture).

We took advantage of the unscheduled time at the beginning of the week to get to know one another and to practice the presentation of our modules. Feed back from the whole group was very useful for building confidence and honing the material to make it suitably interesting and fun.

Then it was soon time to start work. We had enough volunteers that some of the new members were able to observer and co-present at the first schools to warm up to the task. The multinational dimension of the team was identified as a positive feature by students and staff alike. Representatives from the US, Kenya, UK and Zambia were seen to be working together with the students to improve our shared home.

A beautiful start to a 9-hour journey from Mansa to Lusaka

We worked in a mixture of primary and secondary schools; and the feel of each school could be quite different. There was the pleasure of introducing new concepts to students in the less advanced schools and the excitement of seeing the more developed students grasping more complex material.

Come Saturday, we were all sad to have to leave Mansa but excited to be readying ourselves for the next two weeks in Lusaka. The 9 hour journey back to the capital city was punctuated by a beautiful early-morning stop at a lake.

Week 2

Once back in Lusaka, the second week was mostly spent revisiting schools which Cosmos Education has worked with before. In most cases the standard of English spoken at both Basic and Secondary schools was sufficient not to cause us any problems and the team was been able to adapt its material to the different standards of technical knowledge we met.

Students use a code-wheel to decipher a hidden message.

Peter Kanja stayed with us until Thursday of the second week doing his module on Tree Boring and the Environment. The students seemed to get a big kick out of seeing the cross section of a living tree and were very keen to ask lots of questions about how the vasuclar system of a tree relates to that of a human, how water is transported around the trunk and what different trees can be used for (Kanja has wide knowledge about medicinal, carpentry and environmental uses for different species.) Sadly he had to leave for Nairobi at the end of the week.

Damian Smith (CE UK) worked on codes and codebreaking with students of all ages and they enjoyed learning how to write and uncover secret messages. It was satisfying to introduce a very different branch of science from what they are used to in schools and see them figuring out details of the ciphers for themselves.

Week 3

Bridgit Syombua arrived at the start of the third week from Kenya. She handled HIV from a virological viewpoint, working with students to show them how the virus works, rather than focusing on HIV prevention (a topic handled in a very interactive way by Sarah Barthelow from the US). Both of these approaches were quite new for most pupils and very interesting. Experience from last year showed that young people here have a lot of curiosity about HIV and are eager to understand it as well as possible.

Mulenga shows students how to measure a telegraph pole using "similar triangles" and a bowl of water.

The final week saw more difficulty in getting in to schools - however Ernest managed to keep us busy with plenty of visits to schools, and one to African Directions - a community centre in Lusaka helping to keep young people healthy and happy. We spent a very interesting afternoon there discussing techniques used by Cosmos Education and by African Directions peer educators to help people avoid and cope with HIV/AIDS.

By the end of our time in Zambia, we had visited 20 schools and Afrian Directions. All the volunteers were tired, but felt that their time had been well spent, and the feedback from students and teachers was very positive with many requests for return visits. We hope to be able to build on this work by returning to Zambia soon.

The Team

Here is a list of all team members and the material they worked with.

• Omar (UK, Engineer). Modules: The scientific method - experimental design; Seasons and Orbits with Lyndsey
• Sarah (USA, Anthropologist). Module: The science and social ramifications of HIV/AIDS
• Peter (Kenya, Engineer). Module: The science of trees, analyzing the health and history of trees and examining their role in the global ecosystem
• Bridget (Kenya, Veterinarian). Module: Health ­ HIV/AIDS
• Mulenga (Zambia, Researcher working with orphans and HIV/AIDS patients). Module: Math activity involving geometry and a clever trick to measure the height of a tree
• Damian (UK, Physicist). Module: Cryptography - the science of secret messages
• Jess (USA, Graduate student (social work)). Module: the science and social ramifications of HIV/AIDS
• Lyndsey (USA, Student (Environmental Science and Policy)). Modules: The climate; Seasons and Orbits with Omar
• Sikana (Zambia, Primary School Head of Science). Module: The cell and how viruses work
• O'brien (Zambia, Environmental Health Specialist). Module: HIV/AIDS, the science of DNA and how viruses replicate.
• Ernest (Zambia) UAS Zambia Schools Coordinator

Once again, we thank all our supporters and volunteers for their valuable contributions.

Read the Kenyan Report.

In Kenya, Cosmos Education Kenya is Registered Society No. 26710.
In the United States, Cosmos Education is a Project of The Tides Center, a 501(c)3 non‑profit organisation.
In England and Wales, Cosmos Education UK is Registered Charity No. 1100278
Cosmos Education Zambia is registered under the Societies Act in the Republic of Zambia, Registration No. ORS/102/35/3017.