Today we started our pre-assessment questionnaire at Chiputula Primary School! The main purpose of the pre-assessment questionnaire was to understand the students’ pre-existing nutrition knowledge, so that we can plan exciting activities with new nutrition information. Between our three groups (standard 5, 6, and 7), we assessed over a thousand students! We had a lot of analysis to do this week, and then it’s time to start planning the curriculum for our nutrition classes. We can’t wait for the chance to keep working with these students and explore different nutrition topics with them!
We also had a chance to teach them more Japanese words and phrases, including goodbye “さよなら” (Sayonara) and thank you “ありがとう” (Arigatou). It was also so cool to hear the kids repeating the phrase we had taught them last time (おはよう, Ohayo)! Plus, during the break between classes, our students taught us different words in their native languages, which include Chichewa and Tumbuka. Chichewa is the national language in Malawi, while Tumbuka is a regional language most commonly spoken in Northern Malawi. One of the phrases they taught us was ”Zikomo”, which means thank you in Chichewa! Although the children laughed at some of our pronunciation attempts, they were always so attentive when we talked about our cultures or asked them to share about theirs.
After, we visited Mzuzu University and had a meeting with Baxter Chirambo, the head of the Nursing and Midwifery department at Mzuzu University, and Dr. John O’Donoghue, the Founder and Director of the Malawi eHealth Research Center and professor at the University College Cork in Ireland. The meeting was an exciting opportunity to talk about research projects in Malawi and explore options for collaboration on future projects! The meeting today focused on a large-scale nutrition project. It is still early in the development phase, so we came up with a lot of ideas, but it is exciting to see the different stages of developing global health programs and research projects. After the meeting, we received a tour of some of the facilities at Mzuzu University, then it was time to head back to the dorm for the evening.
Highlights:
- Giving pre-assesment questionnaires at Chiputula Primary School
- Learning Chichewa and Tumbuka phrase from the students
- Brainstorming nutrition projects with John and Baxter
All the photos were taken by SHANTU (Verbal consent was obtained before taking the pictures)
