Science Camp

The first week in September I participated in a Science Camp that was held in Koudougou and was organized by Peace Corps volunteers. And yes, I do realize that I’ve fallen a little behind on blogging. The camp had a focus on the scientific method, creative thinking, and problem solving.

Now, why might volunteers want to do this? The education system in Burkina Faso is based around copying (from the board or dictation) and memorization. It’s very “know-what” oriented. The other skills such as “know-how”, “know-who”, and “know-why” aren’t emphasized at all. This makes it hard to take an example and extend it to other situations in life such as doubling a recipe.

My role in science camp was a bit hard to define. First of all, I was the community liason. It was my job to know where to go to get certain things, it was my job to talk to people and make them like us, and it was my job to get things that other people wanted.

I also taught the Astronomy classes at the camp. Unfortunately most of the nights were cloudy and rainy but, one of the nights we were able to get a hold of a telescope and spent an hour and a half staring at stars with 40 kids. Someone asked a question about the apocalypse, someone asked if you could really slingshot around the sun to attempt time travel (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home), and if going through a black hole really meant that you would go back in time. We also talked about the North Star, the importance of stars, and being able to navigate by them, why the moon changes frequently, and what makes a celestial object a celestial object (planet vs. star, star vs moon, planet vs star, etc).

And last, but not least, I worked with a nurse to take care of the sick and injured kids at the camp. I was also able to use this opportunity to teach the kids about health things like what a pulse is, how to take it, and the same thing with temperature and how a thermometer works, etc. Very interesting time.

For the camp, volunteers and their homologues planned sessions around: chemistry, physics, biology- anything that involved being able to touch, feel, see, hear, and above all think critically about. The kids were then tasked to plan their own science fair. Another volunteer and I helped with a group of kids who wanted to examine water under a microscope. They examined filtered water, pump water, and regular water from a barrage to see which had the greatest quantity of microbes and bacteria in it. Luckily, I had scooped some seriously gross barrage water and the bacteria was everywhere! And the kids said, “people drink that?” Which, was super cool because now the kids know what lives in barrage water and how there is so much less bacteria, microbes, etc in pump water and filtered water (what PCVs drink).

The camp culminated in a science fair where all the groups presented their experiments and their findings, along with how they used the scientific method along the way.

It was interesting to see how Burkinabe kids reacted to a new way of learning- because the reception was so overwhelmingly positive. It was the same with the Burkinabe teachers reacting to a new way of teaching- most received the information and skills in a positive manner and really wanted to try it at their own skills with different experiments to help explain different concepts.

Hopefully, the science camp will continue to be a part of the summer activities for Peace Corps volunteers.