lessons for the local school teachers

                                             

My contributions to the functioning of the Lodge, in my role of volunteer, have been extremely varied over the nearly six months I have been here.  I was taken on to provide accounting advice and input, but as the owners had said they’d like me here before we’d actually worked out what I would do, I suppose I should always have expected some flexibility.

I wrote before about my ‘work’ with the young white-bellied pangolin they were caring for (far more interesting and rewarding than auditing their accounting system!), and certain other rotated jobs such as clearing the table at weekends (when there are fewer staff) and switching off the generator at night.  I’ve also washed dishes, removed a mouse nest from a mattress, helped to bring in washing from the line when downpours have started, and ‘guided’ a few clients on walks around the nearby forest paths – and I spent a week re-doing a project proposal so that it met the requirements of the potential donor (successfully, as they were awarded the grant!).

More bizarrely, I’ve translated two scientific papers on Pangolin behaviour from French to English (google translate is my friend…), and towards the end of my six months I gave two two-hour lessons to some teachers from nearby village primary schools, in French, split between one half on how to use a computer and the other half on nature-related topics of their choice (one on forest elephants, the other on black-bellied pangolins).  Both the computer and nature parts came complete with printed handouts for them to take away, both for their own learning and to provide each of them with sufficient information to give a lesson to their students.  Both parts of the lesson included questions and answers, and the computing part involved some practical demonstrations and my hovering over them providing guidance whilst they tried out the computer.

I was pretty nervous about the ‘teacher training’, although I spent nearly two days preparing each lesson – searching for something at the right level on computing, and researching forest elephant / pangolin behaviour that might be interesting for ten-year-old children from a small African village.  What do I know about computing?  About forest elephants??  About giving lessons to teachers – in French??!

But it went well.  They were really happy with the lessons, and disappointed that I was leaving, trying to persuade me to stay on for longer. 

If I were looking for consultancy work in the future, I certainly have a few things to add to my CV!