Delices School

At the beginning of last week we traveled a short distance up the road from Jungle Bay to a small town called Delices, where we planned to spend the day with school children. There were six different classrooms that hosted a breadth of age groups ranging from kindergarten to 6th grade. The school itself was made up of four different buildings closely grouped together, placed against a breathtaking backdrop. The class rooms were small, without artificial lighting, with walls marked by a honeycomb like pattern of holes for natural air conditioning. Roughly hewn wooden desks and chairs held uniformed children bubbling with the excitement of our visit. Tattered work books, composition notebooks, well worn pencils and erasers and water bottles were strewn across the desk tops. Large chalkboards framed the front of the rooms with varying lessons from the previous day still painted across their faces.

We split up into groups of two or three and each tackled a classroom. Hassan, Joshua and I took the first classroom, made up of approximately twenty 5th and 6th grade students. As their normal teacher had not come that day (an occurrence apparently commonplace here) we accepted the challenge of teaching the day's lessons; mathematics and social studies. The children were at widely varying levels of ability. Some were struggling with pattern recognition and additions while others were flying through long division and exponential functions. Regardless, they all shared an enthusiasm for learning and a strict behavioral code not often seen in United States children of the same age.

After lunch we rearranged our groups and laid out a pharmacy practice activity for the children to enjoy. We had bottles of oil, syrup and water to demonstrate partition coefficients, emulsions, viscosity, density and even glitter to demonstrate suspensions. We had acquired "arro root" fresh from Jungle Bay to serve as an edible ointment base. We had children crush up Smarties (trituration) and then mix it into the gelatinous root base (levigation). Many of the children enjoyed the activity. Personally, I was paired with Krissy in the kindergarten classroom and the children had a difficult time grasping the mechanics and concepts of the activity. But they really enjoyed the sweets! Afterwards we had the children draw, color and complete word searches while we regaled them with lessons borrowed from Katie's Kids (medicine is not candy!). The day was closed with physical fitness activities which included soccer (futball), bowling, obstacle courses and wall ball.

The children really enjoyed having us there. They learned most of our names very quickly and followed us with keen curiosity. They especially enjoyed using our cameras, playing games with us and touching Krissy's hair. It was a memorable day for everyone and I believe we had a positive impact at the school. I've uploaded several images at the beginning of this post; Hassan teaching mathematics, a shot of the school against the mountain and a group photo taken by a young boy at the end of the day.