The Common Cold

The last few weeks, I have been teaching on the common cold out in Kongu.  These first few lessons have been review of teaching they received last year and in the coming weeks, I will move on to new material: prevention and pneumonia.

As simple as the common cold seems – the villagers are happy to receive this training, for they suffer from colds all the time.  This time of year especially.  They have various beliefs as to why one gets a cold – the most propagated myth in Niamey being that if one drinks cold liquid (water with ice in it, refrigerated juice) they will get a cold.

They do not know about germs – and this little (er – microscopic?) piece of information is something that I will use as a building block for future health lessons.  The knowledge of the germ will be incorporated into lessons on: sanitation, hand washing, nutrition, first aid … small though it is, the germ will come into play for years to come!

My teaching in the village happens in a little straw and branch hut out on the chief’s land:

A group of men from each of the village site areas …. and a few women from the local village site …. all come to the teaching – taking what they have learned back to the huts and families surrounding their fields.

I discovered one day, through the teaching booklet I passed, out that one of these men can read a bit of Fulfulde!  I’ve also discovered in the last few months, that he knows a little bit of French …. I wonder if he took French and literacy while I was gone last year?  He also has a new job in town – the first of the men in the village that I am aware of – so perhaps he learned to read and speak French for this job!

Though none of the others can read, the teaching booklets are still useful and happily accepted by all the men.  And though I spend a fair amount of the teaching time explaining how to hold a book and turn pages – it is an effort well placed.

The teaching booklets have pictures of the lessons that I am teaching – a visual aid for these men to remember what I have taught so that they can use these books to teach others the same health lesson.

I am constantly amazed how quickly those of an oral culture can memorize and reteach what I have taught.  When I want to memorize something, I can spend hours or days working through the material, depending on the length and material at hand – and my preference remains to read it versus spend the effort to memorize it! 

Yet, an oral culture learner can grasp and repeat a lesson after having heard it only once!  The last time I used these teaching booklets, a couple young men wandered into the teaching on the fourth lesson in and wondered what was going on.  One of the men took out his teaching booklet – and, starting at the beginning of the book, worked his way through all the previous four lessons, pointing at each picture and explaining what I had taught!

I am also learning that the Fulani men love to learn through interaction and teasing each other …. in a sense, coming up with their own little skits based on the lesson!

The day when I taught how the cold is transmitted from person to person – they learned about how germs are transmitted by: coughing in the air, sharing drinking ladles or bowls,

and blowing their nose or coughing in their hand and then eating communal food or shaking hands.

After the lesson was complete, and we were sitting around chatting, one of the older men went outside the hut and we could hear him blowing his nose.  The men in the hut commented that now they should not shake his hand or they would get his cold.

When Garso came back in the hut – he made a great show of walking around and trying to shake everyone’s hands!  They all cringed away from him and started calling out “no …. no … I will die! … I will die!!”. 

Made my day – they all laughed uproariously, so I am it sure it made their days too …. and I don’t think anyone will forget this lesson any time soon!!!

** Photo Credit and Thanks to visitor Joanne!  (All but the last two photos are from her camera)