Greetings everybody! I am joining you today from the garage-turned study and meeting room below our Murray Town compound, where many of the exciting developments and ideas for program initiatives and projects are debated, refined, and put forth into reality! It's a great day to be sitting quietly in front of a fan, as it is humid and sticky with the promise of rain ahead. Week number three in Sierra Leone promised much at the conclusion of last week's excitement, especially in terms of the upcoming teaching opportunities. Thankfully, I can report that there were no disappointments in that department. Let me tell you about some of the incredible experiences and observations from my time in the classrooms of the Prince of Wales Senior Secondary School!

When I left you last week, I posted that I had just begun teaching on Friday the 8th. When I arrived at POW (a double-edged nickname given to the school due to the strict adherence to discipline), I met a cheerful gentleman by the name of Mr. Michael Bundor, the school principal. Mr. Bundor made me feel quite welcome, expressing excitement at my presence and sharing his gratitude for my time in teaching at his school. This was certainly flattering! Let me tell you a little bit about the classrooms and environment, with a little mix of history thrown in. Prince of Wales was founded by the british government in 1925, making it an institution with a rich history covering the past 9 decades. It is a very prestigious institution, the most respected of its kind in Freetown. This is for good reason, as POW attracts some of the best and brightest young minds in Freetown, especially in the science tract. In fact, POW has routinely sent more graduates to medical and other professional schools than any other Senior Secondary School in Freetown for years. The campus is beautiful in a quiet, rural way, something I can appreciate given my midwestern upbringing. Upon entering through the main gate, which proudly states the school's motto (Forward), one notes large, aged trees that litter the commons in between tropically aged teaching buildings, which are typically two stories and feature about four classrooms per floor. To your right, you can note a large dirt field frequented by football (Soccer, as we americans say) crazed youth. The field is bound by a view of the atlantic within an alcove, and you can see homes and hills on the adjacent shoreline.

Now for a random aside! At this point, you might be asking yourself what exactly Senior Secondary School refers to with respect to a system such as what we have in America. The education system in Sierra Leone follows a code of 6334, with a change to 6344 upcoming next year. This indicates 6 years in primary (elementary) school, followed by 3 years in Junior Secondary School (Junior High, clearly) and 4 years in Senior Secondary School. Finally, we have the standard 4 years in college. The standard exam which governs the passage into college is the WASSCE (West African Senior School Certification Examination), which is analogous to our ACT/SAT, only with many more subjects! Included are topics such as mathematics, language arts, integrated sciences, agriculture, and business. The class that I taught this past week at POW was the Senior Secondary I science tract (10th grade in our system). Being that the majority of my academic background lies in engineering, I was assigned the task of helping the students review basic physics.

The classrooms here are like nothing I've ever experienced back home. Upon walking into a classroom, one notes that blackboards and chalk are the staple of choice, and the desks and décor resemble that of some of the old classrooms preserved in historical sites in the US. As mentioned previously, the school is boardered on one side by the atlantic ocean, and one can note the scent and character of seawater and view the gentle surf from the windows during the daily lectures. It is truly a magnificent sight. I have thoroughly enjoyed my teaching experiences over the past week, and I have learned just as much from the students here as they (I can only hope) have learned from me. During the week, I flipped between basic applications of forces and kinematics in physics and the essentials of mathematics, with a random detour into some essentials of engineering applications in fluids. Throughout it all, the students I taught mostly impressed, enthusiastically displaying their appreciation of my efforts and taking my goofy jokes in stride. You will always note students who could care less and are simply not motivated in any classroom in the world, but I was fortunate to witness the benefits of POW's frequent disciplinary measures and the bright, inquisitive minds of its students. Ambitious and attentive students would quickly hush or plead with distracting students to remain quiet, and they were very patient with my american accent. On wednesday, I received a request from a confused student to change the symbols I was using, the commonly taught delta x and y, as well as subscripts of intial and final vectors, to those of the british system. Imagine that – an institution in Africa, far away from the US and accustomed to the teachings of the british system, requesting notations they were familiar with! I felt very silly, but quickly made the change and found my compliance to be an excellent learning opportunity. Simple things like notations in classroom settings can lead to communication breakdowns and distrust, something we are trying to avoid. Again, a subtle lesson in approaching individuals from other cultures with the right mindset and with a patient and understanding attitude. It is also important that I note the many enlightening (and often entertaining) conversations I shared with the teachers and staff at POW. One particular gentleman, who hails from the same Murray Town neighborhood as our base of operations, listened intently as I related to him my excitement and passion for volunteerism and the desire to do something more – to achieve something more meaningful and beneficial to others than what I would be doing in the US. He then fondly recalled his own upbringing in the provinces of Sierra Leone, mentioning an Ohio native and Peace Corps volunteer based in Sierra Leone from 1977-1979. This man, who grew to be a mentor and friend, paid many of his school fees and helped sculpt him into the man he was today. What an awesome story! I am extremely humbled by the opportunity to be teaching to students halfway around the world, and I can already feel my worldly perspective shifting on a daily basis as a result of these two-way learning experiences.

As the week has wound down, our team members have become focused on our own individual tasks. Kate has been shadowing Dr. Lakoh at Connaught hospital in St. John, Freetown. Dr. Lakoh, in addition to being an in-country board member and medical adviser to WAMM, is by all accounts one of the most talented physicians in Sierra Leone and a man of the highest caliber. I look forward to meeting him soon! Gin, meanwhile, will be receiving her husband, Pete, as our newest volunteer this next week, and has been focusing on preparing for a week long sojourn to the eastern province of Kono with an organization entitled Well Body Alliance, with whom WAMM has a sound partnership. She has been tirelessly collecting and digitizing WAMM documents and survey information while acting as a liason to local healthcare and volunteer organizations. Meanwhile, Group One has been joined by the man, the myth, the legend: Mr. Gibson Wong. Gibson is a returning volunteer and senior research analyst from last year's program. He has traveled to Kenema and is our resident expert and source of knowledge for the upcoming Young Scholars of Sierra Leone program, which will be starting on July 9th! He is also responsible for my involvement in WAMM this year, for which I am very grateful. Gibson and I have become reacquainted through joint lectures on physics and biology at POW on thursday and friday, in addition to treks to Fourah Bay College (to engage the engineering faculty and students in collaborating on some exciting community projects) and the fast-paced streets of Freetown! We will be aiding Kate this next week as she tackles the challenge of coordinating a large YSSL-initiated survey effort aimed at gathering educational and socio-economic data on the youth in Murray Town. I am extremely fired up for the exciting times ahead, and I look forward to welcoming our newest volunteer on monday, as well as taking part in the continued growth of our partnership with NETHIPS (Network of HIV Positives) and helping to facilitate volunteer efforts and IT development for their electronic database.

Whew, that's a lot of news! Next week, with our directors departing to the provinces for several days, I'll be proctoring exams with Gibson at POW and getting my feet wet with Fourah Bay College and NETHIPS, not to mention our Murray Town surveillance project! Tune in later for updates on these and other exciting developments in West Africa!