business as usual

11/10/2002:

"The young person who has trained to be disciplined will, in the final analysis, survive better than the one who has been instructed to wear a piece of rubber and continue with 'business as usual'... When we fail to tell our children that there are limitations to human freedom... When we fail to teach our young that there are some moral absolutes and they must reckon with them or perish, then we do grievous harm to the future of the human race."

-Janet Museveni, First Lady of Uganda

...and Uganda has made Africa's – if not the world's – most dramatic and positive gains in the fight against HIV/AIDS. from 30% to 6% in the past few years. supposedly with a combination of abstinence and fidelity advocacy, dynamic political leadership, and compassionate social programs for those with HIV/AIDS. 

the first lady criticizes the UN policy of promoting condoms, condoms, condoms. the cheap and easy way out? i'm not ready to get into this debate. reference my entries a couple of journals ago about talks with Pa Wango. suffice it to say here that condoms alone cannot stop AIDS in Africa.

i think i said something about a band-aid on a finger that keeps getting cut. what does the hand keep getting itself into? condoms do work. should be used and distributed. i just wonder if we're not selling ourselves short morally if we think this is the most effective means. i think that's what the first lady is saying.

SIV/Bushmeat

11/6/2002:
Questions on SIV/Bushmeat Article
[Newsweek, July 8, 2002 – "Breeding Grounds"]

1. How could SIV have led to HIV? Give 2 current examples.
2. How can the risk of exposure to and/or infection with SIV be minimized? Identify 3 practices.
3. Do you think it is more important to identify the origin of HIV/AIDS and prevent new diseases or to concentrate on controlling the current HIV/AIDS crisis? Explain.

this your education

10/31/2002:
na me dis o! Happy Halloween. maggie, manjou and me ate candy. gave some to the kids.

another long thursday. GHS EE Club and Moral Instruction went well. then i listened to Off the Shelf [?] up at school. on my shortwave. it's a BBC [radio] program. kinda like a book on tape. the last one was The Count of Monte Cristo. this one was The Devil that Danced on the Water, by Aminatta Forna. daughter of onetime Sierra Leonean dissident Mohamed Forna.

good book. the setting, i like. the story, i like. characters, i like. how she speaks/describes her father, i like. her voice – that it's her book and her voice on the radio – i like. makes me want to write a book. i will, insha'Allah.

i read more of The White Man of God up at school. leaving it there and reading bit-by-bit. also read about ecology. in a big red biology textbook from our school library. made me want to study science again. i find it fascinating.

also read about HIV. Bridget just asked a question about that in class today. about perinatal HIV transmission. what, if any, is the rate of transmission through the placenta? the big red bio book said 25-50%. i think it's much less. we'll see...

Buba asked a question in Moral Instruction about sneezing, and the etiquette around the blessing of a sneeze. what is the significance behind a sneeze? interesting. gotta look that up, too!

i love teaching. i'm good at it. hamdillah.

so... i finalized the EE SOW with my 3rd year students today. 8 weeks into the term! i may see them again for 2 or 3 more weeks/times. we laughed. at the futility of it all. we should've been crying. but i pray the exercise was/will be helpful. that exposure to developing topics and sequencing them [i.e. curriculum development] will benefit the students in the future.

we'll try to cover a couple of the important ones. Biodiversity and Conservation. Desertification? Urban Migration and Population. Lake Nyos? i made a plug for the EE Charts we have up at school. not just as teaching-learning aids, but as textbooks of a sort. and good references.

GLOBE is going well. i want to get 2nd year involved. this saturday, insha'Allah. gotta get school library keys.

i also want to have another general topic for the students to write about. like "why are you here?" justify the time, money and effort of this your education. in light of many things. like apathy, lack of motivation, assimilation [into civil service teaching posts] and opportunity. why are you here? why am i here?

"Honour and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honour lies."

...what M.S. Forna wrote in his daughter Aminatta's autograph book when she was young. it made sense to her only later.