Chifundo

I am not a pet person. And I am definitely not a cat person. But somehow I have found myself the owner of a 4 week old, tiny, white kitten. This is how it happened. One day last week I woke up to find that, overnight, a rat had eaten half of one of my bananas an chewed through my phone charger. (Stupid rat. It caused a lot of problems and I couldn't charge my phone for a couple of days.) I went to the head teacher of my school to ask for advice. Specifically, where I could buy rat poison or traps. Instead, I was told that one of the other teachers had kittens he was giving away and I should take one. I hadn't really wanted pets here, mostly because I didn't want to worry about them if I left my house for the weekend or on a trip, but I told him I'd think about it. Apparently he took that as "yes! I'd love a kitten" because two days later a guy shows up at my house with a cat in a burlap sack. Being that I've never had a cat before, and have previously made a point to avoid them (I can actually count the number of times I've even touched a cat) I was a little worried about what to do with it. I texted one of my friends, who also has cats in Malawi, and got a lot of advice from her. So, now I have a pet. She's actually really cute, and it's kind of nice to have some company around my house. I wanted a traditional Malawian name so I asked my friend to pick out a name for her. He decided on 'Chifundo' which means 'mercy'. I think 'Wamisala' would fit her better, it means 'crazy', but I guess I'll stick with Chifundo. 

Chifundo

I am not a pet person. And I am definitely not a cat person. But somehow I have found myself the owner of a 4 week old, tiny, white kitten. This is how it happened. One day last week I woke up to find that, overnight, a rat had eaten half of one of my bananas an chewed through my phone charger. (Stupid rat. It caused a lot of problems and I couldn't charge my phone for a couple of days.) I went to the head teacher of my school to ask for advice. Specifically, where I could buy rat poison or traps. Instead, I was told that one of the other teachers had kittens he was giving away and I should take one. I hadn't really wanted pets here, mostly because I didn't want to worry about them if I left my house for the weekend or on a trip, but I told him I'd think about it. Apparently he took that as "yes! I'd love a kitten" because two days later a guy shows up at my house with a cat in a burlap sack. Being that I've never had a cat before, and have previously made a point to avoid them (I can actually count the number of times I've even touched a cat) I was a little worried about what to do with it. I texted one of my friends, who also has cats in Malawi, and got a lot of advice from her. So, now I have a pet. She's actually really cute, and it's kind of nice to have some company around my house. I wanted a traditional Malawian name so I asked my friend to pick out a name for her. He decided on 'Chifundo' which means 'mercy'. I think 'Wamisala' would fit her better, it means 'crazy', but I guess I'll stick with Chifundo. 

Lab#2 Photosynthesis

Yesterday I did a lab with my form 3 bio class. We were testing 2 different leaves for the presence of starch; a green leaf and a yellow leaf. The hypothesis was that the yellow leaf wouldn't have starch because it doesn't have many chlorophyll to perform photosynthesis. The lab itself went very well. The students were engaged, they followed the procedures, and the results were exactly what I had wanted. The lab reports, however, were much less successful. 

Last week we learned how to write lab reports. I discussed the format, what sections to include, and exactly what each section should contain. So this lab we were going to practice and work through the entire thing together. I wrote the purpose, materials, and procedures on the board so all they had to do was copy them. As a class we generated a hypothesis and that too I wrote for them to reference. After the lab we discussed the results. So all they had to do was come up with a conclusion. I even prompted them with that by writing: "the green leaf showed that it had starch because..." 

When I got the lab reports, they were a mess. The format was nothing like I taught, sections were in any random order and some on completely different pages. Some had the word "hypothesis" written three times but no actual hypothesis to go with it. Some of the conclusions were good and a few were pretty impressive, but most were like these:

"The green leaf showed that it had starch because..."

"First stating we can boil the water and because of boiling water the green leaf has starch."

"Photosynthesis to make food to green leaf but the yellow leaf has no starch because of there not make they food."

"The green leaf is chlorophyll."

And my personal favorite:

"Do not become yellow."