"Family values" in my house meant two things: don't bleed on the carpet and sit still, ingrate, its science time. My father believed in instilling respect for the natural world and how it worked in his progeny, by force if necessary. Resent his endless ant books i did, but his evil plot succeeded: I've spent the last year of my life cheerleading for science, trying to kindle some of that sense of wonder in my own reluctant brood.
Throughout my year in Lesotho I've had doubts about my role and usefulness at St. Rodrigue. I've struggled to find a sense of purpose here, other than as a combination general store/variety show, offering candy and amusement but little lasting value.
But the longer I've been here the more I have felt my role can be described simply: science teacher. It brings me great joy to provide the girls with insight into the science of everyday life. And while I like electron configurations as much has the next guy who muscled through inorganic chemistry but didn't retain a damn thing, I truly love physiology. I am in awe of how many mechanisms are necessary to get the human body gets through its day, and it's fun to share what I know. In the senior students I have a captive audience five times a week to impose my enthusiasm on. And it's catching.
They like knowing what is going on inside of them. They can feel their hearts beat, their muscles flex, their goosebumps rise. And they can see that their urine is sometimes dark and that my skin is light. They have heard their grandmothers have high blood pressure and sugar diabetes. They eat soil. Their parents have AIDS. And they want to know why.
I have had the privilege of teaching girls who have soaked up this knowledge and peppered me with questions demanding more. They seem pleased and proud to have an explanation for their bodies' activities. I have optimistic visions of them in clinics of the future, insisting on a detailed account of what can be done to treat their brothers' heart conditions. So, in name of kindling curiosity I have explained farts more times than I care to count.
Despite all this interest, they mangle the information to an unbelievable extent on exams; one listed the three main components of urine as: 1) water, 2) salts and 3) soup. After correcting hundreds of appalling exams I have become the Sherlock Holmes of spelling discernment: "fertherlice," "myricshoup,"vanal"--I give credit for them all. Despite test scores in the teens, I choose to believe the students retain a practical understanding of the topics they find titillating.
And nothing has been more titillating than human reproduction.
We have spent a portion of the last few weeks getting our sillies out regarding the usual cultural practices, rural legends and curiosities (if a boy mixes semen in my yogurt can I get pregnant? Is it true that the ovaries get rusty if you don't have sex? If a pregnant woman is unclean does it mean she will give birth to a girl?) and gotten down to biological facts. The girls are always eager to learn about their guts, but I've gotten a different feeling as we've talked about sex-stuff.
I spend most of my time around mob-boss nuns, sassy female teachers and outspoken students, so it is sometimes difficult to remember that Lesotho is supposedly a strongly patriarchal country. But I am reminded by the girls and w omen's frequent complaints about male infidelity and rape. In a country with an astronomical HIV rate and where remote locations, early pregnancy and malnutrition make childbearing a risk, sex is dangerous. The girls have a lot to lose from ignorance. At this point in their lives the students' interest stems mostly from a natural curiosity about all things copulation, but it keeps them interested enough to listen to the important stuff.
We had a breakthrough for feminism when discussing sex determination in babies. Female cells have two X chromosomes, one of which is inherited from each parent. Male cells have an X and a Y. They receive the X from their mother and the Y from their father. The egg, then, will always carry an X chromosome, but the sperm which fertilizes it will have either an X or a Y. An egg fertilized with a "X" sperm will develop into a girl, whereas an egg fertilized by a "Y" sperm will make a boy.
At this point in the lecture one of the girls stopped me and astutely asked, "so, is it the woman or the man who determines the sex of the baby?" And then it dawned on me. This was a rural society with a need for male children. Which had been blaming women for the sex of their children. And here was the key piece of evidence; the sex of the baby wasn't the women's fault at all, if anyone was to blame, it was the man! The girls were utterly delighted. Biology was on their side. They were excited to explain to their family and friends that if a woman had only female children it was because "the Y sperms were lazy to fertilize!" I shamelessly encouraged the anthropomorphizing and gamete-bashing in the name of the greater good of female empowerment.
I'm not worried about these young women having the confidence to navigate through ordinary life--they can argue foes (or teachers) to exhaustion with their sheer volume and persistence--but sex and babies are a different arena, and a little bit of assertion backed up by knowledge could save their lives someday.
Not that they care about that. They want to know what causes period pain and whether peanuts can make you horny. But they pick up a lot of science along the way, which they like to demonstrate in conversation with me.
Following a lecture on dominant and recessive alleles, I suggested we use the last 5 minutes of class to take notes from the board, inciting mutiny from the ranks. They wanted to continue answering practice questions, which was reasonable, so I caved. One bright student announced from the back of the room, "Ah ha! We are the dominant allele!" Which made me proud.
It is non-ideal, of course, for a teacher to be the recessive allele ("the one which loooooses!"), but I am proud I can expect this group to dominate the living crap out of difficult situations. I hope a knowledge of human physiology will extend their already extraordinary self-confidence to include standing up to anyone who tries to harm their bodies and those of their children. I am humbled and honored to have given them one tool to help them live happy, healthy productive lives; being "Mme Darcy, science teacher" was an enviable raison d'etre for spending a wonderful year in the mountain kingdom.
