The student becomes the teacher!

Teaching and educating others is a big role of the nurse.  Here in Burundi, I see it as the major role of the nurse.  Because of this, I have been working hard with my students to teach them the importance of educating those around them.  It may just be my personal opinion, but I see these 70 bright young minds in front of me here, as the future of Burundi.  The conditions in the hospitals here are horrible.  There may or may not be running water, and electricity is not consistent.  In many of the hospitals there are no doors to shut off the outside world from the patients, and even if there was, I doubt they would close them, because it is so hot, you want the breeze to help keep you cool.  The hospitals are dirty, and most of the people I know, would not even want to sit on one of the beds in the hospital, let alone sleep in one.  Nurses are given too many patients to take care of, and not enough education or information about what they are to do with the patients.  So, they do the minimum.  Not because they do not care, but because they do not know any different.  The family does everything for the patient except medications that have to be given by a shot or through the IV.  When you ask a nurse to check a patients vital signs, the only thing they check is their temperature.  Is this because they do not realize that the other things like pulse, blood pressure, and respirations are not important?  I doubt it.  I think it is because they have never been told any differently.  Hospitals are not where you save lives here, you need to save lives before they ever get to the hospital and teach people how to avoid getting sick in the first place. 

I gave my students an assignment that they needed to find a group of people to teach a health topic to, any health topic.  I didn’t care if it was something I had taught them, or something they had already learned, I just wanted them to get out into the community and teach something.  Little did I know that this would take us into uncharted waters for the university.   The students began working on their project and then told me, that in order to go into the community they would need an official letter from the university president that stated what they would be doing, and basically giving them permission to be out in the community.  It seems that without this, it would be impossible for my students to do the assignment safely, as they were afraid of getting in trouble.  The country has many rules that we would not only not understand, but also not tolerate.  So, when I asked if we could get this permission from the director of the nursing program, he seemed hesitant and didn’t really want to help out…and without his help or buy in, I knew it would never get done.   So, I asked for an alternative, could he help me bring people to the campus that the students could teach.  He thought this idea would be better, and I felt like it would be safer for the students as well.  Eric, the director of the nursing program said he would contact people to help me get them to campus, but it soon became clear to me that this was low on his list of priorities, and he just wasn’t doing it.  I was frustrated, but turned to a few of the people that I do know here and asked for help.

One person was able to help me arrange for the students to teach a group of widows.  The organization of Sister Connection has its office here on campus.  Sister Connection is an organization that helps support widows here in Burundi.  After the war, nearly an entire generation of men/fathers was wiped out.  This left, many women alone to raise their children.  Widows here are seen as “lower than dirt” I was told, and they have a very hard time supporting and providing for their family.  So, sister connection was born, and people can sponsor a widow much like all of the child sponsorship programs.  Only you sponsor a widow instead, and that in turn helps support her whole family.  So, every Wednesday a group of the widows comes to campus for prayer and worship time.  I was able to connect with the director and arrange to have my students teach them while they were already on campus!  Perfect solution!  About half of my students spent a couple hours teaching the widows.  They had prepared to teach them about tuberculosis, diarrhea, HIV/AIDS, hypertension, alcohol, smoking and malaria.  We split the widows up into small groups and each group was taught 4 different topics.   

I was also able to have a friend help me arrange with the church that is right near campus to have the students come and teach people there.  When we arrived that afternoon, they were all ready for us.  They had announced in church on Sunday that nursing students would be at the church teaching if anyone would like to come.  I think about 50 people showed up, it was amazing!

My students did an amazing job!  They took the assignment very seriously and even requested to wear the medical lab coats from the lab so that they would look more professional.   I was so proud of them, I had a hard time holding back the tears.  They taught in Kirundi so I had no idea what they were saying, but they had turned in their teaching plans to me ahead of time so I knew what they were supposed to be saying.  Afterwards the students all said that they felt really good about themselves and felt like they could make a big impact on their country by teaching people around them.  They had never seen teaching and educating others as one of their roles, and now instead of just telling them about how important it was, they were able to live it and see it for themselves.  The people they were teaching were so appreciative to have the information, and were very interested in everything the students were teaching them.  I did have a nurse from the hospital that I had met a few weeks ago come help me on this day so I could have someone there that could understand what they were saying, and she was very impressed with what a good job they were doing.

The pastor at the church said, even though they are so close to the University, they had never had students come over to the church to do anything like this before, and he was so glad we had come.  The widows also said they had never had such education before, and hoped it would continue in the future.  The director of the nursing program I think was a little shocked that I actually was able to pull it off, even though he did not help me at all.  One of the missionaries here said to me, “you have accomplished more in your short time here than some missionaries accomplish in a year here.  You are not afraid to introduce new ideas and you want to see the students succeed and learn.”  I am not telling you all of this to toot my own horn, because it really was not me.  It was the work of a lot of people helping me get this arranged, and it is the students who did all the work.  I just tell you this because I am so proud of the students, and I hope that they continue to remember throughout their careers the impact they can have in their country by teaching and educating.