Kuuliza si ujinga

This year, I set up the national exam practicals for biology. One month before the exam, I received the following advance instructions. (these are excerpts, the instructions also included chemicals and lab apparatus)

BIOLOGY PRACTICAL 2A
Specimens:
Each student must be provided with a liver fluke.

BIOLOGY PRACTICAL 2B
Specimens:
Each student must be provided with:
-a lizard (may be shared by several students)
-a centipede
-a hibiscus leaf
-a cypress branch
-a scapula bone
-radius and ulna bones
-a rib bone

I nearly panicked at these instructions. A liver fluke? What's a liver fluke? What's a cypress tree? How am I going to get enough scapula bones to put one on each table in the lab?

Tanzania has no biological supply houses. You can't just fill out an order for 15 liver flukes, 8 scapula bones, and 4 centipedes. You have to find everything yourself: in short, you go on a scavenger hunt. A scavenger hunt where the stakes are the students' exam scores and possibly their educational futures.

Okay, liver flukes. Liver flukes are parasites that live in livestock livers, specifically in the gall ducts. Apparently, the cows in my district are not infected with liver flukes. So, where to get them?

Try one: the headmaster's cow is being slaughtered for school graduation celebrations. I talk to the students doing the slaughtering and ask them to take a look at the liver. I also put an order in for ribs and scapula bones. I end up with two small, immature liver flukes and seven ribs covered with rotting meet (I received them three days after the celebrations, due to poorly timed travelling on my part). The scapulas were somehow lost. But I did get two from a goat that was slaughtered for another graduation party.

Try two: talk to friends. I have a friend in town, a biology and chemistry teacher who is super-enthusiastic about practicals. He runs the district branch of the Tanzanian science teachers' association, and has hosted several workshops training the local teachers to use the labs. He also has connections. I initially got two liver flukes from him, and got eight more later.

Try three: the mnaada. The mnaada is a monthly market and livestock auction. It also happens to be two days before the biology exam. I bike to the neighboring village on mnaada day, carrying a small container of formaldehyde tucked in an old powdered milk can. The cows being butchered have liver flukes--lots of them! The butchers initially want to charge me for taking parasitic worms off their hands, but fortunately the district meat inspector intervenes. I split up the liver flukes with some teachers from another secondary school, and end up with enough liver flukes to put out one per student. The mnaada also provides four scapula bones--not quite enough, but maybe the students can share.

As for the rest...I get radius and ulna bones by scavenging wing bones from chickens at lunch time. The lab contains a single dry lizard and a single centipede. There are a few cypress trees in town. Fortunately, hibiscuses grow at the school.

So the practicals went reasonably smoothly. There were some last minute preparations, some rushing around the lab to label things correctly, some quick additions of solutions to student tables. But the specimens were there, and it wasn't a disaster. And now I have 15 liver flukes preserved in formaldehyde for next year.