Translating microbiology into African mother tongues
My name is Grace, and I run a small YouTube and Facebook e-learning community, T?nyam? tw? muoyo, that discusses issues related to health and diseases in my mother tongue of Kikuyu from Central Kenya. Our focus in these lessons is on the "why" of disease, delving into the microbiology and molecular details to better understand what is happening at the cellular level.
Because the division of labor related to care-giving typically falls on women, especially in the rural context, access to current, up-to-date modern health and science information is increasingly important and of utmost priority for communities at large. One way to mobilize and increase science literacy in rural or underdeveloped parts of the world is to support robust science engagement in the languages that people speak in their daily lives. In this way, science engagement in mother tongues presents an under-explored, unique and targeted method to increase learning and literacy in the languages in which people conduct their daily lives.
Contributed by: Grace Kago