I have just read your post and I am speechless. Really! I am so happy to see this. I can't really comment more, but feel free to imagine the nice smile on my face.
I am actually quite close to the topic as I myself try to do something good for Africa (through the African school for particle physics).
I just say WOW once again!
If your smile is anything like the smiles on the faces in Liberia then I can imagine it quite well indeed!
That is great - thank you for the work. Physics was a tricky course to teach in my schools as foundational mathematics were severely lacking. I did find, however, that they understood things well if they could see them. One day I had students pair up and time each other pacing 50 meters, then calculate speed from that real data. It stuck!
Those students are usually amazing in terms of good will (much stronger than most Western students).
The first time I lectured at the ASP school was a complicated experience for me. I was supposed to provide an introduction to quantum mechanics, special relativity, gauge theories and quantum field theory. On slide 1, I have a question about the Greek letters (one of the student didn't know what the letter 'mu' was). Then later on, another student started to ask a lot of very deep question on quantum disentanglement.
Such a gap in levels makes teaching really tough!
That's a great observation. I had the same issue. For my case, I consciously decided to teach to the upper-middle level students to maximize the utility of the class. Hard to do a side-by-side test, but it felt right.
I am sure those issues will be alleviated with time. It is just hard at the time of the "investment", i.e. now :)
Are you still there?
That is true. All good things take time.
Actually, we had to leave several months back. I wrote a post about it here.
Oh I missed that post (I was quite away during the last 10 days). I will read it later today!