Wilima Science Competition

First off, I would just like to take this opportunity to wish everyone out there a very happy Tanzanian Union Day! And how exactly does one celebrate this festive occasion locally, you ask? I have absolutely no idea, but it means a day off of school for me, and therefore an opportunity for soon-to-be-leaving PCVs from the area to have a "final Chani weekend" in Njombe. And so today, to clear out some space and make some extra cash, a few of us took to the streets of Njombe to sell all of the old clothes that have been accumulating over the last couple years. My haul was mostly supplied by the things that the volunteer before me left at my house. But hey, finders sellers. It was worth it just for the entertainment to be honest, seeing the crowd of Tanzanians following us around town to see what we had in all of those big fancy suitcases. Can't wait to see a few more people walking around town with their fashionable bike helmets!

The big news since my last post, however, was that I successfully completed my second weekend science competition, this one at my own school, Wilima Secondary, along with students from the nearby Wino Secondary School, which also has a PCV from my class. So he, along with 8 Form III and Form IV students, made the walk to my school on a Friday, making for a total of 6 teams of 4 students competing.

Form III parachute - based egg drop device

This competition was different from the first one in Njombe during March in that it contained twice as many students, was hosted by my school and therefore took place in front of a crowd of a couple hundred cheering students (wild and crazy kids if you will) throughout the weekend, and also featured a couple new events that we didn't get to try out in Njombe. Many of the competitions were the same, although it was interesting to see the differences in some of the design techniques compared to the younger students from the Njombe seminar. These students, for instance, actually were familiar with the parachute concept (to my surprise) and a couple of them used it in their egg drop devices. I also tried to incorporate more mini lessons into the activities to help the kids relate their classroom content to more practical applications (e.g. thinking about center of mass for building tall structures and Archimedes' Principle for building rafts).

A Form IV student presents his group's tallest jengo, or building, made from only paper and tape.

This seminar also saw the introduction of the JEOPARDY quiz bowl competition. Rather than testing them strictly on classroom facts, we decided to focus the JEOPARDY categories on things like completing number sequences and picture patterns, and presenting engineering-style scenarios that required them to use simple formulas to meet certain design specifications. Some of the problems were pretty challenging, even for the top students that we had participating. But they all really got into it and once again really impressed me with their abilities. The one disappointment, however, was that none of them seemed to appreciate the value of Final JEOPARDY. Only half the teams were even willing to gamble any of their points after my pulling their arms, and then only bet the minimum. I need to find a way to teach them about the value of high-risk-high-reward gambling and extreme thinking - someone has to set a good example after all...

Creating a fresh batch of Sudoku maniacs.

The bridge building competition again was saved for last, though this time it got to be a little ridiculous. I guess the bamboo sticks we gave them were bigger, so the groups were cutting them in halves and using multiple rails of bamboo on their bridges. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves in terms of the results - myself standing on one of the bridges while holding a cinder block I think was actually a reduction in the load compared to what we used while testing. But the kids certainly enjoyed seeing how they could make such a strong bridge with such few materials.

Each of these cinder blocks easily weighs 50 lbs.

Overall, I was extremely pleased once again with how the competition went, and it definitely seemed like the students appreciated it as well. That and the fact that, after using some leftover materials from the last one, this entire competition cost somewhere around $12 to put on. Now that's what I call a Peace Corps budget! And the added bonus was that one of the new teachers at my school has a video camera, and was able to take some great footage of the whole weekend, including plenty of my jumbled, babbling Swahinglish. So I'm currently working on making some kind of video / slideshow trailer that I can use to possibly further my extension hopes and maybe get more funding for doing future competitions. I've already gotten a good amount of confirmed interest from other volunteers in bringing things like this to their schools, but I'm still waiting to get more information from the Peace Corps staff about what is going to happen with my extension request. In the meantime, I'm really enjoying getting to do these small-scale seminars for the kids at my school. One of the Form I's that I took to Njombe actually approached me and requested that we hold another similar competition at Wino soon for the younger students who didn't get to participate this past weekend, so it's really cool to see how excited he is getting for these competitions!

The other exciting thing at my school has been that I've found a couple teachers who are also big basketball enthusiasts, and so I've shared with them some of the old Bulls playoff games and Michael Jordan videos that I got while I was home. We've started having evening screenings for some of the basketball playing students as well, so I'm happy to say that MJ is quickly becoming a household name around Wilima!

Next week I will be heading up to Dar for our class's Close of Service (COS) Conference, which basically means spending a week on vacation at a nice hotel on the south beaches of Dar. I guess it's Peace Corps' way of saying congratulations on making it for two years, now enjoy a free week in Dar. So check back soon for more updates on that and hopefully some good news about my extension finally! Thanks for stopping by, San Diego.