I’m Extending (Part 3 of 3)

Although it probably could have been inferred from the fact that I’m not back in America after completing 2 years of Peace Corps service, I can finally say with certainty that I am in fact extending my service for a third year. After spending much of the last few months in uncertainty on what the next step for me would be, I was finally able to realize that what I most want to do right now is continue teaching here in Tanzania and continue the work I’ve been doing with the “Shika na Mikono” hands-on science group and conducting science competitions around the country. In other words, I want to be a travelling science man who goes around Tanzania promoting interactive science events and working with other Peace Corps Volunteers.

I will be staying at my current site at Wilima Secondary School near Njombe, and will continue teaching, though with a reduced number of scheduled periods. I am continuing to teach Form I Math, but will have more time to prepare Physics lab practicals for students in every grade level. Hopefully around once a month or so, I will be able to visit other Volunteers’ schools or nearby towns and provide the materials and planning to do science competitions / seminars with their students. Depending on how things go, it may also be possible to do region-wide science fairs and possibly gain added support from the Ministry of Education as well.

So please stay tuned as things progress, as I will continue to give inside looks into the various events and conferences that I take part in around Tanzania. If there is anyone who may be interested in supporting these kinds of events, either by donating money, books, supplies or other learning resources, please feel free to contact me by email (sbonomo3@gmail.com) for now, and please also be on the lookout soon for a more direct way to contribute that I will make available online. BUT PLEASE DO NOT SEND PACKAGES OR BOXES OF SUPPLIES TO MY PO BOX IN NJOMBE!!!! Problems with the Njombe customs office continue to stifle attempts at receiving care packages from America, so until things get figured out, please don’t send anything other than letters to that address.

In other news, I’ll be coming home in a couple weeks! For the last two weeks of September I’ll be home - a Game Night wedding and a Texas baseball trip are just too much of an excuse not to use to come home, so I am very much looking forward to that. Plus, one of the perks of extending for a full year with the Peace Corps is that they give you a month’s home leave to use whenever you want. So I’ll be adding on a few days using my regular vacation time to be home from Thanksgiving, all the way up through New Year’s! Can’t wait to hopefully get to see everyone over at least one of those trips!

Science = Explosions (Part 2 of 3)

Belle, Ben and I were the three chosen representatives from the Shika na Mikono hands-on science team to go to the pre-service training (PST) of the newly arrived 2013 class of education volunteers. The location of PST was changed this year, from Morogoro, where I completed my training almost exactly 2 years ago, to the altogether underwhelming new location of Korogwe, near the coastal region of Tanga. However, despite its lack of luxuries, conveniences and more than 2 dining options, Korogwe did perhaps offer the trainees a more genuine “Tanzanian experience” than its predecessor. And at least we were able to tell the new group in all honesty that going to their sites would almost certainly actually be an upgrade compared to what they’ve gotten used to in 10 weeks of training.

During the week, the trainees stayed at their CBT’s, or local clusters of nearby village schools, while we made preparations for our sessions on Friday and Saturday. Our task was to prepare the volunteers for teaching math and science in a Tanzanian context and to show them ways to use cheap and easy-to-find materials to make their teaching more interactive. But of course, as has been the case for the past couple years of such trainings, the primary area of focus was to make a dazzling explosion-filled introduction that would hopefully scare the new volunteers as much as inspire them. So that’s what we spent the majority of our week prepping for.

Here’s what we did: For a while, the Shika team has been working to perfect locally available recipes for gunpowder and smoke bombs, so we made a few trial batches of each to make sure everything would go as planned. For the introduction, the group was led into a dimly lit open dining hall as initial smoke bombs were thrown into the charcoal jiko’s (stoves) placed on the front stage. Out of the shadows appeared Ben, who as he walked out, initiated a video space montage, finely tuned to coincide with the song Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell (think Requiem for a Dream). Throughout the video, Ben stood on the stage in front of the crowd, giving a passionate monologue on the mysteries of space and our attempts to understand the universe through science. Meanwhile, Belle and I slowly approached from the back of the room with lit toilet paper torches, lighting kerosene-soaked rocks on the ground on either side of the standing crowd, before setting off pouches of gunpowder front and center, and then finally ascending the stage for a synchronized final trio of smoke bombs as the music reached its final crescendo and Ben capped off his speech with, “We are….Shika na Mikono!”

Of course in a perfect world, things would have actually lit as they were expected, been timed correctly, and we would have mysteriously disappeared behind a wall of smoke and reappeared in the back of the room. But it was still pretty entertaining I think, and we made sure to admit that we are in fact nothing more than a bunch of nerds who like to blow things up.

Needless to say, the rest of our training was a let down compared to the introduction, but it was the first time the trainees had training sessions that weren’t just sitting and listening to powerpoint presentations, so they all said they really appreciated our days with them. For our first session, we split them up into small groups and dumped out a giant “Box of Fun,” filled with different items that can be found almost anywhere at very little cost. Each group was given a couple topics from the various science syllabi and had to come up with some kind of engaging way to present the topic. There were some really creative ideas from the volunteers, and Ben, Belle and I shared some of our own that we’ve picked during our time teaching. We also introduced them to the idea of doing science competitions by having them do an Egg Drop competition, and showed them how to set up and conduct science practicals, or lab experiments. A couple times we split up into separate math and science groups to talk about issues specific to those respective subjects.

In the end, it was a lot of work and travel for a couple days of training that went by incredibly fast, but we all loved being able to lead our sessions and getting to know the new group of volunteers. They will be headed to their sites in early September, and it sounds like 3 will be coming down to Njombe, so that’s very exciting.

And I’ll actually be able to get to know them because…

Puppies, Pills and P-hysics (Part 1 of 3)

A few weeks after starting the new term at Wilima, I decided to make my first stop as a travelling science man at Belle’s site, Mwatisi Secondary School in Tukuyu, near the town of Mbeya. Loading up the science wagon (backpack) with the necessary provisions, I hit the old dusty trail (crater-laden dirt road). But along the way, sickness struck in the form of some kind of tonsillitis / mono virus – I’m still not totally sure which one it was. The timing was convenient enough, since I was spending the week at Belle’s site anyways, and that made it much easier to recover and maintain a steady overdose of Advil. What also made things much more tolerable was that Belle had just inherited an 8-week old puppy from a nearby Volunteer’s recent puppy surplus, so Apollo was able to keep me in as high of spirits as possible as he struggled to adapt to new concepts of indoor bladder control and not being constantly smothered with attention.

Having tonsillitis / mono in Tanzania while sleeping with a puppy every night – is there any better way to define juxtaposition?

Luckily, by the end of the week I was feeling a little better, and so the science competition was able to continue as planned. Once again, science wins the day. It was slightly more difficult to do a weekend event at Mwatisi, since it is a day school, and most of the students do not come in on the weekends. But at least half of those who were expected to show up came within 3 hours of the stated starting time (pretty darned good by TZ standards), so everything worked out great. We were able to use several of the activities that I have done in the past, and saw some new and interesting ideas from the Form III students. They were all really excited to participate, especially when we handed out prizes of colored pencils and USAID-provided school supply pouches. At a school whose only 2 science teachers over the last 3+ years have been Peace Corps Volunteers, it was pretty cool to see the students getting so excited about doing science activities. And the school headmaster and some other Tanzanian teachers were there observing most of the time as well, and really seemed to appreciate and get into the events themselves.

So for me, it was back to Wilima, but only for a few days, since the following week would be the Shika na Mikono (hands-on science) group’s turn to lead training sessions at the new Peace Corps Volunteers’ pre-service training…