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…
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