Njombe Science Competition

A couple of weeks ago, myself and two other Peace Corps teachers held a science competition weekend in Njombe. Only two schools were able to bring students, but there were 12 in total - 6 from my school and 6 from another near Njombe. Last year, some older volunteers got in touch with a group from MIT which agreed to make a $500 donation to support some kind of science-related activity or conference in Tanzania. We were finally able to make use of the money for this conference, using the funds to cover all the costs of the venue, materials and supplies for the competitions. The students' contribution was covered by them paying for their own transport to and from Njombe.

The competition was a great success! We split the kids up into 4 teams, mixing schools and allowing them to make their own team name and flag. Throughout the weekend, we awarded points to the teams based on their performance in each of the competitions and kept a running standings board to keep track of which team was in the lead.

Density Column Demonstration

In addition to the acutal competitions (which I will describe in more detail shortly), we set up some short science demonstrations that highlighted certain topics which are covered in the syllabus, and also introduced them to some math and logic puzzles like sudoku, which they loved. Students here don't really get exposed to many (if any) critical thinking activities like this, which are so common for young students in more developed education systems, and have a huge effect on learning development in general. But it was great to see them all have so much interest in the puzzles, and I was very impressed with how quickly a lot of them were able to pick them up. All of the students were Form I and Form II, so they were pretty limited in their knowledge base and English ability, but they all were very excited to do the activities and went far beyond our expectations.

As for the events, here's a brief rundown on some of the competitions we put them through:

Egg Drop - given a bunch of junk, design some kind of container that can keep an egg safe after dropping it from 8-10 feet. This one was very interesting actually - apparently the students (and even Tanzanian teachers) were not at all familiar with the concept of a parachute, which is usually the standard approach used in making egg drop devices. So all of the teams just tried to pad the containers as much as possible in order to protect the egg, and 2 of the 4 teams still succeeded. It made me realize that without TV and textbooks, there really is no reason why they should know of parachutes, so after we tested their designs, we made a quick example of one with a parachute and showed how much of an effect it had on the outcome.

Jenga Jengo ("Build a Building") - build the tallest structure possible, as quickly as possible, that can withstand a book-waving wind test by using only sheets of paper and masking tape. All of the groups seemed to go straight for house-type buildings as opposed to sky scrapers, which again was an indication of how little they are exposed to. Though some of them were very tricky and gave themselves an advantage by putting their scissors inside of the buildings as a weight to keep it from tipping over. Clever girl...


Raft Rally - make some kind of boat out of a small piece of aluminum foil that can hold the most weight before sinking. A couple groups did me proud by making origami-style boats, but quickly learned the difficulties of doing such things with aluminum foil... especially since they weren't allowed extra sheets in case of rips. Whammy. But the winner held up 2 large rocks and a potato!

Drop Zone - make a plastic bag parachute to safely drop a paper clip passenger as close as possible to a target on the ground. After their brief introduction to parachutes earlier, the kids did a great job making some themselves.

Bridge Challenge - the grand finale and my favorite of them all. Design and build a bridge using limited materials, BUT instead of being given the materials, each team gets 15 Science Shillings and must buy everything from a science shop. All kinds of materials were available - straws, toothpicks, wooden skewers, bamboo sticks, tape, rubber bands, glue, etc. but the kids had to decide which materials were most important becuase bonus points were given for each Science Shilling leftover at the end. Again, I was incredibly impressed with what they were able to come up with, and the winning bridge held a bucket with 18 giant rocks. In fact we didn't have enough to start with and had to run outside to grab massive bricks just to see how much the thing could hold.

All in all, I couldn't have been happier with how the weekend went, especially in terms of how excited it made the students participate in these competitions and put their science knowledge and intuition to the test. It would also be great to be able to show this to all students, so that they could all see some fun and interesting applications of science subjects, which is why I'm hoping to replicate it soon after the midterm break at my school.

Helping to organize and put on this science competition reminded me of why I had originally had thoughts of trying to continue doing hands-on-science-related work in Tanzania after my 2 years of service runs out in July/August. It really inspired me to look into the options of extending with Peace Corps, with the hopes of being able to travel to different parts of the country and put on similar conferences and competitions for other Peace Corps schools. This event was so cheap and easy to plan and put on that there's no reason why it can't be duplicated for any other school. The only problem for volunteers is finding funding sources and going through grant-writing processes and preparing venues to hold these kind of conferences. But I feel like if I can continue as a volunteer with a primary focus on making those kinds of arrangements, there can be a ton of similar and improved science competitions all over the country, which can hopefully help to raise interest in science among Tanzanian students and possibly increase the incredibly low percentage of students who even bother continuing to study science subjects through Form IV. I'll keep the updates coming on whether this idea actually seems feasible, but in the meantime, I'm very excited for the success of our first science competition, and also for the hope of doing another one at my school in the next couple of weeks!

"Kili"-ng Me Softly

Not literally "killing" me, granted, but still, I'll go for the pun at the risk of sounding a bit over-dramatic. It is of course in reference to the Kilimanjaro Marathon which took place last weekend on Sunday, March 3rd and which became my second completed marathon over two continents!

I successfully completed my lone goal of finishing the race, after having done foolishly little training beforehand. Considering the lack of preparation, though, the run could have been much worse. The weather in Moshi right now is still very warm and sunny with little rain, but the race started early at 6:30am and was at a high enough elevation to be fairly breezy throughout the length of the course, so overall it still felt plenty cooler than the hot and humid Chicago Marathon of 2010 that I can compare it to. 

The course was very interesting and varied in terms of its environment. The first half marathon took place throughout a series of side streets passing through villages, where runners were able to take in the wonderful scents of Kilimanjaro (a.k.a. Wake up and smell the burning garbage!). It was fun to run by the crowds of villagers on the side of the road and actually greet them in Swahili, which was not common for most of the foreigners that were running the race. And because the early part of the course was "down-and-back," I was able to see the leading pack of world-class Kenyan runners as they whizzed by me in the opposite direction and left me in their wake of clouded dust for good. If only I were able to run one 5-minute mile, let alone 26 consecutive ones, I might just have had a chance at that prize money...

The second half of the course was a tarmac road that goes up closer towards the base of the mountain, and so the stretch of miles 13-19 ish (the funnest stretch by far) was almost completely uphill. Woo. My greatest motivation during this part, however, came from a couple small Tanzanian children who started running alongside me carrying bags of cups that were being used to give water and the alternative "energy" drink, coca-cola, to the runners. So I kept telling myself that if a couple of 5-year-old boys in flip-flops carrying bags of cups could run this, then I guess I can go on a little longer. I did stop a few times on the uphill part to stretch my legs though, which I think was very necessary for my lack of preparation for the race. But the one boy stuck with me the whole way up and back down, which was very impressive. It was kind of sad though, at times I would still technically be "running", based on little more than the fact that I was swinging my arms slightly while moving, and yet the walking child beside me was still slowing down to let me catch up to him.

Near the end of the race, I met up with another Peace Corps Volunteer who was running, and we decided to finish together. Naturally this warranted some sort of finale, so we did a little routine over the last hundred feet or so involving leap-frogging, circle-swinging, and finishing with a human wheelbarrow across the finish line, which got some applause from the crowd and also got the attention of the cameraman who apparently had little work cut out for himself in between recording the exciting finish of a group of Kenyans and the goofy antics of two 6-foot-plus white people stumbling across the finish several hours later. But hey, maybe it was enough to make the Tanzanian nightly news...?

Overall, running the Kili Marathon was an experience I'll certainly never forget. Being able to look up and see the massive snow-capped peak of Africa's tallest mountain while running 42 kilometers amongst Kenyans, Tanzanians, Americans, Europeans, and others of many more nationalities in the midst of a country and a group of friends that have defined what I've called home for that last 21 months is an experience that I am extremely lucky and grateful to have had. Although, despite having added a new member to my collection of marathon medals, I have to say, a better souvenir would have been to take home a glowing piece of that radical rock.

How Steve Got His Groove Back

Hello all, and greetings once again from the land of Tanzania! It's great to be back after a short, yet

refreshing 3-week visit to America, and now finally after about 5 weeks of getting back into my Tanzanian groove, I am able to use internet and let the updates rain down, not altogether unlike the weather I've been experiencing in what is now the full-on rainy season in the southern highlands of Njombe/Songea. It makes for some exceptional scenery, especially around my school, but of course carries with it the occasional whammy of getting caught in the village for hours on end in the afternoon before being able to make the sloshy hike back to my house on travelling days. It still remains one of my favorite pasttimes though to sit in my house or on the porch during a heavy rainstorm and just see how calm and quiet it seems to be all around, amidst the thunderous and fierce showers.

Unfortunately we had a pretty bad lightning attack a few weeks ago, which not only scared the living bajeebus out of me after lightning struck no more than 20 feet outside my front window, but also caused some pretty serious damage to our generator, leaving us without our typical electricity benefit in the evenings. But all is well (and I am still able to take regular advantage of my incessant movie- and tv show-downloading in America) because our solar power is fully functioning. Another teacher has brought his own inverter to use in the staff room so that teachers can keep their phones and computers charged during the day, and there is still enough left to keep the classrooms lit from 7-10 at night so the students can still have their nigh studies. It's great to now be seeing the real advantages of our solar grant! The school is putting the finishing touches on the new administration block that has been under construction since before I arrived, and when it is fully done we will be able to move on with the next phase of the solar project and make one of the new rooms a computer lab / photocopy room. Can't wait to finally have that!

As for teaching, I've begun with my Form I students, teaching an introductory course called Baseline, which is supposed to get them all up to speed on what they should have learned in 7 years of primary school. I have actually just finished with those topics, so next week I will start with their regularly scheduled programming - math and physics. I am really loving teaching the Form I's. They are all very impressionable and actually haven't given up on math and science yet, so they are all really excited and participating in class and it's great. I can tell a lot of them are able to build up their confidence by doing relatively easy topics to begin the year. And I am definitely beginning to see who the standout students are going to be, so that is keeping me very excited for the rest of my time with them this year. I'm also teaching Form III Physics, and these are the same kids that I taught Physics to last year. At the end of last year, they took their national examinations to see if they would be allowed to continue on to Form III or have to repeat Form II. Surprisingly, only 11 out of 120 or so failed, which is awesome by normal Tanzanian standards. All of the results were quite impressive. They finished 3rd out of 22 in our District and 108 / 408 in the entire Southern Highland zone, which includes Iringa, Njombe and Songea. I was particularly impressed by how they did in Physics also. For the class, they averaged a C and there were actually 3 A's!! Another one of my teachers said he had never seen an A in Physics since he had been at our school, so that is definitely an accomplishment. They certainly deserve a lot of credit because with the shortened schedule last year for the census, we had to rush a bit at the end of the year to fit in all of the topics, so I knew it would be on them to make sure they studied their notes well, and apparently they did, so I was very pleased. Now in Form III, Physics is no longer mandatory, so I just told them that whoever wanted to continue should come join my class, and over 40 of them came, which is fantastic (Usually there are 10-20). Although I'll only be with them for half of the year, it is a great motivation to teach them having seen the effort that they have made so far.

In other school news, my All-Star Girls Conference girls have continued with their life skills teaching, this time teaching the new Form I girls. It was great sitting in on their session (I've never had to say a word in any of their sessions, which shows how prepared and superb leaders the girls are) because you could tell that these new young girls were really looking up to the leaders who are now Form II's. So I think they got a lot out of it. And as always, they LOVE playing musical chairs, which is pretty great entertainment for me as well.

Outside of Peace Corps stuff, there are a couple trips coming up that I am really looking forward to: next weekend we are saying goodbye to Songea's beloved Paul, who was the Dumb to my Dumber (or the other way around) for our Halloween costumes last year and will greatly be missed. So we will be going to Mbamba Bay one more time, which is the nice campsite on the beach at Lake Malawi that I have been to a couple times before. Then a few weeks later, on March 3rd, is the Kilimanjaro Marathon, which, despite having done next to zero training for, I consider myself sufficiently prepared to "run". Of course my only real goal is to finish the race, and put myself one step closer to the ultimate goal of a marathon on every continent (watch out, Antarctica!) so I won't be too disappointed if I end up with a terrible time. At least it should be cooler weather near the mountain than it usually seems to be for the Chicago Marathon.

Now that it is already February, I am really starting to see what little time I have left in Tanzania. Officially, we can begin to COS (leave) in mid-July, though I don't know that I will necessarily be trying to take the first plane outta here since I haven't exactly made any...what do you call those...plans for after Peace Corps. Not to say that I don't have ideas. As I have mentioned, I've been involved in a hands-on science group with Peace Corps, and if it could work out, I could see possibly sticking around to continue with that, perhaps doing things like preparing inter-school science competitions and conferences. It is something that I have really enjoyed doing at my school and at our Girls Conference last year. Myself and 2 other volunteers are planning a small-scale competition like this in mid-March in Njombe, and depending on how that goes, I think I will have a better feel for whether I think it is something I would like to continue doing in this country.

That's all I've got for now, I promise the next update won't take as long to deliver, but thanks again to everyone who continues to check back and take interest in the goings-on of Tanzania! Hope everyone is doing well, and an early Happy Birthday to Mom!!

This was a semi-decent attempt at capturing probably the greatest rainbow I've ever seen. An entire semi-circle with every color vibrant and visible, and from the right viewpoint, my house could be seen perfectly centered underneath it. Pot(s) of gold pending...

A Change of Scenery

Top priority after 1.5 years...

Well I am very happy to say that I have successfully returned home to the greatest place on earth, Tinley Park, and have officially begun my holiday vacation in America. Still, I wanted to give some updates on what I had been up to in Tanzania just before coming home.

Dating back to Thanksgiving, I have to say that it turned out to be one of the greatest and more memorable Thanksgivings I've ever had, mostly because of how smoothly it went despite having so few "typical" amenities. We were able to cook a turkey (to perfection, not by me of course) in an aluminum pot charcoal oven, along with stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and some amazing pies made from scratch - pumpkin, mango, chocolate pudding-pineapple, and apple. I continue to be blown away by the cooking prowess of many of the other people here. My endeavors were not as difficult or complicated, but were equally successful and appreciated by all. I ended up making a 10-liter bucket's worth of guacamole, which turned out to be a great secondary gravy, and the egg nog was a HUGE hit and went off without a hitch. I think I've influenced a few more people to make it a twice-a-year tradition like it is for me. With 20 people at a single Peace Corps house with no electricity, the fact that we were able to get all of the cooking done and actually eat by 7 o'clock may have been nothing short of a miracle. After eating, we all gathered around a 12-inch netbook computer screen and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Mr. Turkey finished to perfection.

The "jiko" oven used to cook the turkey.

Thanksgiving gang, mostly residents of Njombe / Songea.

Truly classic-looking Thanksgiving pies - pumpkin, mango, apple.

Following Thanksgiving, I traveled to Morogoro to help with the in-service-training of the new class of Education volunteers. I led two sessions related to teaching Math in Tanzania, and I was part of the Hands-On-Science team that led activities all day on Saturday the 1st. We talked about ways to make science seem more exciting for students, and demonstrated this by doing an egg drop competition for the volunteers and their Tanzanian counterparts. We also made homemade gunpowder and stuffed it into a giant paper crane and then ignited it for an enticing fireworks introduction. So essentially our message was: if you can't break or blow something up, it's not science.

Testing out an egg drop contraption.

Cooking up a delicious batch of gunpowder.

Upon finishing my work at IST, I had about a week of time before needing to be in Dar for my flight home. Before he left, an old friend of mine in country told me about his site in a place called Lushoto, which is a small town in the mountains slightly farther North than Dar. I had my tent with me, and so I decided to go check out that area and see if I could do any hiking. From my guidebook, I learned about this place called the Irente Viewpoint, for which the book used some pretty intense descriptors such as: heart-pounding, breath-taking and gob-smacking. After seeing it myself, I have to say I agree with all of these, though I might also add on one more - scrumptulescent. It was really incredible, and I felt like there needed to be some Lord of the Rings background music just to stand and look out at the view. There is a very nice hotel right at the viewpoint, which was far outside of my budget range, but luckily they let people set up their own tents on their front lawn for cheap, and so I was able to wake up to the incredible sights seen below.

There were a lot of chameleons in the forests of Lushoto.

After my hike through Lushoto, I made my way to Tanga, a coastal town only a few hours away. There is a beautiful beach called Pangani that can be reached by a short 2-hour bus ride from town. I stayed there with a friend for 2 days and enjoyed the soft sandy beach, slightly warmer than desired but still refreshing Indian Ocean waters, and unbelievable views of the starry night sky. The temperature was very hot since this is the middle of the summer season, but with a nice fanned room it was nothing unbearable.

Finally, after leaving Pangani, I went on to Dar with a day of preparation before my 4:30 am flight on the 12th. On my last day before coming to America I decided it would be worthwhile to get into the proper mindset for the next 3 weeks and go to an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. 6 plates later my stomach was sufficiently stretched out to accommodate for all of my eating plans at home.

Now that I've had a couple days to be back and start catching up with friends and family, I can definitely see how seemlessly some things like driving came back to me, and yet everything I do seems to cause me to draw comparisons to my life in Tanzania. I'm sure I will be looking forward to returning in January, but for now it is nice to be completely unburdened and to actually understand everything that's being said around me! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone, and thank you for your continued interest in my blog and activities over the past year. Be sure to stay tuned next year for even more wild and wacky Tanzanian adventures!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Or more up-to-date, Happy Black Friday! My Thanksgiving here was a rather quiet one, spent at home with a not-so-impressive "feast" of rice and beans, but don't think I was any less thankful than usual to have it. Our Thanksgiving celebration will be on Saturday in Njombe. My scheduled contribution is (of course) a tub of guacamole, and also this year I'm going to give the egg nog another try. Basically this is an attempt at a retribution Thanksgiving, since I will be trying not to fail so badly on both of those things compared to last year. Helping me out this time around will be not having to lug the avocados half-way around the country and also the learned foresight of making sure i don't get sour milk for the egg nog. As far as the last several weeks have gone....

In the time since the Girl's Conference, the 5 girls from my school who attended the conference have hosted mini-conference lessons of their own for pretty much all of the other girls at Wilima, from Form I to Form III. A lot of the lessons were ones that they saw at the conference, but done in a slightly different way and sped up to cover more material in a short time. I was VERY impressed with their leadership and ability to keep control over a group of 40 or so students, especially those a couple years older than themselves. I literally did not even need to say a word during any of the lessons because they were very well prepared and confident about what they were teaching. I can't say enough about how proud I am of them and how dedicated they've been to spreading girls' empowerment at my school. I am sure they will be glad to continue lessons next year as well when we get new Form I students.

Aside from that, I've recently gotten involved in a hands-on science teaching group of Peace Corps Volunteers called Shika na Mikono ("Hold with Your Hands"). The group was started by other volunteers a few years ago with the intent of spreading knowledge of how to teach different science topics or perform labs using very cheap and easily available materials. I find it very interesting because it strongly relies on finding creative ways to teach students somewhat more difficult material, while sparking their interest in science subjects by letting them physically participate in the lesson. Because the last group of Education volunteers is now leaving the country, the old group members are passing on the duties to our new group - me and 2 others from the class I came into country with. So we had a meeting a couple weeks ago to talk about new ideas and goals for the group for the coming years.

There is a really nice manual that has been published for use by PC Volunteers, and so we are hoping to make updates to that and also add on more simple lesson plan ideas for hands-on teaching. The manual is made all in LaTeX, a document-writing program that I was (somewhat forcibly, but not regrettably) made pretty familiar with at Notre Dame, so luckily I am able to draw back on some of those skills now. The other big thing is that the Ministry of Education is planning these new teacher trainings for next year in terms of showing them how to actually teach using experimental lessons rather than just writing on the board every day. So we may be able to attend those trainings and put our two cents in on how to do all of those things, but also on a small budget. I'm really excited to start planning a Math and Science Conference next year, which will probably involve using some of the same kinds of ideas.

I'm officially done teaching for the year now, since the Form II students have finished their national exams and have left school. So the school is now half-capacity and winding down towards the final exams for the remaining students at the end of November. I have had a bit more freetime the last couple of weeks, though beginning the week after Thanksgiving is the IST training for the new group of volunteers in Morogoro, and I will be going to lead lessons for the math group, and then also a few sessions with the Shika group.

I will be spedning Thanksgiving (weekend that is) at the house of the married couple in Njombe, Jon and sara. It sounds like most of the people in the region will be coming - 15 or so - so it will be a lot of fun. We will actually be having turkey, even though they are so hard to come by in this country. Of course if it catches on fire in our make-shift cooking pot oven, we may have to all go looking for the nearest Denny's in Njombe.

After Thanksgiving and IST, I will probably be looking for some small filler travelling for a week or so, because on Wednesday, 12/12/12.......I'll be coming home for Christmas!! Wooooo!! I decided a while ago that it would be great to go home for the holidays, and so I booked my tickets for Dec 12th - Jan 4th. So let me know if you will be around Chicago in that time, because I will probably be able to take a few small breaks from gorging on food to actually see some people. So excited to be home and see everyone!!

Wasichana Wanaweza!!

Last week we held a Girl's Conference in the town of Peramiho, which is about a half hour bus ride from Songea. At the conference were 5 Form 1 girls from my school, Wilima, and also girls from 5 other schools that other volunteers either teach at or live near. Only our school and one other had girls from Secondary schools; the others were primary level but all within a few years in age. The conference started on Monday and went through Thursday night, and then we all returned to our respective homes on Friday. It was held at a big conference center in Peramiho. Pretty much the entire town of Peramiho has been built by various Missions and the whole town is well kept and has very nice buildings.

There were 7 volunteers in total from the Songea region, and most brought with a counterpart to help teach lessons and give advice to the girls. I brought with me one of my neighbors, since there are no female teachers at my school. Her name is Mama Edu and she turned out to be the perfect choice for me to bring. She gave some pretty heated rants to the girls about the way women are treated in this country and how that affects her. It's not much of a secret that generally speaking, at least in the village setting, women do a highly disproportionate amount of work compared to men in Tanzania. Cooking, cleaning, farming, carrying firewood, taking care of children, and choting water are all on the job description, and then it's also customary for them to always serve men first for food. A lot of men don't work and end up just sitting around the house most of the day drinking pombe (a locally made alcoholic bamboo juice) and talking with other people. Since most students don't pass their exams or do well enough to continue on to A-Level studies, they mostly end up going back home to work on the farm with their parents, and so many girls end up living this kind of heavy work-low payoff life until they are very old. The theme of the conference was "Wasichana Wanaweza" which basically means "Girls Can."

We had a lot of different teaching sessions and activities to send different messages of empowerment to the girls and also mixed in a good amount health education. One was teaching about the food pyramid, since your typical Tanzanian diet consists often of nothing more than ugali (a corn-based staple food of white mush with little nutritional value) and beans. Tanzania is such a fertile country all over and it easy in a lot of places to grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables, so there should not be nearly as many malnourished people as there are. We also taught them about the solar disenfecting, or SODIS, method of treating water. If you fill up a water bottle and leave it out in the sun for 6 hours or more, it kills a lot of the harmful bacteria and makes the water safe to drink. It's a good alternative to boiling water, which uses a lot of wood, charcoal, or kerosene that can be expensive.

Another session was on gender roles. The girls were given cards with different words on them like "doctor" or "cooking" and then they had to make an instant reaction and either go the "Men" or "Women" side of the room based on who they associated that word with. We also had a guest speaker, a female doctor from the Peramiho hospital, come to give a talk on HIV/AIDS, and with her was a man who is living with HIV, and he also gave a talk about his experience and advice for the girls.

I had two sessions that I led. The first was a lesson on Role Models- what the term means and how to identify/choose positive role models in our lives. Of course the example I used was Michael Jordan, so I made a big poster of him (a better drawing than my old Frank Thomas posters I must add - he did not look like a thumb) and listed reasons why he is my role model. Then I gave the girls poster paper and markers and told them to draw someone who is a role model for them. I guess my initial rough Swahili explanation was somewhat confusing because the first girl I saw working on hers starting writing "Michael Jordan" at the top of her poster, and I had to explain again that they were supposed to use someone that THEY looked up to, though maybe she was just so impressed with MJ that she decided he was a worthy role model for her as well.

The other session I did was a Hands-On-Science workshop kind of thing. So many kids in general, but especially girls, come into secondary school hating math and science, usually because they never had an actual teacher in primary school. So what I wanted to do was have different science demo's that were kind of exciting and showed them that science is more than just memorizing formulas, which is all that most of them do in class. We had 4 stations that they rotated through in small groups. One was a simple circuit with a battery and a Christmas light bulb, which was left open and needed to be completed with different materials like a pen, aluminum, nail, paper, test tube, balloon, etc. and they had to predict first and then try to see if the light would turn on. Another was a lever demo, which was just a ruler balance with cups on either end to add bottle caps into to see how many it took on each side to balance. Then they had to move the ruler so one side was larger than the other and try again to see how it changed.

The next was using a water gun to shoot targets at different heights to try and get an idea about how trajectories work and how to point the water gun to get the most distance and height. And the last station was rubbing a balloon or plastic pen or ruler on your head and seeing how it attracted small pieces of paper with static electricity. Most of the girls have shaved heads, so I think they needed to borrow a head to rub from some of the volunteers. All in all I was super excited with how it went because they all seemed to enjoy the activities and looked really interested.

For the end of the conference, we had each group of girls prepare a song/dance and a skit related to the messages of the lessons. My students put on a really good play that of course I only got a limited understanding of, but based on the other Tanzanians' reactions, was downright hilarious. I was incredibly proud of all my students because they kind of took leadership roles since they were some of the oldest students at the conference. They asked a lot of good questions and seemed to really believe in the things they were being taught. I'm really excited now for the rest of the school year to have them lead sessions like the ones they saw, but use them to teach other students at my school and possibly even some of the primary schools nearby. It also made me a lot more comfortable with teaching life skills lessons and was great to get other ideas on how to teach them. I definitely think teaching life skills will become a much bigger part of my teaching at school after having done this girls conference.

We were already talking about now trying to do a Boys Conference sometime during the next school year which starts in January, possibly at the same place in Peramiho. Another idea that I have had and really want to do next year is to hold a conference like this, but instead of being a Boys or Girls Conference, have it be like a Math and Science Seminar, where the best math and science students from different schools can come and have some quality nerd-out time. It would be really cool for them to be able to see what is actually happening with science in the world today and where the real applications of what they're learning are. I can possibly even show them some footage of our robot quarterback, Sleepy Jim, that we made as a senior design project for our robot football game at Notre Dame.

Meanwhile, back at school.....

The week of the Girls Conference was also the week of National Exams for the Form IV students. They will be finishing up for a few days this coming week also, but then will be headed home. I'll continue teaching the Form II's until their exams in early November, but then will be finished with my regular teaching schedule. I plan to work more with the Form III's and giving them a head start in some math topics that they will learn next year, and also hopefully keeping up these life skills lessons on a regular basis.

The solar power project is moving along well. We had the grants coordinator from the Ambassodor's Grant Dept. come to visit our school a couple weeks back. She happens to be the wife of one of the head Peace Corps people for Tanzania. We haven't started to install anything yet, so her visit was really just to see the school and talk about whatever changes are going on in the solar project. The headmaster has now decided to do the project in 2 phases since the original cost estimate was lower than what it is now, and the school will have to wait until next year's budget to make the rest of the contributions. So first we will install lights in the classrooms, and then a few months from now will use the rest of the grant money to install a second system that will be able to power the big photocopy machine and also the laptop computers. I continue to be happy with the relatively little amount of work that I have to put into the project, which shows they are able to do it themselves, and maybe even write another grant after I leave!

Other than that, I've been dedicating the diminishing free time I have almost exclusively to puzzling. In a 6-day span I did (with some help) about 2.75 puzzles, and already have a couple more and one sent from home to work on when I get back to my house. My hope is to turn my house into a replica of the Wilks' garage, and just have the walls covered with completed puzzle posters. In unrelated news, I don't have any nerd tendencies whatsoever.

I continue to love and miss you all, and don't forget to check out all the pictures from the Girls Conference on facebook!

August / September Roundup

School was closed for the better part of August because of the national census, which gave me a few weeks to do some travelling.

NICK VISIT

Though he could only be here for about 6 days, Nick's visit to Tanzania featured, I believe, a pretty good sampling of the country's sights, early history, both spectrums of its widely separated social and economic classes, and inevitably some of its larger annoyances, namely with travelling. We started the trip in Dar, getting to see some different parts of the town and the beaches, and later went to see The Dark Knight Rises in (supposedly) the biggest movie theatre in East Africa - mostly just an indulgence for me to remember what a movie theatre looks like. Then the next day we stood on a typically overloaded bus for 2 hours going to Bagamoyo.

Bagamoyo used to be the major port city in East Africa during the height of the slave trade, but eventually the business captial moved to Dar and Bagamoyo has been in a steady decline ever since. Now it mostly serves as a historical and tourist site. We saw the Kaole Ruins which included remnants of mosques dating back as far as the 1500's, and also a Catholic church (very rare in that part of the country) that was built around 1900 and has some very nice murals inside. Next to the church was a museum that basically gave the history of Bagamoyo from its origins, through the part it played in the slave trade, then came under German control up to World War II and given up as a British colonial town until Tanzania's independence in 1961. What's interesting is the name of the town used to be something similar that meant basically a place of hope, but got changed during the period of slave trade to what it is now, Bagamoyo, which means "Lay down your heart," meaning that pretty much everyone who came there in those days would never return to where they came from.

After coming back to Dar, we headed on South to Iringa, where we met up with another volunteer and his friend for a joint safari in Ruaha National Park, the one I had visited with Christine a while ago. We used the same guide as the first time, and funnily (or not) enough, got a flat tire at the exact same spot that we did then. So we got into the park right at sundown, which was beautiful of course. We had the whole next day to see pretty much all of the major animals, including a few male lions all resting together. We stayed in the little metal huts inside the park and at one point during the night, all of the guards were yelling at us not to come out because there was an elephant just hanging out sitting right outside our door. Naturally we went out anyways and jumped on for an evening ride. Then on the way back we got another flat tire (well, actually the same one that they had "repaired" inside the park), so by this point we were all pit crew pros.

After Ruaha, we had to go right back to Dar for Nick's flight home. One more flat tire on the cab ride to the airport just for completeness, and then Nick was off, leaving all of his newfound "friendies" behind (who coincidentally seemed to include every taxi driver that we walked past in the country). But he did leave me with plenty of mementos from home, including a giant bear-sized container of animal crackers. You know me too well...

MSC

The week after Nick's visit was our Mid-Service Conference or MSC, also in Dar. It was great to see everyone from our class again, and it really was like a family reunion since we were all staying in the same hotel for the most part. We had a few training sessions on sharing ideas and experiences from site now that we've been there for over a year, and then a doctor's and dentist's appointment, but overall the week was very laid back. We were able to check out a couple of Dar's nicer beaches, one of which had a pirate ship to play on. By far my favorite part of the week was finding a real basketball court where they hold youth league practices every evening. I went there one night to check it out with a couple other volunteers and we got to play full court 5-on-5 scrimmage games with the guys there. And they were so good, much better than any other Tanzanians I've seen play before. It was so nice to have that since I've really been missing playing real basketball on a nice court. I actually found out about the place from a coach I ran into at this kid's camp that I just stumbled upon earlier in the week, but was apparently hosted by two NBA players - Hashim Thabeet (I think the only Tanzanian basketball player in the NBA) and Luol Deng from the Bulls. Unfortunately I had just missed them when I found the place, but it was still lucky to find out about that other court.

SONGEA FEST

Capping off the week of MSC was our adventure to the largest annual Peace Corps get-together event, Songea Fest, held in my hometown Songea, which is normally about a 15 hour bus ride from Dar. Because our whole class was together already, and most of them wanted to go to Songea, we more or less rented out a big bus to take us all down there in style, and were able to put on our own movies and music for the whole ride.

At Songea Fest were a ton of volunteers and even more delicious food. The major event was a huge BBQ featuring pork burgers with cheese, ice cream, plenty of sides, and of course, a giant tub of guacamole that used somewhere around 75 avocados. It was a much bigger success than my last attempt of such proportions last Thanksgiving, since the avocados were actually ripe this time around. And not a drop remained at the end.

Sunday morning there was the typical 3-on-3 basketball tournament. It was actually a good turnout with 6 decent teams. Myself and another person from my same team in Njombe Jam won our second straight PC basketball championship, though without an exciting 6-2 comeback this time.

The final event was the talent show, for which me and 5 other guys from Songea dressed up in shiny orange (how'd you guess?) robes of sorts, and, sporting the finest in fake moustache fashion (thank you random care package gifts) put on a pretty good performance to the Backstreet Boys' "I Want it That Way." So I suppose be on the lookout for embarassing pictures to come on that one.

SOLAR POWER

The end of break meant a return to school for me and, roughly 10 percent of the students...? I suppose it's just a natural trend for schools in this country, especially boarding schools, for students to gradually filter in over the first week or so back. It meant I didn't really have my normal teaching schedule, but did give time to talk with my Headmaster and others more about our Solar Power grant. We've now gotten the money from the US Embassy and are currently looking for a reliable retailer of the materials and a good technician to install them. There is another school near Njombe that has a system similar to what we want ours to be, so we may very well use the same contacts that they did. We should have enough money to get solar panels to power our new copy machine, which doesn't run well off of the generator, and to light at least half of the classrooms. Though it sounds like the Headmaster wants to keep the generator running for the classes in the evenings and use the solar as a backup for when the generator breaks down. I think its a good idea, and also to use solar for the copier, since it is pretty much useless right now, and it would be so great to actually be able to have print-outs for my classes next year. Finding the right retailer is probably the most important part of the project, since there are so many fake and poorly made materials up for sale here. Once we decide on one for sure, the installation should go relatively quickly.

MATH CONFERENCE

Right after getting back to site, I was notified of a national math conference in Arusha this week by one of the Peace Corps staff, and he asked if I could go since I had said earlier that I was interested in going to trainings like this. I gladly accepted and so that is where I am now, in Arusha, way up north near Mount Kilimanjaro. The conference lasts all week and they will be having different discussions on teaching methods and materials relevant to teaching in rural secondary schools in this country. There are probably around 200 or so math teachers from all over the country, including me and 2 others from Peace Corps, so it's a pretty cool opportunity to see how the Ministry of Education views the issues related to teaching math in Tanzania. The conference came at a good time, since my students have a week full of mid-term tests this week. Though when I get back, I will only have 2 weeks of prep time for my Form IV students before their National Exams. I can only hope that they studied over their break, because that sure isn't alot of time to review the 4 years of material they're responsible for in all their subjects! But I still have many that I feel confident about in math, so hopefully they can even exceed my expectations!

That's about all for now. Stay tuned for the next update and keep sending yours my way!