Viva Murrupula e Ciencia!

August 17^th is Dia de Murrupula.  All week, I had seen signs of the town preparing for the big day and what it day it was.  It began around 9am with a parade down the main street to the rotunda, including 100s and 100s of people, banners held by a few students both from Escola Secundária de Murrupula and Escola Secundária de Armando Emílio Guebuza (I especially loved how the second school’s sign had forgotten the “o” in “escola”, but cleverly squeezed in a very tiny one inside the “c”), a military band equipped with two drums, 2 saxaphones, 1 trumpet , trombone and even a tuba, and a pair of cymbals, and a line of cars driving in the governor and other important officials of the district.  It seemed as though all the residents had gathered together to celebrate the 53^rd year of the Vila de Murrupula. 

As with all Mozambican holidays, the festivities began with a gathering around the rotunda for the laying down of flowers at the base of the plaque in the center.  Around the rotunda were banners and signs proclaiming Murrupula’s fight against poverty, domestic violence, and the spread of HIV, and “Viva Murrupula”. 

After, two motorcycle riders did a few tricks on their motorcycles including riding backwards, driving with no hands, and driving with no feet (a little nerve racking to watch seeing as how they didn’t have helmets on, of course, and were driving so unbelievably fast amongst such a huge crowd of people all pushing and shoving to try to see).  The crowd loved it.  Then there was a competition between 3 women carrying buckets of water of their head to see who could run the fastest.  I also heard rumors of a sack race and bicycle race, but I guess they cut those activities out. 

People then rushed over to the nearby stage to watch dancing and music.  As in true form, we stood around for a while waiting while the organizers did who knows what, organizing something I guess.  It was the perfect opportunity to do some people watching amongst saying hellos to colleagues, students, and just people in the community. 

There were 700..800..900… I’m not really sure, but 100s and 100s of people.  Most women with babies strapped on their backs with capulanas, kids climbing the trees to get a good view of the stage (I counted 15 kids on top of one tree), other children probably 5 or 6 years old running around shoving their way to the front.  My favorite is seeing some of the clothes people have (not intending to make fun of them, it’s just so random sometimes how and where these clothes come from) – tweety bird shirt, Popeye, the hulk, a small child wearing a McDonald’s uniform t-shirt, and a sequined image of Michael Jackson doing a toe stand.

While waiting for the dancing to begin, I took a stroll around to see what else was going on.  In the park area they had built about 10 small reed structures.  One was handing out flyers about Malaria, another a station for donating blood, and three others for HIV testing and counseling or testing for other health factors like blood pressure, etc.  I was very pleased to see all of these set up and people actually gathering around to take advantage of their presence.  The other 5 structures of course were bar areas.  (I am already thinking about next year and what kind of station I could set up with either activities or games about HIV education, a carnival area maybe?? we’ll see…)

Then the dancing and music began, the governor and some important army guy even got up to shake their hips a little, much to the crowd’s enjoyment. 

Somewhat bittersweet, I had to leave the celebrations in the late afternoon to head to Nampula with my two students for the Provincial Science Fair.  I think one of the students was especially bummed to be missing that evening’s concert featuring some big singer from Pemba, a theater group, and some other entertainers I don’t know much about.  But I think they were both excited to see what the fair would be like, at least I hope so.

A few questions I received from my family about the science fair that I’ll address here – No I did not meet with the students’ parents before our field trip.  No there is no permission slip.  Supervision basically doesn’t exist in this country as most kids are essentially on their own starting at about age 5 and these students had been to the city many times before, so they were basically on their own to do as they pleased during free time in the evenings.  (Most students chose to stay in their rooms and watch the TV.)

For anyone curious about our accommodations, Friday night we stayed at Residencial Monte Carlo, a more motel-feeling place with rooms featuring only the bare essentials of a bed, a desk, and a chair and some rooms have air conditioning.  Saturday night, we stayed at Hotel Lurio, a more hotel-like place, and thus a bit fancier than Monte Carlo.

Okay, back to the fair. 

The approximately 30 students from various districts around the province, 9 Peace Corps volunteers and our accompanying counterparts/professors travelled into the city on Friday, meeting at the hotel, having dinner together, and essentially a free evening before the fair the next morning.  Adam and Tony planned the fair themselves, with some help from the Ministry of Science and Technology, but they pretty much coordinated everything from transportation, lodging and meals, location of the fair, prizes, etc.  Not an easy feat, especially in this country where everything seems to take much much longer than you would think.  But they did a great job and pulled everything off, receiving many compliments for their efforts.   

We left the hotel early Saturday morning to arrive at the Escola Secundária de Muatala, an extremely nice (and I mean nice even by American standards) school in Nampula city, complete with Biology, Chemistry, and Physics laboratories stocked with supplies.  The fair took place in the outside but roofed gymnasium area.  (They even had basketball hoops!)  Desks had been set up in a horse-shoe shape around the court with a few lines of chairs in the center facing a table where the important Ministry representatives would sit for the fair’s opening.  Our 30 students joined the 35 students from Nampula city secondary schools, setting up their inventions, experiments, and posters.

Though scheduled to begin at 8am, due to the late arrival of the Ministry delegates and representatives, the fair began closer to Mozambican time and started at 9:30am.  To open the fair, a cultural group sang one or two songs, the Ministry officials said a few words, and a theater group performed a short skit to an audience of about 350-400 people. 

Then the rain came…

Now is technically the dry season in Mozambique and it hasn’t rained for a couple months in Nampula city, but of course today had to be the day it rained.  Luckily the gymnasium is covered, but when the wind picked up a bit, unfortunately, a few students’ posters and projects lined up around the edge got soaked!  Everyone was a good sport about it, a few of us rushing over to help them move their desks, mostly just shaking our heads that today, of course, had to be the day it rained.

After he was done speaking, the Delegado, or basically the head of the Ministry of Science and Technology, began to visit each student and learn about his project.  There was a bit of confusion at first, as people did not quite understand the concept of a free time to walk around and visit the students, and instead all 300 people decided to crowd around the Delegado as he spoke with the student.  Thankfully, after a little while, people caught on to the idea and things smoothed out.

The jury followed a little later, passing from student to student, judging them individually on their visual and oral presentation, perceived knowledge of the presented scientific concept, use of the scientific method, and creativity and relevance of the project.  There were about 60 projects in total, so this was definitely not a quick task of judging and selecting winners.  The judges included our Peace Corps education director Gelane and the health director Lúcio, two members from a UN development organization called UNIDO, and two people from the Ministry. 

During this time, a DJ played music, there was an area featuring myths about HIV and explanations of their validity or falsehood, and a group promoting reading displayed a large spread of books.  There were also representatives from SCIP present to do free HIV tests.  Later, we learned that of the 66 people who took the test, 2 came back positive.

At about 2pm, the judges had finally finished making their rounds to each student, and the winners were announced.  There were prizes for 1-6^th place for both 1^st cycle (grades 8-10) and 2^nd cycle (grades 11-12).  My student Aires received 4^th place for 2^nd cycle for his project creating an insecticide using electrolysis!  The overall winner was Patrick’s student from Ilha who created a method of converting dirty or salty water into drinkable, clean water (an awesome project that clearly deserved to win).  Other projects included a pulley system for loading things on to the top of a chapa, many projects featuring medicinal plant health remedies, an invention of the easy lighting of a fire, demonstrations like using an egg to show density of objects in salt vs. regular water or putting a bottle over a candle to blow up a balloon, rewiring an MP3 player to play in a car stereo system, and many more. 

First place received prizes including pens, pencils, notebooks, a binder, ruler, a backpack, pencil sharpener, 4GB flash drive, and scientific calculator.  The other places received similar school supplies, just fewer or of varying degrees of quality.

Though a long day, the fair was a huge success and it seemed that many of the participants learned a lot, some even saying they already have ideas for next year’s fair!

Oops...

Wednesday afternoon I was home thinking about how I needed to write a new blog and was trying to come up with some new ideas, when I accidentally created a situation myself…..

Three little girls came over to take some papayas from my trees and to play (Fatiminha, Vanessa, and Merina, all about 9 years old).  I shut my door behind me to join them outside, not thinking anything of it.

Now, let me explain the lock on my door.  It has a normal door latch that any American door has, but you have to use the key to open it, just like turning a handle would open a door in your house. 

Yes, you probably guessed it, I locked myself out of the house.  I had always thought about this happening at some point and just wasn’t thinking when I shut the door.

I turned to the little girls and explained the situation, keys and phone both locked inside.  We tried wedging the lock open with a kitchen knife I had left outside with my washed dishes.  Nothing.  They turned to me and said, “Well I guess you are going to sleep outside tonight.”

Then one of the little girls mentioned that another girl, Esperança (another 9 year old who likes to come play), had “a key that could open any lock.”  I didn’t really understand what she meant by this, thinking how that probably was impossible, but well, it was either that or try kicking my door down.  So, I opted to try this magic key first. 

On my way over to Esperança’s house, lucky for me, it was time for the afternoon call to prayer, and I fortunately came across my carpenter on his way to the nearby mosque.  I explained my situation to him, thinking maybe he had some tool that could work or would have an idea what to do, asking him to come over after he finished praying.

I continued to Esperanca’s house and explained my problem to her mom, a very nice lady who I have sat and talked with a few other times too.  Surprisingly, she was more sympathetic than amused and never even laughed at me! 

So this magic key that could open any lock?   It was a screwdriver….. I smiled to myself and thought, well this is worth a try I guess.  Not surprisingly, the screwdriver didn’t work.  So I waited for Saida to come by, looking at the door trying to devise a plan for how to go about kicking it down if necessary, while also playing with about ten kids who had appeared in my yard.  As a good teacher would, I took advantage of the opportunity of having so many children around and taught them the alphabet song I had made J (same as the good ol’ version, just with Portuguese pronunciations).

Saida showed up not too much later and brought with him a chisel-like tool to essentially pry open the lock.  Success, it worked!  It did indeed break the lock a little, but nothing too bad, just snapping off the latch part, but I can still lock it perfectly well with a key.

The little kids, ages 6 to 11, had stuck around for the entire adventure, so I had a little reading session with them on my veranda.  Peace Corps, in conjunction with Books for Kids Africa, started a pilot program with my group of volunteers, providing us each with 50 Portuguese books of differing levels and difficulties to use as we saw fit in our communities.

Though their attention span was pretty short, I read one short book with them and then let them flip through the pages of a few others, hoping that slowly I can build an interest for reading.  One of the older boys even practiced reading with me a little, expressing a keen interest in improving his reading level, something I look forward to continuing with him and with some other kids too.