Conferences

Once again, I am very behind on my posts, so I shall summarize my activities in the last few months in a few posts.  This is the first of those.

Now let’s see, where did we leave off?

Ah yes, after my safaris with my family, seeing the President, and the trainings in Dar with the Baby Eds, I got back to site and had quite a transition to get back into the game of teaching.  This was last September, the season of the NECTA, so I plunged back into my routine of teaching about 35 periods a week.  Remedial classes after school were added for the few Form IV students taking Physics and Chemistry, so they could hopefully get more study and practice time in before the life-altering exams.

The same time this was going on, myself and a few other Mbeya volunteers (from both Education and Health/Environment sectors) were organizing a Girls’ Empowerment Conference!  After interviewing my Form I girls, my Girls’ Conference counterpart (Madam Zuhura Mwambenja) and I selected five girls we would take to Mbeya with us.  We definitely wanted to choose girls that would be motivated and show leadership, and boy were we impressed!  I may be a little biased, but the Mwatisi girls were amazing!  Each one of them showed poise, were well-behaved, and had so much enthusiasm in every activity.  I could always count on at least one of them raising their hand or volunteering to present or speak during every session.  And Zuhura was SUCH a huge asset to the sessions!!  I was so proud of my girls and Mwatisi when the other PCVs came up to me and pointed out their participation.  :)  Counterparts are required to teach the majority of the lessons for multiple reasons, but also because the language of instruction for the conference was primarily in Kiswahili.  Most of the girls were in Form I or II and are not proficient in English yet, so it is usually best for girls’ (and boys’) conferences to be done in their first language so all the information is understood.

There were a total of 40 girls, eight PCVs (five Ed and three H/En), and five counterparts, and the conference was held for four days at MUST (Mbeya University of Science and Technology).  Since our Girls’ Empowerment Conference was funded via a Peace Corps VAST grant, we had to incorporate HIV/AIDS and life skills sessions within each days’ activities.  In addition to the sessions, each morning we had a PCV lead a session on morning exercises, whether it be yoga (Siobhan), zumba (Rachel), or self-defense (Steph, Tracy, and me), and each evening we had a different activity (movie nights, beauty night where we made avocado masks and had manicures, and talent show night).  Riddled throughout each day were tons of icebreakers, pictures being taken, and breaks for delicious meals.  And for the schedule…

Day 0 was the arrival, registration, and introduction, which included a session on “What it means to be a woman”.

Day 1 was Life Skills where the girls learned about good decision making, early pregnancy, being a good role model, peer pressure, and drugs and alcohol awareness.  We also had a campus guard to give us a quick tour of the university.  I was so stoked when I saw the engineering departments!

Day 2 was HIV/AIDS Day where they learned about awareness, stigmatization, and prevention, and they were able to do a condom demonstration.  I am sure you can imagine a room full of 40 adolescent girls bursting into giggles when we mentioned condoms, but once we actually started talking about it and how important they are, the room went silent and they listened intently.  Each of them was required to place a condom on a wooden model of a male reproductive organ, just so they all knew how to do it properly.  Keep in mind, none of these girls have never had a sex-ed class before in their lives, unlike many Americans who are required to have had some exposure to sexual education at least once before high school.  This is why these conferences are so beneficial, given the HIV/AIDS statistics in Tanzania.  Also, the southern highlands regions of the country have the highest rates of Tanzania.

Day 3 was Career Day and Science Day.  which was one of my favorite days because I got to spend half the day doing a Science Competition!  I had to brush up on some of my Kiswahili because so far each session had been taught in Kiswahili and I had never taught an entire class in Kiswahili before.  Though, I think I did decently well in trying to communicate technical elements of science and math while showing how fun science can be!  [I am not a nerd at all…]  The science competition started in the afternoon where we started with the Egg Drop off of different flights of stairs and then some math puzzles.  I was happy when the girls wanted to continue doing more games, but alas we ran out of time and the day was over.

The morning sessions of Career Day consisted of a “livelihood panel” of females from different backgrounds and occupations, a presentation from Olive Branch (which is an orphanage in Mbeya town run by an American and her Tanzanian husband) about money management, and then the Olive Branch kids acted out various skits that were about peer pressure, bullying, and pregnancy.  They were amazing actors and all of them spoke perfect English, all thanks to their “mother,” Deb McCracken.  :)

Day 4, the final day of the conference, was their graduation.  Each girl and counterpart was given a certificate (like the one seen below), many pictures were taken (and we know how much Tanzanians love getting their picture taken), and we showed them a slide show of all the pictures that had been taken that week.  The girls loved it and they couldn’t wait to go back to their villages and tell all their friends how spoiled they were LOL.

After such a wonderful (and exhausting) experience with the Girls’ Conference, what with the sessions, herding 40 girls into one room and keeping track of them at all hours of the day (and night), and just lack of sleep, I had to go straight from the graduation to Iringa, then to Dar the next day.  I had a couple of appointments in Dar, including going to see the Young Scientists of Tanzania (YST) Exhibition.

The YST Exhibition is pretty much a national science fair of different schools in the country.  Any school can apply, as long as they fulfill all the requirements as by the YST committee, and this year PCV Brian Andrus’s school was one of the participants!  His students did a project on drip irrigation systems using locally available materials, and they did a fantastic job!  So fantastic that they actually went all the way to win the entire science fair.  Each of the team members got a certificate, medal, a small scholarship (which is by no means small in their standards), and a trip to Ireland (because one of the sponsors was Irish Aid)!!  Congratulations to Brian’s students!  :D

Brian had told me about his school being a participant and I had been notified about YST by one of the Peace Corps staff members who was a liaison with the Ministry of Education, so I decided to make the trip and be Shika na Mikono’s eyes and ears.  I was so glad I went because it was so cool to see the different research projects going on within the country, to talk to different students just to get an idea of their backgrounds, and to make some good connections with the YST Coordinator and corporate sponsors.  When I was checking out all the projects and the sponsor booths, it reminded me of my days being one of the EXPO Career Fair Co-Chairs in Austin.  :]

That was also the first time I was able to get in contact with Dorothy, who is our main point person at the Ministry of Education for Shika na Mikono.  She was at YST, but I literally just missed seeing her by a hair.  Even so, finally having contact with her was key, because that moment would be a turning point for my Peace Corps experience…

…which is to come, next time!