Science Congress, Part Deux

Saturday, we had the District Science Congress. I went with our two students who advanced with their greenhouse project (in the math category because of scale modeling and such). The basic format for math presentations was as follows:
1. Students present a useful trick for solving a certain type of math problem (like calculating squares of numbers that end in 5)
2. Students tie topic into the years theme (Science and Technology for Environmental Improvement) by explaining that this method saves paper, which saves trees.
3. Judges open for questions from everyone watching
4. A group of bratty provincial school (maybe analogous to prep school) kids start asking the most asinine questions to try to make themselves look smart and the presenters look stupid ("There are four types of pollution: Air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution and noise pollution. How does your formula address soil pollution?")

I got fed up with them after a while and was about to tell them that their questions were not constructive when the judge made a general announcement that questions would be restricted to relevant topics (good job Mr. Oketch). Even so, the day started to crawl, so I ended up bailing before the results. The top three presentations were to advance to the Provincial level (think state level). Noel and Eunice got 4th place. I don't know if this is entirely true, but I was told that since there are two judges (you know, to ensure fairness) each one advanced a project from his/her own school. Then, too make sure the scrutiny wasn't too close, they awarded the other spot to the best project from a well-known school. Mwakitau is five years old and was at Science Congress for the first time. Not so well-known. Our students suffered a deduction for not having the school's stamp on their write-up with the headmaster's signature. (He had taken those materials to change the signatory on the school bank account. Instead, I signed the report with no stamp and listed my title as Head of Math Dept.) That deduction was apparently enough to send them from 4th to 2nd. I guess that's fairness.

Anyway, I spent the rest of the weekend in Voi with the other volunteers in the area. We visited the Voi Wildlife Lodge, where beers are 250 sh (that's about $3.75, but we usually complain about the high prices when bars charge $1.50) and had birthday cake for John. We saw elephants come up to very close to where we were eating. Then we went to a club where I saw Mr. Godwin (the physics teacher from my school; he had also come to Voi for the Science Congress). We hit the dance floor at about 1 and he left at 2. We stayed until 4. I slept like a log that night (well, morning, I guess) and then came back to Mwakitau.

Happy early St. Patrick's Day, I suppose.