Science Fair!

After GLOW camp, Vaye Town had pretty significant success in two Peace Corps sponsored student competitions, both held at the same training center in Kakata. I think I was there more than I was in Vaye Town for a period of three or four weeks.

The first event was the Science Fair. Mustapha, 15 years old and in 8th grade, came up with a project in the ‘health’ sector (the other two options were environment and technology). Almost every day, we would meet in the evening for a few hours to read about a variety of topics related to health. (Mustapha is very quiet yet brilliant, and would struggle just to make it to school most days. Sometimes when I went looking for him, I’d find him doing some hard labor for the people he’s staying with. He initially broke my heart by telling me that he didn’t want to participate, but then came back the next saying that he had thought it over.)

Mustapha decided that he was into the nervous system, and he clearly got a kick out of the lock and key model explanation that I gave him for neurotransmitters and receptors. Knowing our resource limitations for studying brain function, he decided to compare two age groups in kmemory performance for new words and hand-eye coordination using a thread and needle. After he handed me a written procedure, we went around in the community explaining the project and its purpose, collecting data, timing people, and we then developed a scoring method to help analyze our data.

I battered him with the question ‘why’ to explain each portion of our results. I really drilled him for explanations at every turn, which at the time I didn’t realize would be so beneficial in giving a presentation completed at the last minute. I got him on my laptop typing up his explanations and coaching him through some grammar and formatting. I sketched a poster layout and had him roughly conceive the content for each section. I showed him how to make graphs and tables, etc, and on our last evening, we had our framework for a scientific report.

The morning of travel, he was awed going through Monrovia and fumbled all over. It was adorable but he carefully followed my steps. His only reaction to Kakata was “this place is big.” I was trying so hard to get him out of his shell. And slowly but surely, he was moving. After settling in – showing him a bed with mosquito net, the running water, and preparation areas – we went straight to work putting together a poster and continuing work on the PowerPoint.

Two months of effort culminated in a well-conceived poster presentation on Day 1 – only unremarkable because out of 10 posters, his was the 9th, and the three tired judges immediately began asking irrelevant questions. Using the feedback asking for more visual aids, we went back to work, polishing the PowerPoint for Day 2. I was incredibly nervous. We finished the presentation that morning and just barely rehearsed at all – let alone explaining the projector screen setup to him. A jittery mentor for a student entering the unknown? But, DAMN.

Mustapha’s 18 minute talk knocked the judges and other PCVs out of their seats and nearly brought me to tears. He did a better job that I could have done. Someone has the video clip that I will not leave Liberia without. One judge said that he looked forward to Mustapha becoming Liberia’s first and foremost neuroscientist.

After sitting through all the presentations – most done by teams, some by senior high students, and mostly on water testing, resource consumption and production – the students were totally exhausted. One student even made a sign that said, “my brain is on fire, I need to rest.” So, to relax a bit and have some fun, we watched Jurassic park and did some non-Newtonian fluids and acid/base reaction demos. We had a straw tower competition too. But all of this was a continuation of the inspiring nights before – students staying up well past midnight for the sake of intellectual pursuit. This brought our training manager to tears in his statement during the closing ceremony. It was amazing to see how much our students could accomplish with a little guidance and some resources.

At the closing ceremony, we all thanked Tony, the PCV organizer, who then presented certificates and announced Mustapha as the winner. I could not read Mustapha’s reaction beyond a simple smile that totally concealed whether or not he expected it as much as I did. He won two textbooks, which he keeps at my house. He still comes by to read and sometimes just to talk. He’s really opened up and laughs easily now. I even got the National Volunteer to start tutoring him in English.

Soon after returning to Vaye Town, Mustapha told me that I’m the best friend and teacher that he’s ever had while choking on some tears. And if I hadn’t turned away, he would have seen some real waterworks. But at this point, something has changed. His stated appreciation and dependence made me feel obligation instead of the same pure joy I sought in teaching and inspiring him. But now my emotional investment scares me. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve finally cracked his shell.

Well, this was a long post, so I’ll cover the chess tournament in the next one.

Cheers!

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