Regional Science Fair

A few weeks ago, I took the science fair kiddos (just the 4 winners from the local fair) to the regional fair in Nampula City with one of my colleagues. We hopped into the back of a chapa Friday morning at about 3AM with our bags and materials for our experiments and rolled into the city about 10AM, allowing enough time for the students to explore the big city (one of the students had never been to the city) before any programs started. The next day the competition was on! Angoche did quite well. I was so proud of our students. Sunday, we all headed back home to start the next school week.
Science fair is a growing secondary project that many PCVs collaborativelly facilitate. Many of my fellow teaching PCVs brought the winners of their local fairs for the next level of competition. Here we have some mixer games going on to entertain the kiddos while waiting for things to get started. Over and over I've gotten to see how much the students are motivated by meeting their peers from other areas of Mozambique for school related events.
The kids brought all of their materials to the gym in one of the high schools and had sometime to set up and get themselves organized before opening speeches and judging started. Here's Belito, Faruk (fellow teacher), and Carlos getting things set up.

Silva with his rotton fish experiment. Woot! Woot! Way to represent for the 8th graders!

Belito explaining his palm wine making process to a group of dazzled peers.

Carlos got quite a bit of attention from the judges with his salt-water distillation set-up. He made it to the second round and presented to the whole crowd, taking 3rd place over all!!!