17/07/10

Science fair was today! I spent all of this week personally delivering letters of invitation to attend or be on the jury for the science fair. There have been many times in the past 10 months where I have wished for something in America like a chocolate milkshake, delivery food, or skim milk, but this week made me realize one thing I truly miss about America (obviously what I miss most is all of the wonderful people I left behind!). I miss just intuitively knowing how to act appropriately in any given situation. I spent this week meeting with all sorts of directors in the local government and other important people and in an extremely formal culture like Mozambique’s I just know I must have been incredibly offensive at times without knowing it. How do I know when to shake their hand, when do I sit down, what should I wear, how to I exit??? And of course my Portuguese doesn’t get any better when I am nervous, which only makes me more nervous and self-conscious.
This morning my colleague actually showed up early and the first thing he asked was whether I had more chalk. “Oh did I mess up?” I had written “welcome to the science fair Inharrime 2010” on the board in colorful chalk and hadn’t double-checked the Portuguese with anyone because I had been confident in myself, so I was frustrated I had made a mistake. “It looks great!” he said “But the current year is 2010…not 2001.”
I knew people were going to be late—this is Mozambique after all—and had planned that into the schedule, but I was still nervous when everyone was running late. I had asked the police chief, the two local doctors, the director of the primary school here, the directors of the two other schools in the district, the district director of education, a former engineer, and the district director of agriculture and development to be judges of the fair. I had also sent personal invites to the president of grading at our school, the equivalent of the mayor, and the president of the neighborhood we live in. My fear was that nobody would show up, that there would only be a couple judges and no audience. Most of the judges showed up before the participants even had which alleviated one fear only to replace it with another—what if all these important people had come and none of the students showed up? All except two of the judges showed up which was amazing and there were about 15 other spectators, including the people I had invited (except the mayor). The participant turnout, however, was dismal. The six expected students from my school showed up, but only one of the four students from Emma school showed up, and nobody from the professional school across the street showed up. We were all a little embarrassed that so many prestigious people from the community had showed up for so few presentations. My two colleagues who had helped organize, my director, and the pedagogical director of 11th and 12th grade showed up. Not a single other college showed up, not even the science faculty, not even my colleague who had two daughters participate and one of them won the fair. This disappointed me. The district director of education (who is a pretty big fish here) had told me he was too busy to come, so sent his immediate inferior to represent him, but he showed up at the end with another district director of a department I didn’t catch, and even personally thanked me for organizing everything.
The fair turned out wonderfully. The students who participated had good projects and presented them well. What the audience was most interested in was how the science of the projects could be applied and used in everyday life, thus the homemade candle made from seeds and the homemade charcoal (charcoal is very expensive) made from recycled waste materials were big hits. The judges gave great feedback to the students and they and general audience members seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. I learned a lot today. I learned what I did right and wrong in the preparation for the fair, and also by letting my colleagues and director run things today learned a lot about what expected from an event like this in Mozambique. At the end my director said “there is one more person we need to acknowledge, Professora Anata, who organized all of this. You haven’t seen much of her today because she still doesn’t like to speak in Portuguese in front of a lot of people still, even though I tell her that her Portuguese is perfectly fine, but she did all the work for this fair and if it weren’t for all of her we wouldn’t have had one.” It was incredibly thoughtful and sweet of her to say this, and although I had that warm and fuzzy feeling inside because the fair had gone well, it is always gratifying to be acknowledged for the work you did.