Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

As I read that title I imagine myself sounding like Leonard off the Big Bang Theory when they went to encourage Middle School girls to enter science related fields. Yes,  I know I am late posting this week.  I appreciate the reminders.  The reason is that I attended the Singida Science Conference 2016 put on by the Peace Corp Volunteers in Kinampanda.  This is a village area that I drive through to get to my site.  It is the last village on the ridge line before I head down into the valley.   This was my fourth science/math conference put on by the Peace Corp Volunteers.  They plan the activities, set a schedule, create budgets, negotiate for locations not only to have the conference but also to house the students and transport them and one teacher counterpart.  There are two main type Peace Corp Volunteers.  One group does work along the lines of agriculture or health.  The other group are assigned secondary schools to teach in. ...

This week we are looking at adding Solar Power Generation and wiring up the Tiny House. Be forewarned I show my math-yes I qualify for nerdom.  After the video are some photos from the science conference in Singida last weekend.  As I state with all my Tiny House Tanzania videos, I recommend the show Tiny House Nation on the FYI Network with John and Zack as some of my ideas will be coming from that show. The photo above is from making the metal frame for the roof mounted solar panel.  I am drilling a hole for a bolt to attach the panel to the frame.  Some may remember it took 4 minutes to drill a 1/2" auger bit through a 1" piece of wood.  It took an average of 15 minutes to hand drill the bolt hole through a piece of metal 4 mm thick.  About the same length of time the video is this week. Here is Tiny House Tanzania Episode 3-Solar Power link to YouTube video if window below does not work:  https://youtu.be/H9rARQfdzGU One another n...

One of the fun things I got to do last year was participate in the Peace Corp Volunteer’s conference for secondary school (high school) girls.  This year they did a conference for boys in Singida and I was allowed to participate again.  I don’t really do much at these other than walk around and smile but it is still fun getting to see students participate in science competitions especially since this is the first time for some of them to actually put what they learn on the blackboard to some kind of activity that they actually do. One of the great things about the Peace Corp Volunteers is that they are easy going, fun loving group but that they also critically analyze their own work and improve on it.  For example, last year’s science day was great and they had a lot fun while learning to put their knowledge to work.  But with everything in this world if you look at it in hindsight you can spot a couple of things to tweak and make it better.  That is ex...

Got the opportunity to particpate in the Girl's Conference put on by some of the Peace Corp volunteers.  They did a four day event in Singida, housing and feeding the girls from I think 6 different secondary schools in rural areas for a total of about 30 girls with the purpose to empower them.  They had science talks and experiments, items on health and safety, careers and to express themselves artistically.   I participated in Saturday when they did their science talks and experiments.  As part of the section they had them break into groups to draw everday things in their life that have some type of scientific element and to then present their drawing and talk about what it has to do with science to the whole group.   The other part was to do break into teams where they had to work with girls from the other schools to compete in three competitions.  The first was pretty neat.  They  were to make boats from a sheet of alumi...