February 2015 – Oysters and Pearls

Holiday Training – January 2015

I arrived in Gulu on a Saturday afternoon, not sure what to expect from the next two weeks. As a volunteer with the Oysters & Pearls holiday training program, I knew about the class materials and basic program setup. As I quickly learned however, there was much more to the program than just the teaching.

Joining Sandra and the instructors, I spent the weekend assisting with logistics — the little details that I had never considered, but had to be completed. Where were all the plates for the dining hall? Could we borrow mattresses for students that didn’t bring their own? Why was the electricity off in the classrooms? These and a hundred other small-but-crucial tasks had to be settled, even as students started arriving on Sunday afternoon.

Classes began immediately on Monday, and continued through the week. Sighted students were sorted into one of three classes — Engineering for the Future, Introduction to Robotics, or Advanced Robotics. As the classes delved into new materials and lessons, I watched the projects grow increasingly complex. Since I constantly moved from room to room, I saw the classes develop in snapshots. What started on day one as a collection of wires and boards became a functioning light display, then a

Engineering Camp at Gulu

It was great to be back in Gulu for my third time at the Oysters & Pearls holiday training. This was the first year we had an engineering camp designed just for girls! Eighteen girls attended the training, sixteen from secondary school and two from primary school level. In the beginning everyone was very quiet but they warmed up quickly by the end of the first day.

The first week the girls designed and created water filters. It was exciting and inspiring to watch their experimenting. Their engineering challenge was to:

Design a water cleaning process to provide clean drinking water to the girls’ dormitory.

The sample water we provided them was particularly unpleasant. We used tea leaves, mud, dirt, flowers and other various plant life, and some insects to create a nasty brew of “dirty water” that they had to clean. Their process had to include filtration and purification, and the success of their designs was evaluated based on budget, cleaning time, and quality of the water after cleaning. At the end of the week, a panel of nine teachers examined samples of the water after each team of students had cleaned it. The panel (including me) smelled the water, observed its appearance, shook it to see