In Quelimane, Science Rules! Part 2

After watching Eric get all stressed out in the run up to the Zambezia Provincial Science and HIV/AIDS Prevention Fair, I was both dreading and looking forward to the flagship National Science and HIV/AIDS Prevention Fair this past weekend. As the National Fair is a much more complicated event and has a much higher profile, having everything run smoothly is of great importance to the reputation and future of the project. With this event looming on the horizon for so long, Dan (the other national coordinator) and I have been planning for months, and in the end it went perfectly.

Though I didn't get to watch it, I could have listened

to the Fair live on the radio

Though the budgeting, coordinating, and planning of the Fair (with a capital F for fun!) has been going on since mid March and much of the organizational and financial responsibility lies with the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT in protugese for short), I didn't want to take any chance. So a full week before the Fair, I went down to Quelimane to check in with our partners and see that all details, big and small, were being taken care of. Learning from my experience with last year's Provincial Fair, I went to the bank first and was able to easily use my beautifully legible John-Hancockesque signature to withdraw the funds for the Fair. After holding meetings with the MCT staff and representatives from most of our partner organizations, I felt pretty confident that everything would be ready on time. But having learned my lesson from both last year's and this year's Provincial Fairs, I checked, confirmed, and reconfirmed that HIV testing would be available, that a qualified person would be on hand to run the HIV/AIDS discussion, that the jury members were invited, that enough hotel rooms were available, that the restaurant where we would be having our dinners was prepared, that the fancy color card-stock programs were fancy enough, and that the personalized name tags were indeed using people's personal names. What both Dan and I neglected to check was perhaps the most important part of any event: the certificates!!!!!

By the end of the day I was getting a little silly, though it

might have been cruel to play games with the certificates 

The only thing that maters at a Mozambican event more than whether food will be provided is whether a properly signed and stamped certificate will be available for all participants to take home. From a JUNTOS workshops to a Peace Corps conference, having a piece of paper with a participants name and some fancy printed-on graphics makes the difference between happy and disappointed participants. Perhaps it's a symptom of Mozambique's highly formalized culture, or because there's a rumor that NGO's look for these certificates when hiring new employees, but either way they are not to be forgot. Well on Saturday morning Dan and I were informed that instead of having 100 official, printed, signed, and stamped MCT certificates, we had 3 packs of imaginary certificates (i.e. blank card stock paper). So instead of watching the 20 cute mini-scientists from 10 provinces present their experiments with all the earnestness befitting an over-excited kid out of his/her element, I had to run around designing, printing, signing, stamping, and filling in the certificates. Though they were ready by the time the winners from Niassa and Inhambane were announced, I was unable to actually watch the Fair and had little idea how the mini-scientists's presentations went or if anything exploded into fiery destruction. I have since been told by a wide range sources that everyone had a great time and that no incendiary devices were accidentally created. Thanks to our amazing counter-parts at the MCT, 8 great PCV provincial coordinators, and my co-national coordinator Dan, everything went smoothly and sciencey.

All of the 60+ participants, coordinators, and judges. Thanks

to our great team, this year was a huge success

Now with the National Fair under my belt and only some receipts and reports to process, I look back with fondness at the stress and anal-retentiveness that came from caring so much about something to come. Though I hope I'll be back one day to see a future Science and HIV/AIDS Prevention Fair, it could be a long time before I get to have such an important role in a project that helps kids learn to love science. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some disappointingly unscientific French papers to grade.

Photos were taken by and are the property of  Eric Wilburn. Thanks bro!