adventure

Amagoro Mini-Maths Camps

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Moding High Motto: To Arm the Brain to Conquer.

This weekend we ran four mini-maths camps! These are half-day events held at high schools, which give a sort of introduction to the kinds of things that we do at the main maths camp in August at Maseno.  On this particular trip, we were partnered with the Elewana Project, which works directly with a number of schools in the area; they mainly bring in students from the US during the summer to work with students, though they are beginning to do some two-week camps aimed at improving educational outcomes for secondary students.

The upshot on this particular trip was that the schools we visited had decently-maintained computer labs, thanks to Elewana’s ongoing efforts with the schools.  The schools also have student computer clubs, which allows students to have regular access to their computers.  As such, our program for the camps were focused on:

  1. Getting across the basic idea that mathematics is about understanding and applying a system of rules, and
  2. Getting a little bit of familiarity with the software, so that the students can explore and learn more after we’ve left.

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Akirachix MobileGarage

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A speaker at the MobileGarage event.

Today is the kick-off of the Maseno MobileGarage, a two-day boot-camp hosted by the Akirachix, a group promoting ITC development for women and more generally.  The idea is to give trainings on mobile application development to the local students.  I gave a short 15-minute talk for the kick-off emphasizing the importance of developing open-source tools in addition to focus on winning the lottery in the app store.

With luck, I’ll be able to poach an enterprising undergraduate to help develop an Android version of the photo-uploading script I wrote; I think it would be a great app for getting student work up on a website quickly and easily, which facilitates peer-learning and peer-review of student submissions.

Good times!

More Strike Down-Time

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The Sizzling Brownie from Laughing Buddha, in Kisumu. It’s a brownie served on a hot plate with a big scoop of ice-cream on top, then drizzled with liquid chocolate which boils when it come into contact with the plate. Mind-bogglingly delicious.

There’s still no foreseeable end to the teacher and lecturer’s strike (in fact, the doctors are joining in, too, now), though I’m assured that there is to be a meeting on Monday to try to negotiate an end.  As such, we’ve been running lots of errands in the downtime…  And in-between work, we’ve been eating healthy amounts of ice-cream and playing a lot of Dominion!

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Maths Camp Song

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I worked a couple summers at Camp Winnebago, near Augusta, Maine.  (Founded 1919, long before the car was a thing!)  One of the great things about Winnebago was that they had some thirty camp songs, one for every occasion, mostly written in the 40’s I think.  The most sticky of the bunch was ‘Goodnight Winnebago,’ which the entire camp would sing every night before bed; it’s a kind of theme song for the camp.  (And a good lullabye for getting a pack of kids ready to chill out for the night!)

We’ve been thinking for most of the last year that it would be great to have a theme for the maths camp.  And after nothing happening on it for many months, I wrote a bunch of lyrics the last night of camp and performed it (with some predictable hiccups) at the closing ceremony and then again at the final assembly, before we sent all the students home.

Yesterday we managed to round up a bunch of undergrads in the Maseno music program and work the song up a bit more.  The students were really creative and great to work with; I absolutely cannot imagine getting something like this together in just a day back in Toronto.  Here’s the last recording of the day!

Maseno Maths Camp Song

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Moi University Visit

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Rawr!

Today I visited Moi University with David, about a two hour drive from Maseno in the city of Eldoret.  Along the way there was a factory tour, a great talk with Moi’s Vice Chancellor, and a somewhat indulgent visit to one of Kenya’s very few cheese factories!

The road out was actually quite good; we expect it has to do with the upcoming elections, and speculate as to their quality in a year’s time.  The road work out here tends to be relatively quick and shallow, which means that they deteriorate quickly.  We did hit a couple patched of massive potholes today, but for the most part it was smooth sailing.

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Some Days in Nairobi

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After the maths camp was done, the international part of the camp came to Nairobi; the UK students took off on a few days of safari.  I came along to Hell’s Gate (my first time there), which was fantastic!  We biked past lots of zebra and gazelles (some days there are also giraffes, but we didn’t see any this time), and then hiked into an incredibly beautiful gorge.  I now really want to learn some rope climbing and head back for a longer stay some time.

Rock climbing at Hell's Gate
Heels over Head.

Then we got completely soaked by a sudden rainstorm that hit while we were still in the gorge.  There were some people killed by flash floods there about two weeks ago; since then, they’ve put quick-ascent emergency exit paths in, with ropes one can hold onto for easy climbing.  We were told at the start of the day that typically it takes a couple hours for the flash floods to arrive after you first hear them, but with the heavy rain we moved quickly anyway up one of the escape routes and were just fine. A few of us then drove back to Nairobi (in damp clothes, or whatever could be scrounges) to put Abebe, our Ethiopian friend, on his flight back home.

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iHub, Nairobi

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Well, I seem to have landed safely in Nairobi, in spite of an eventful trip, and am currently sitting in a place called the iHub, an incubation space for tech development.  It looks pretty cool, and shortly I’ll be able to provide a review of their espresso!
Their website is http://www.ihub.co.ke, and it seems there are a great number of projects going on in the space.  I’m told it’s a slow day, being a Saturday, but it sounds like a great plethora of things occur during the week.  There are about fifteen people plugging away in the space none-the-less, and some kind of large meeting going on in one of the corners…