"Paulina Ndawala"

Paulina Ndawala and Ben Chambers discuss various school matters. St. Michael's Secondary School, Mangochi, Malawi.

Paulina is a form 3 student at St. Michael's Girls' Secondary School. Unlike many of the other AGE scholars she really likes the sciences (Physics, Chemistry, etc.). The first time I saw her smile, as opposed to grinning nervously in front of the camera, she was talking about an experiment her class did recently to show the PV=nRT. I was surprised that this is the first time I've heard of teachers doing experiments in class. It'd be nice if more of the schools tried to do experiments and demonstrations with the material they have, instead of only complaining about not having the equipment the book says they should use (though they certainly should keep complaining).

The classrooms at St. Michael's wrap around a courtyard which has a few fruit trees in it. Of course the girls love to eat the fresh fruit from these trees, and one of them in particular, the one near the class room with all the broken windows. What do broken windows and fruit trees have to do with each other? I initially asked Paulina why only one of the class rooms had broken windows, while all the other ones were in perfect condition. She told me that they collect the fruit by throwing rocks at the tree and catching what falls down. She looked away for a moment and added softly that, sometimes, their aim isn't so good...

An Anecdote

When I arrived in Mangochi I met up with Ben and some Peace Corp volunteers who were in town on a field trip with the secondary students from their village. One of these volunteers, Katie (?), told how they had rented a bus to take the students from the village in to Mangochi. The bus arrived and filled up with students as you'd expect. Then the bus driver decided to let all the little kids, including the 6 year old who was carrying a 2 year old on her back, on to the bus. The driver then went forward about 20 meters and, thankfully, let all the little kids out. They got to travel with a real bus, I'm sure they were happy.

this picture was published on sunday, may 10 2009. there is a full size version available. this picture was taken with a 24-70mm f/2.8 on a nikon d700. the settings when this was taken were: focal length: 70.0 mm; shutter speed: 1/60; iso: 400. this image has the following tags: malawi.