Did a Talk to Form 1 St. Mary's students
I eat kondowole for the first time, do a talk, and reflect on my existence.
— 6 min read
Table of Contents
Background
So about two days ago, I think on June 3, I was just walking on a cobble path at Kapirimtende when all of a sudden Wisdom shows up out of nowhere. Wisdom is one of the computer science and mathematics teachers at St. Mary's. They walked down from St. Mary's to visit one of our faculty who unfortunately was afflicted with malaria.
Wisdom and I had a brief chat about whatever and then he asks me if I could do a talk to a group of Form 1 students at St. Mary's. This group, in particular, was one of the first, I think, to be delving into computer science adjacent subjects. One of the courses that the school offers is called computer studies.
Last year, one of our computer science professors from the US brought a bunch of electronic kits to the school. Now, the students are learning how to program these Arduinos and Raspberry Pis and also how to breadboard circuits.
And so, I agree to do the talk not really knowing what I just signed myself up for.
Walking Up to St. Mary's
omg we walked so unnecessarily fast up to the school. We were literally all sweating. We had to stop a few times to catch our breath. I don't know why we subjected ourselves to such needless torture. But, at the same time, it was fun. My legs were burning, my brain pulsing, and all the blood rushing. It was freaking hot and there was no wind. Why did we do that wtf. I don't know who decided that we go through that torture, but I sure ain't going to be the one suffering by it.
So I decided to walk a little ahead and set the pace for the entire group. I would gradually increase my speed every minute or so. That was why it was fun to me. :)
Eating Kondowole
About an hour before the talk which was to be held at 2pm today, Wisdom invited Martin and I to eat lunch with him at his house. We were served a dish called kondowole which is a traditional Malawian dish. And I had absolutely difficult time eating it. It was very clay like and chewy. It was like eating playdough. Normally, you would roll it up into a ball and then form it into a disc shape. Then you would dip into whatever sauce was available.
The thing was, you don't chew on it, you just straight up swallow it. I just could not.
But other than that, we had greens and some kind of beef or something like that. It was a very good meal. Thank you very much for inviting us to your home. It was an honor.
The Talk
The talk was held in the computer lab at St. Mary's. I didn't really know how many students there were. I think about 50 because thats around the number of students per section.
The whole room was freaking packed bro. I was kind of mostly unprepared. I just planned on improvving the whole thing. Fortunately, I prepared a couple of things to show, like our IoT irrigation monitoring project, a cartoon, my website, a video, and Martin talked about one of his brain reading projects. I also briefly mentioned our other two projects that we're building which is a gradebook website and a borehole database website.
Taking into consideration the gender of the audience, I made sure to take a girl's approach to computer science. Thank you for very much Amy Wilbowo for creating such a beautiful story. If not for your story, your illustrations, and really the intersection of all the things that make up your entire person, I would not have had as an effective rhetoric in my talk.
I also showed them that video of the golden record that NASA sent out into deep space. Watching this video a long time ago, by myself in my room, even before high school I think, I never would of thought that I get to revisit it especially in a setting like in the middle of Africa. This video evoked emotions in me about my life and my future. I hope that I evoked a similar feeling in those girls.
There were two goals I had coming in, and I think, mostly, they were achieved. One of them was to explain what was possible with computers. The other was to instill a passion of computers. These students are honestly much more impressive than I am. I got into computers pretty later like senior year of high school. And I was barely doing anything, I was just looking up videos and articles about how to break in, what computers were all about and whatever.
But these girls, they are literally programming Arduinos at such an early time in their lives literally the equivalent of a freshman in highschool. I didn't even get into microcontrollers and stuff until freshman year of COLLEGE.
I am so proud to have the opportunity to speak with the next generation of leaders.
In a world rife with so many problems from climate change, war, genocide, poverty, to loneliness, depression, loss, what is really the meaning of all our lives despite the fact that there just so many issues that we probably wouldn't even be able to solve in our lifetimes?
The existentialist who believe that the greatest difficulty of our species is the fact that we were born with the ability to comprehend the meaninglessness of our universe. The idea that it's some kind of cruel joke from the gods, that humanity would ever be given the intelligence to mourn the lack of purpose. We often despair at the lack of meaning and all the pain in the world.
But the only reason for that is because we are the only species that we know of in the entirety of existence that has the kind of curiosity and ability that would lead a species to despair at our circumstances. Nothing else in the universe has that, every other animal is perfectly situated with the environments that they were born in. They will spend thousands, millions, even billions of years not questioning to the world beyond themselves, always trapped in that cycle, incapable of comprehending their situations beyond their immediate biological survival mechanisms.
But humans, on the other hand, are uniquely capable of perceiving the universe in ways other species cannot. We look for meaning and empathy because we're curious about meaning and we ultimately want to live in a world where everyone can live happily. Because putting puzzle pieces together is how we mastered the planet. It might yet master the solar system or beyond that eventually.
The next generation is the key to our survival and for humanity as a whole to thrive in a world of so many many problems.