We have come to the end of the school and the thing that’s breaking my heart the most is that I wont be able to post pictures :(… Such a cry baby! Anyway I think I gave everyone their pictures and if I didn’t then please send me a mail. They will get to you, but they’ll take a while since I’d have to sort them first!
Wow what an incredible three weeks!! Getting to know everyone(students mostly) has been the most exciting part of this school. Mostly because as youth we are so full of ideas and so much zeal! It’s always very inspiring to be surrounded by this much brain activity, so many ideas and so many hard questions concerning the future of this continent. Even though it wasn’t perhaps an obvious objective of the school, I loved the fact that more than a sharing of the knowledge of science, it was about wanting to make science more easily accessible to an African child. The school is by no means a sustainable way of making this happen. It is only the beginning, an inception of an idea. I really hope that this is what all of us will take away… It was really awesome to be taught by the best in the fields, and we really appreciate the time that all the lecturers and tutors/helpers took to come here and share their knowledge. To be here in the heat (humidity or wetness as Mathieu would call it), endless hours, dosing off faces, temperamental network etc. takes a lot of compassion and we are truly grateful. But I really hope that something was stirred up in all of us, to want to come back to the school as the experts, the teachers, the organisers and tutors. Or to perhaps start something similar and to push our governments to take action and invest in science and to inspire in us a desire to not be perpetual end users! To want to start great experiments here in Africa and to go some place else to share our knowledge! ( I promise that when I started writing I wasn’t going for deep 🙂 but I’m pretty sure that you you spent half an hour with me you aren’t surprised. I am sorry.)
Right, back to the lighter side of life!
Even though there were at times a language barrier, there were always people who were willing to translate, yay! Thank you. I’m pretty sure every English speaker learnt some French and vise versa! Some Wolof and Arabic too! There were many funny moments and the banquet video will attest to that! And whoever thought that scientist are just nerdy( the negative connotation Phil and Takong) and boring has clearly never hung out with this bunch!
There are of course those special people who will just make it hard for you to forget them! E.g If I mention Clementine what do you think of? Yes… The girl in front of ALL the cameras! The saying would go something like, “where’s there’s a camera there’s …. CLEMENTINE!!” That’s right! Mr. ever so friendly… Ulrich, and oh so many underdogs!! Gosh guys, it was really a great pleasure to meet all of you!
So like not writing your name here doesn’t mean you didn’t stand out, I swear I have something awesome to say about all of you! The post would just get too long 🙁 so just invite me on facebook or something!
Bye mes amis! Good luck with all your endevours forwards! I hope the future of our continent( The world) has been drastically changed since the beginning of the school! Here’s to the forum of the advancement of Africa!( or something like that :)!
