Guy Fawkes to Diwali

This week is bookended by two events: on Monday, always game for a celebration, we set off sparklers in honour of a really unsuccessful British criminal (maybe we could have given him some tips, we blow up so many ATMs so well?) during Guy Fawkes night.

On Saturday, it's the triumph of good over evil in the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, which is being celebrated near the canal running behind the MTN Sciencentre here at Canal Walk.

Bookings coordinator Carmen Solomons says fireworks can also be expected when staffers light fires and set off explosions during their shows. As on Monday, when staff took the Mobile Sciencentre to Scottsville Primary. And as on Thursday, when the same Mellow Yellow van heads off to Zimasa Primary, the Xhosa/English school spearheaded by the community in Goodwood.

Here at the Sciencentre, we're being visited by a wide variety of schools across the province, including Meulenhof Primary from Malmesbury, the West Coast Christian Academy, Piketberg High - which serves a large Afrikaans-speaking farming community from the West Coast region - and Laerskool Riebeeck-Kasteel, from the Boland village inland, organised by teacher Isabel Roets-Geldenhuys

Meanwhile, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has sponsored visits so we can be visited this week by the kids from the Desmond Mpilo Tutu secondary school, named after the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel peace prize laureate.

The Desmond Mpilo Tutu school's in Mbekweni, a location in the nearby fruit-growing and wine-making agricultural town of Paarl. Close to sixty percent of the parents are unemployed and the payment of school fees, however low, presents them with difficulties. So the DST sponsorship makes a big difference to the dedicated teachers.

DST has also sponsored a visit from Kasselsvlei High, an Afrikaans and English-speaking Dinaledi (Morning Star) school showing above-average results in mathematics and science.

Kasselvlei has had some fireworks we can do without. Last week, four pupils at the Bellville school were suspended after two vicious assaults, using a golf club, on a Grade 10 girl. The girl, who has been accused of starting the fight over a chocolate earlier this week, has also been suspended. One of the suspended boys filmed the attack on his cellphone, and this has become evidence.

Definitely the kind of fireworks we can live without!