Visitors from the NorthWest province

50 students from the NorthWest province are coming to the MTN Sciencentre on Wednesday October 10 2007, in addition to our casual visitors and our outreach efforts.

This particular group of grade 11s are coming all the way from Hoerskool Skoonspruit in the Freemanville suburb of Klerksdorp, now also known as the city of Matlosana.

But we have local visitors too, we hasten to add. This week, locals are coming from various parts of the Mother City, including the private co-educational Christian secondary school Elkanah House in Table View, organised by teacher Liz Broad. (For more on the school, surf to http://www.elkanah.co.za/)

Others are arriving from further away in the Western Cape, such as Hoerskool Stellenbosch, with teacher Daleen Muller.

Both Hoerskool Schoonspruit from the North West Province and Hoerskool Stellenbosch from the Western Cape were provincial winners last month in a travel and tourism award organised by the National Business Institute, and both are coming here this week, so they seem to be thinking along the same lines, despite the hundreds of kilometres that separate them.

Primary Colours

Children are natural-born scientists. This is something to be encouraged. And so we do! And it seems to be working.

On the morning of Monday, October 8, 2007, the MTN Sciencentre was visited by 120 grade five students from Beaumont Primary at the base of the Helderberg mountains in Somerset West (34°4'12"S 18°50'23"E), led by grade five teacher Mr De Wet Kotze. (The school is visible from Google maps of satellite imagery online at http://wikimapia.org/765885/) This was Mr Kotze's first visit and he found 'very interesting, the things were done very well, and it was entirely appropriate for the level of the students.'

Then on Tuesday, because of sponsorship from the Department of Science and Technology (or to put it another way, thank you to the South African taxpayer!), we were able to host learners from Manenberg Primary. The school can be found on the corner of Kei Street and Kasouga Road in the Manenberg section of Athlone on the Cape Flats. This trip was organised by teacher Mr Basil Janson, who is trying to provide alternatives to gangsterism for his students.

And on Thursday morning, for the first time, we host close to 100 grade four children from Vukani Primary on Singolamthi Road in Philippi East. This school is in Lower Crossroads, a part of Cape Town suffering from high unemployment. The school group is being led by teacher Mr Babalwa Dudumashe, who had never been to the science centre - or indeed any science centre - before this week.

Mr Dudumashe teaches just about everything under the sun except science, and said he heard about the MTN Sciencentre through word of mouth, from a teacher friend who went and recommended it. ''Because many the parents don't work, we have to work extra hard to equip the students with life skills,'' he explained. Tragically, one of his pupils was a victim of the spate of child rape and murders which have been plaguing the Western Cape: ten-year-old Usande Dabula was a Grade 4 student at Vukani Primary School when her body was found half-naked in a field in Symphony Road in Philippi East.

MTN Sciencentre salutes teachers like Mr Dudumashe, Mr Kotze and Mr Janson, who go the extra kilometer for their students, despite difficult conditions.

Science Tourism

Our dedicated science educators Detlef Basel and Eloise Nefdt are clocking up the mileage on the bright yellow mobile science lab from the MTN Sciencentre. Here's a look at their schedule this week, covering the southern Cape.

On Monday October 8, Eloise and Detlef raced off to English-language Percy Mdala Secondary School overlooking the picturesque Knysna Lagoon. Staff at this school say that one of their biggest challenges is persuading learners to go home in the afternoon! (More on this school and its international partnerships at www.bbc.co.uk/nisa)

Tuesday, Detlef and Eloise motored down to Afrikaans-speaking Pacaltsdorp Secondary School, in tiny but historic Pacaltsdorp in the Karoo, south of the town of George in the southern reaches of the Cape, on the Garden Route.

Wednesday, Eloise and Detlef drove to the 1300 learners at the English-curriculum Imizamo Yethu high school, which is NOT in the informal settlement of the same name in Hout Bay, although it is true that both mean 'through our mutual struggle' or 'our endeavours.' This one is in George, and was pushed for by the local community in the 1980s when they had no high school at all, hence the name.

Thursday, Detlef and Eloise follow the roads inland to Groot Brak Rivier secondary school in the Klein Karoo, in Kannaland to be precise, where fewer than twenty percent of residents have completed high school, according to the 2001 census.

Friday, Eloise and Detlef head off through the Outeniqua mountains, this time to the Afrikaans-speaking Sao Bras Secondary School in the sub-economic suburb of Kwanonqaba in Mosselbaai. And for those who are wondering, the bay was called Aguada de Sao Bras (watering place of St Blaize) back in 1488 by the Catholic Portuguese explorer Bartholomew Diaz, while searching for a sea route to Asia. It was a Dutch navigator Paulus van Caerden who gave Mossel Bay its current name in 1601, for the abundant mussels that line the shores.

But these are science mussels (I mean, muscles) that these two are harvesting!

Science stars from Bethlehem

113 grade five students came here on Wednesday from Truida Kestell school in central Bethlehem in the Free State.

It's an interesting school, with a history that dates back to just after the Anglo-Boer war in the early 1900s. It's also a school with its eye on the future, as it was one of the first whites-only schools in the province to open up admission to children of all races while apartheid was still intact, prior to the arrival of democracy in 1994. For more information on the school, go to http://www.truidakestell.co.za/eng/index.htm

Grade five manager and mathematics teacher Hantie Maree said, ''we have come to Cape Town every year for three years, and every year we do a graph on the children's favourite activities from the questionnaire, and every year, the MTN Sciencentre ends up the most popular of the activities we do, I promise you.''

''I've already made a tally table and the MTN Sciencentre has ended up at the top again,'' Mrs Maree said on October 9. ''The children just simply love it, I think because it's so very much hands on. We go to the Cango caves, Robben Island, World of Birds in Hout Bay, the museums, the aquarium, we do a train drive down the coast, it's a lot of stuff that we do. And for the past three years, MTN Sciencentre has come out tops.''

Manenberg to Delft to KwaZulu-Natal

On October 4, we were visited by 45 students, mostly grade sevens, from Mahlabathini Primary School in Mahlabathini, north over the Black Mfolozi River in northern KwaZulu-Natal, led by technology teacher Mr Nkululeko Cele.

''It was very good, the staff at the science centre divide the children into different classes and they do some practical things. The children took their models all the way back to KwaZulu-Natal to show their parents what they have done at the MTN Sciencentre. We don't want to miss those lessons at the science centre,'' said Mr Cele.



In addition, Grade nine students came from Manenberg High School (above) in the area of the same name in Athlone. Their trip was organised by Ludwig Bernard of the school, which has had its ups and downs. Last year one of Manenberg's learners, Cheslyn Jones, was fatally stabbed by gang members outside the school.

On the other hand, last year Manenberg also got a matric pass result of 85.29% (to give you a comparison, it was about 35% a few years earlier) and is hoping to do better in the 2007 matric exams, which start any day now. A visit to the MTN Sciencentre - courtesy of sponsorship from the Department of Science and Technology - seems like a good way to work towards achieving a 100% matric pass rate!

On the same day, we had a visit from Rosendaal High School (above) in the remote and poor satellite township of Delft, a mixture of shacks and small cinder block houses some 35 kilometres away from the rest of Cape Town. This is what the school itself has to say about itself:

''Situated in Delft, Rosendaal High serves a poor socio-economic community with high incidents of unemployment, gangsterism and crime. The road towards technology has therefore been a long and difficult one for the school and from their humble beginnings of one computer donated by an ex-deputy-principal for administrative purposes, Rosendaal High now has a full Khanya computer laboratory (see below).''


This is the school that sent 70 learners from grades 8 and 9, escorted by teachers Mr Claude Petersen and Mrs Barbara Mouton. ''In an area like us, our learners don't get out of it much and they enjoy it when they do,'' said the school's newly-appointed maths and science subject head, Virgil Fritz. ''Our learners were very excited, I could see that. Their report back was also very positive.''

The school's visit was subsidised by the Department of Science and Technology, so no fees were necessary for their visit to the MTN Sciencentre. ''It's a very challenging situation for us,'' said Mr Fritz. ''They made it free for us and that is important to us because we are a sub-economic area. If there was money involved, we wouldn't have gone.''

Students also came from Khayelitsha's Matthew Goniwe Memorial High School, named for the teacher and activist who was assassinated and his corpse mutilated by apartheid-era policemen. Learners from Malibu High in Malibu Village also came on the same day, courtesy of sponsorship from the Department of Science and Technology.

PS: The next day, Muizenberg High visited. Surfer's Corner! And Eloise Nefdt and John Crossland took the Mellow Yellow mobile laboratory out to Oliver Tambo (not the airport, silly, that's in Johannesburg; this is a high school named after the teacher who led the African National Congress in exile). We'd tell you more, but we don't want to overload you.

Tjokkies was here

Much of Bloemfontein seemed to be here in the first week of October. Well, to be specific, the students from Laerskool Universitas - better known as Tjokkies - were here. (For more on the school, check out http://www.tjokkies.fs.school.za/)

This is according to organiser Michael Grundling from World Sport Events, www.worldsporttours.com, which is based in Brackenfell, Cape Town, and organises sport and educational tours for schools.

Michael brought in 60 grade 7s on the last day in September from Bloemfontein, to spend six days touring Cape Town. On Wednesday they spent between two and three hours at the MTN Sciencentre. ''They said next time they would love to spend the whole day there. They enjoyed it absolutely. The deputy headmaster said they thoroughly enjoyed it,'' said Michael.


Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were a busy start to October 2007, with the Department of Science and Technology sponsoring students from the bilingual Afrikaans/English schools Spine Road High (seen above) with the help of teacher V.N Paramore and Rocklands High (see below), the latter led by Francois Nekosie, head of the science department.



Both are good schools in Mitchell's Plain. They were followed by a Wednesday visit from Modderdam High School (one of the schools trying to ban the instant messaging system known as Mxit because kids can't stop playing with their cellphones in class) in Bonteheuwel in Athlone.

Did you know that back in 1985, the premier of this province, Ebrahim Rassool, was a teacher at Spine Road High? So who knows - maybe the future premier of the Western Cape was walking in his or her school uniform through the doors of the MTN Sciencentre last Monday!

In the same time span, we were visited by the youngsters from Ebbtide Educare with teacher Estell Gordon, while Eloise Nefdt and Detlef Basel took the mobile science van to the Bellville Velodrome, the indoor sporting arena which can take 6000 people!

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