Fun around the institute

So what do we do on the institute? Surely we don't study all the time? Well, as much as the atmosphere is perfect for finding irreducible polynomials, solving optimisation problems and describing firing rate of neurons, we (I) sometimes do other things. So let's have a look :-)

First of all, I took a friend with me from Slovakia, a very good friend - Gertrude, my electro-acoustic guitar made it through the long journey and even though she had some rough time accommodating to the local climate, she's now OK after a quick fix of the tension in the neck (truss rod adjustment), which (to my great relief) I carried out successfully. Funny that the humidity can cause such deviations in the neck, before I adjusted the truss rod, it was almost unplayable.

Sunday mornings are like this :-)

I bring the guitar to AIMS every weekend - I cycle with the normal rucksack and the guitar on top of it on Saturday morning and back on the Sunday night. The reason is, well, for one - it's a weekend and I have a bit more time to play. But another reason are the gatherings with Michael, Thabo, Bemsi and often others - we meet on Saturday night on the terrace and practice a song. It's always a Christian song, as we practice for the following morning's worship session. I play my guitar (and sometimes hum along), Bemsi plays his electric bass and the rest sings in a nice choir harmony. I must say that even though the songs are always simple, with just a few chords, I look forward for this every time. It's nice, it's fun and both the practice and the session itself sort of remind me what's really important in life.

Madagascan tunes

There's also another good player (shame, that not another guitar too) here - Mihaja from Madagascar who usually comes along after finishing up his assignments on Saturday. The tunes he plays are nice to listen to, and it's the best background you can have for writing a blog post or an afternoon piece of code!

But the pressure on the strings is there, and the humidity makes them rusty quickly. Thus, when I was in Cape Coast and I caught by the corner of the eye an electric guitar in the window of a shop, I knew I'm gonna stop by (actually, I would have stopped even if I didn't need any strings). The place was very small and I doubt the place has seen anything better then a cheap immitation of a Strat, but it was really nice to see a music shop around, and even nicer to hear that there were 2 more in Cape Coast. Ghanians could be musicians, after all! But my hopes of getting D'Addario strings remained to be hopes, as the only strings they had were of a funny name "Darling" (the logo actually quite resembled the one of D'Addario), for just around 3 euros.

On another note, twice a week, we go to a local junior high-school in Biriwa, to transfer the knowledge on to the younger generation. The initiative was kind of broken for some time until we decided to resume it at the beginning of March. The idea is, that the AIMS students are those who've now made it far enough to help others. And what is more - as I mentioned in my street-playing blog post, it is by helping others that you often help yourself the most. By going to teach even the most basic things to the local kids, you not only grow as a person, a teacher and a leader, it also kind of forces you to do something so that you subconsciously know you deserve to be the role model for others. And I also assume that when going to teach, one should not only understand the concept, but also be able to explain it (which, in fact, brings a whole new level of understanding)! The reality, was, once again, a little different :-) and I had to keep my calm when few (AIMS) students came 5 minutes before the departure with the words "I don't really understand the game" :-D, though we've explained it a day ago, and asked if it was clear (we were to teach Monty Hall paradox while also playing it, as a game).

School visit - playing Monty Hall

At the end of the day, however, it all comes down to having fun with the kids, and inspiring them to strive for their best, because (as Michael said) motivation is the most important for the young African students. Along with hope and confidence they will make it to see the better future. But enough of words, to see once is better then read thousand words, so here you are, a video (the video was initially meant for the kids in a school in Prague, where Tinka works, thus the "hello Czech Republic" at the end :-))

One of the teams for Robot night

Finally, the third thing to mention would be a funny activity Zuzka came up with and organized. We were thinking about a cool name that would attract as many students as possible, and eventually went for the "robot night". Though initially there was some unwillingness, the whole idea quickly caught up and I don't think I've heard so much laughter and noise on the institute before.

Robots are ready!

The students were split into about 6 groups, each of which was to choose one person to be a robot. The robot could be controlled only with three words (copy, paste and delete) and nothing else - the robot was blindfolded and should not be directed by anything else then the three words. The groups then discussed a language to control the robot (e.g. copy paste could mean "go straight"), unaware of the task that was waiting for them. All in all, there was 4 rounds of tasks: taking a pen from one table and bringing it back, finding a specific page in a book, shaking hand with another robot and eating a piece of chocolate, the task always following with a chance to improve the commanding. Evening well worth it!



Apart from that, many other things happen. Every end of the block, there is a party and presentations about some African countries. Last time, we fit in with Zuzka, and gave a presentation about Slovakia, which said so much positive about it, that at the end I actually felt like going there for a vacation!

Could there be a presentation on Slovakia without this picture?

A great Ghanian dish during Ghanian night

Robert and Emma - very nice people! :-)

Some other day, there was a football match of AIMS vs. Vocational school in Biriwa. Watched by about 200 people, it was a pretty serious match which ended with a draw. I played just for something over 10 minutes, but in my running shoes it was not optimal (not to mention not having played for 3 months).

And I can't forget the "staff meetings", introduced again by Zuzka, which could just as well be called "going for a coconut and a beer with our lecturers", a very nice tradition, and one that, if nothing else, would truly make one feel as on a holiday.


So all in all - nope, not bored. It's true sometimes I long a bit for a change of environment, but then, the time passes quickly, it's fun and if I look at it from a bigger perspective - the whole AIMS is kind of change of environment, at least for me :-)


PS: I was on CNN! The television crew came in one day as a part of filming documentary about Prof. Allotey, part of African Voices section. You can see (but not hear) me something after the middle of this video :-P, or simply see how it looks around AIMS.

Our place for coconuts