Shopping for Science
Christina Scott
Nolwazi Nombona has been hanging out in malls almost every Saturday for
weeks. Nothing unusual about that for a pretty, fashionable 21-year-old.
But this is mall-trawling with a purpose. At Beacon Bay Mall in East London
Nolwazi inflates an orange balloon and freezes it in liquid nitrogen. At the
Walmer Park Mall in Port Elizabeth, she borrows an elderly shopper's R50 note,
and sets it on fire.
Flames shoot up but the note refuses to burn because Nolwazi's soaked the
money in a mixture of water and colourless methyl alcohol. At another mall, she
sits on a bed of nails - without puncturing her skin.
"I want to be managing director of a chemicals company," says the
ambitious Umtata-born student. And to that end, when not studying, Nolwazi's
picking up valuable skills as a SciFriend - a select group of young and trendy
science campaigners created over the past decade by one of the world's most
successful science enjoyment programmes, South Africa's Sasol
SciFest.
"People think we just run the annual science festival but in fact we do
a
lot more throughout the year, including visits to some of the poorest and
most isolated rural schools in the country and a national tour with some of
the festival highlights, explains SciFest officer Tina Moss from her offices
in Grahamstown, where she's busy putting the final touches on the festival's
tenth birthday celebrations from March 22 to 28.
Mall outreach - bringing science to the shopper for the last eight years -
was initiated by SciFest director Brian "Bugs" Wilmot and since has
grown
into one of SciFest's most successful ventures. Thousands of harried
shoppers with trolleys, babies and lists of things to do have found
themselves sidetracked, alarmed and amused by the antics of SciFriends - and end
up seduced by science.
"People get so amazed," says another SciFriend, Samson Khene, busy
arranging the portable set with fellow science fans Sango Madliwa and Philani
Mashazi before the shops open for Saturday shopping.
Fellow SciFriend Zandile Makina agrees. "One teenager in Port Alfred
said,
'this is the most exciting thing that has happened to me in a shopping
mall!'," the 23-year-old science graduate recalls. "I love the way a
child's
face glows when you push a kebab stick through an inflated balloon without
it popping. She thinks it's magic until you explain it to her and she tries
it for herself."
Nolwazi already has much-coveted bursaries from two biggies - petrochemical
giant Sasol, which pumps nearly R50 million into science education every year,
as well as the Pretoria-based National Research Foundation, the power behind a
vast amount of scientific research in South Africa. She doesn't need the
SciFriends' stipend to finish her Rhodes University honours degree in physical
chemistry.
In that case, why get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday to be ferried
around the country by the only SciFriend with a professional driver's
permit, Albert van Wyk, who himself should be in the lab trying to extract
anti-cancer agents from sponges in order to help humanity and get his P.hD?
True, the National Research Foundation in Pretoria factors in science
outreach when they decide which research will get taxpayers' money - but
that's a difficult thing to remember when the alarm clock goes off in the
wee dark hours of the morning. So why do these young students promote
science when they should be studying it?
"I'm also learning at the malls," Nolwazi laughs. "You get
asked so many
questions that you've never even thought of!"
Zandile, on the other hand, already has her undergraduate degree in
biochemistry from Rhodes University and now spends her weekdays job-hunting so
she can support her mother, the only breadwinner in a family of ten. She
reserves her weekends for science evangelism.
"I enjoyed chemistry at school so that got me hooked," the science
addict readily admits. Her experience, she knows, is rare: "science at most
schools is one-dimensional:the kids don't get the fun of science, they only hang
on to the preconceived ideas of how hard science is."
At the heart of science is the story of how we live, from the smallest
fragment of atom to the incomprehensible size of the universe. Yet many
people muddle through their lives convinced that they are allergic to
science. SciFriends want to change that. "It amazes me to see just how much
people do not know about science, even trivial things. That's a sad
reality," Nolwazi confesses.
Both Nolwazi and Zandile - as well as 120 other SciFriends - will be on duty
at the upcoming Sasol SciFest, which every year attracts people in numbers that
would fill The Wanderers' cricket grounds in Johannesburg to
standing-room only.
SciFest is like the the Olympics: a logistical nightmare for the organisers,
a frenzy of activity for those lucky enough to score tickets. Only SciFest
happens every single year and unlike the Olympics, your wallet won't be
fatally wounded.
It's a steal of a deal: subsidies from government and business mean that
it's more expensive to have a cup of coffee at SciFest than to attend a
R7,50 talk by the famous scientist Robert McCredie, also known as Lord
Robert of May, one of the few Australians to receive a knighthood and then a
peerage from the British. (The good Lord, who speaks at SciFest on Sunday, 26
March on "the unintended consequences of well-intentioned science",
doesn't shy away from confrontation).
Last year Nolwazi was stationed at the Albany Science Museum for SciFest,
where she was a tour guide explaining the drinking habits of elephants and
how birds know when and where to migrate. She enjoyed it so much that she's
requested a return stint at the Albany this March: "it's nice to see young
minds opening up."
Zandile's worked in the Monument building SciFest ticket office and as a
tour guide. She describes the national science festival as one of South
Africa's hidden jewels. "SciFest existed already when I was in high school
in Queenstown, I just wish I had known about it," she reflects. "I
only
really got hooked on science when I attended SciFest when I was doing my
first year at Rhodes University. It had the same buzz as a carnival I once
went to but instead of stands with glowing yo yos there were stands that
explained why the yo yo glows!"
For a decade, Scifest has tried to transform hardened anti-scientists with
literally hundreds of hands-on workshops - from cooking up chocolate from
scratch to launching a real weather balloon - as well as an extraordinary
series of afternoon and evening talks with science's leading lights from
around the world. Unfortunately, SciFriends don't always make it to the
evening lectures because of the risk of falling asleep in the comfy Monument
theatre seats. Also, homework beckons - most SciFriends have a fairly volatile
mixture of lectures and lab duties mixed in with SciFest.
There are two exceptions. Many of the SciFriends were coached and polished by
top-notch UK science communicators such as musician-scientist Wendy Sadler and
the award-winning Zbig Sobiesierski. A reunion beckons at SciFest 2006. Wendy is
kicking off the global tour of her exciting multimedia show "Visualise: The
Beauty of Science" at SciFest on opening night on Wednesday, 22 March 22.
Giant smoke rings, sound waves made of flames, twirling tornadoes and liquids
that defy gravity should keep any exhausted SciFriend bolt upright in their
seats. And Zbig will return to demonstrate the physics of pub science - making
beer walk a tightrope is one of his specialities - on Friday, 24 March.
Science covers territory from art to atoms, and SciFest covers as much turf
as possible in over 600 different events. If anyone knows how SciFest
operates, it must be SciFriends. So it has to be asked: does SciFest tame
the science side of South Africa's educational crisis, or is it more faith
than fact? What can a week-long science party do for other 51 weeks?
Zandile compares the festival to Mount Everest: "it's there, and it's
huge."
The festival may be a once-a-year event, points out Nolwazi, but so is a
farmer sowing his seeds. Without that initial activity, there is no harvest.
"The SciFest makes a huge difference," she explains. "It plants a
seed in
minds, children in particular, which will grow more and more. Measuring that
impact is hard. But that should not blind us into thinking that just because
it's a once-off event, it's not making a huge difference. I honestly think
that it does."
And even if you can't make it to the SciFest, there's always the malls. And
there's one huge advantage to the SciFriend shopping expeditions. They may burn
your money but they never, ever, take your credit card!
More information:
 Booking for
SciFest 2006 workshops and talks can be done by phoning Tammy at 046 6031106 or
email info@scifest.org.za. To find out
more information on the other 600 or so events that will be running in
Grahamstown from March 22 to 28, check out www.scifest.org.za
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