MISSIONER NEWSLETTER – Fall 2024

Kyle Johnson, Tanzania

Kyle Johnson puts on a show to teach the scientific method to a classroom of fifth- and sixth-graders in rural Tanzania.

MWANZA, TANZANIA—When I was a little boy, my grandma Rosie took me to the local hospital in North Platte, Nebraska to visit the laboratory department. She was a supervisor there, but to me it seemed like she ran the whole place. She gave me a lab coat to wear that hung to my ankles and I truly felt like a scientist as I watched blood getting spun in the centrifuge and viewed thin slices of my grandma’s recently removed adenoids under a microscope. It was a defining experience that cultivated a lifelong interest in science that I have since passed onto my children through museum visits and our own microscope-viewing projects.

Tanzanians value education. The first president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere was an educator and to this day is affectionately referred to as Mwalimu, which means “Teacher.” Despite rapid economic and social development following independence, Tanzania remains an impoverished country. In some classrooms, there are almost 100 students to a single teacher. Supplies are limited and the educational focus tends to be on the essentials. Paper is a luxury and there are few “extras.”

As a child, Kyle had a defining experience with his grandmother, a scientist, that cultivated in him a lifelong interest in science, which he has since passed onto to his own children—and now the children of Mwanza.

Today, I took the passion I have for science and brought it to a classroom of fifth- and sixth-graders in rural Tanzania. I started off by holding up a candle and asking the children what it is. “A candle!” one student answered. “How can we know for sure it is a candle?” I asked. “Light it on fire,” came the response. You can imagine their surprise when I lit the candle, showed everyone the flame, blew it out, and then promptly put it in my mouth and ATE it. I will never forget the expression of the little girl who was sitting in front. Her jaw dropped and her eyes bulged like balloons. It was beautiful!

As you might’ve guessed, it wasn’t a candle, but rather a slice of cheese with a sliver of charred almond for a wick. I introduced the kids to the scientific method, and we began working through their collective observations. Following the cheese candle trick, I demonstrated liquid density, various chemical reactions, static electricity, and air pressure. The sounds were loud, the flames big, and the smiles contagious as we explored the scientific method with each experiment. I wore a white lab coat with a name tag that read, “Mr. Science.” Bill Nye would be proud … and so would Grandma, I think.

For two hours I put on a show unlike anything these kids had ever seen. Looking at their little faces, who mostly hail from small villages outside of Mwanza, I couldn’t help thinking: How many genius kids have grown up walking and working in the nearby fields because they couldn’t afford the shoes required to walk into a classroom? How much raw intellect has died on the vine because it was never given the opportunity to grow?

I guess every place has the same issue: Unrealized potential that is a result of poverty and/or a lack of opportunity. In the United States, physicians can deduce more about life expectancy from your zip code than they can by looking at your medical records. Through variables outside our control and a simple luck of the draw, the “success” of our lives is frequently influenced by where we are born and who our parents are—but not necessarily, depending on who intervenes on our life journeys.

I grew up in a small cow town in the very middle of the United States. My best friend from childhood went to prison at about the same time I went off to college. Up until then, our lives weren’t very different. Thankfully, I had Grandma Rosie and a few others who saw to it that the value of education was instilled in me at an early age. What’s more, I was given a few very poignant opportunities to be inspired. 

I didn’t become a scientist, but I didn’t go to jail either, and somehow, I managed to make it through school. Who knows, maybe some fifth-grader who watched hydrogen peroxide get converted to oxygen and water will become a scientist someday. I certainly hope so.

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