The Sunday Mail
Tariro Nicole Zambasa
Mufakose 1 High School
THE Zimbabwe Robotics Team recently competed in the International Robotics Olympics held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
We competed with over 190 countries from around the world and played a total of nine games – winning some and losing others.
Despite that, our experience was awesome. We enjoyed learning from other teams, especially the ones that we worked with.
We also got to discover quite a lot of interesting things. In competing, it is not just about aiming to win over your opponent, it is mostly about winning over the problem you are trying to solve.
It was amazing how the teams at the competition helped each other out, be it in working on the robot or in any other activities we carried out there, the zeal was just incredible.
Friends were made while stories and different cultures were shared. Telling and showcasing the Zimbabwean culture was one of the things we loved most as we got to understand and appreciate other cultures as well.
The Robotics Olympics provided us with an opportunity we could never have found anywhere else.
It opened our minds and exposed us to a world we never knew existed, a world where one’s gender does not matter, where it does not matter how tall or short you are, where only your capabilities count, a world of robotics.
It was not only about robots, but about building children through robots.
It is a world where cooperation is encouraged, where we do not just compete against but compete with as well.
We learnt that young people are not just the future leaders but the future itself. The competition really helped us see the world from a bird’s eye view. It shut off that narrow- minded approach that most young people have towards life.
It was fun, it was hard work and we learned a lot. Everything about the challenge was on point.
We went out to tour one of the most amazing sceneries in the city, the Burj Khalifa. It is the tallest building in the world. We also visited the Atlantis Island and the hotel. It is one of the most amazing hotels in the world. We also saw the biggest screen in the world at the Dubai mall.
Teammate Delight was always thrilled to see the dancing waters every night.
We had the most amazing experience ever. We believe it did not just end there. In fact, it is just the beginning of discovering ourselves and instilling in ourselves the initiative of taking risks and looking for problems to solve because there will always be problems.
We aim to introduce coding as a club in most schools in our country so that other youths can also enjoy robotics as much as we do. We need the other students to love adventure.
The main goal is to solve the world’s challenges. We have already started teaching girls how to code, that is the basis of programming.
This is just a start in building Zimbabwe’s digital economy and women are a part of it, a great part of all of this.
Our sincere apologies for the error on sponsorship in our earlier article, POTRAZ did not sponsor the team this year.
However, we would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to FIRST Global and the Dubai Future Foundation for enabling our participation at the prestigious Global Robotics Olympics.
Thank you to Gifts and More for the beautiful team T-shirts, our parents and everyone who supported the team one way or the other.
Most of all, we would like to thank our mentors, Aretha Mare and Charles Matanga. They constantly encouraged and pushed us to go through the work. We also thank our schools for supporting us. They helped us make this dream come true.
Students send your articles, pictures, poetry or art to: [email protected] or [email protected], WhatsApp or text Charles Mushinga on 0719936678. Follow Charles Mushinga on Facebook or @charlesmushinga on Twitter.
