Debate Tournament

This past Saturday was the first ever debate tournament that I attended. Yes, I know that in highschool most of my friends did debate, even my sisters did, but I did not.
So this is how I ended up at a debate tournament of all places.
When I was returning home on Friday night from a Persian New Year's celebration/ Birthday celebration I came upon one of the senior 6 students at my school. After the normal pleasantries I asked what she was doing on Saturday (since I had thought something was going on at my school). She told me that nothing was happening at the school tomorrow, but she would be going to debate in the morning and that I should come to watch. She said they would be leaving at 7 am. I figured what else am I doing at 7 am, so I said sure I would like to go. Come Saturday morning I was ready at 7 am, but we of course did not leave till 7.30. 20 students from my school went. The debate 'coach' would be meeting us there I was told. So we all piled on the bus that had come for us. As soon as the bus pulled out of the school the girls asked the driver to put on music and put it on loud. The driver put in a tape, and I'm not kidding when I say the song that came on was "red, red wine." And yes all the 20 girls knew the words; it gave me a good chuckle.
Now on the bus with us, other than the driver that is, was a police man. Since I didn't know why I asked one of the students, and she informed me that it was because the police were sponsoring the debate. It should be noted that at the time I had no idea what that statement really meant, but I would soon find out.
We shortly arrived at our destination, we only traveled far enough for us to listen to 2 songs, to the dismay of the girls. Now this is where for me it got good. We pulled into the National Police Headquarters; which for those of you who do not know is a huge compound/base in Kigali. Well when I was told the police were sponsoring it, it also meant they were hosting it.
I'm not going to lie, I was really excited, I mean its not every day one gets to be inside of a national police headquarters. As we were unloading from the bus another police officer came and told us that we could walk around for a bit while we waited for the other schools to come. I didn't have to be told twice, I got moving, I wanted to see as much of the place as I could. Although I wanted to, I figured it would be best if I didn't take pictures while I was wondering. I believe I amused my students with my curiousity.
After the second school arrived we were ushered into this other compound within the compound. Within the next half an hour 3 other schools arrived, so that there was a total of 5 schools. Essentially it was the 5 best schools of Kigali(private and public). The students proceeded to greet eachother and just be students. This was all very interesting to see how they mingled amongst the private and public school students. Also some of the students from the private school were foreigners.
After a bunch of waiting we were directed into a conference room. There we waited for more time. I finally found out that the reason we were waiting was because the commision general of the police force was running late and we were waiting for her(yes it is a women in charge).
When she had finally arrived, we could finally start, it was now approx. 10.30 am. She began with some brief words and then quickly passed it off to an officer from the CID who then did a short presentation on the current crime rates in Rwanda. Then the actual debate tournament could be started.
From each school there were 5 students(+or-)who would be debating. These students were called out of the conference room and divided into 8 teams of 3 students (I have no idea which school did not have 5 students participating). We then had 4 teams stay in the conference room, and the other 4 teams went to another room. Then half the audience was divided to go watch in the other room.
The format of the debate went like this. First affirmative or negative positions in regards to the motion were assigned to the first two teams. They then had 5 minutes to make their game plan. Then the first speaker of the affirmitive team had 6 minutes to speak. Then the third speaker of the negative team had 3 minutes to ask questions or cross interegate the first speaker. The first speaker of the negative team then had 6 minutes to speak, followed by a 3 minute cross interigation by the 3rd speaker of the affirmitive team. This same scheme repeated itself for the 2nd and 3rd speakers for both sides; the only difference was that they only had 5 minutes to speak instead of the first speaker's 6 minutes.

Immediately after the first pairing of teams finished, the other two teams went up and the process started all over again. I will admit I was a little confused that the teams not participating got to watch what the other teams said.

So what was the motion they were debating over? The fact that Rwanda wants to involve its youth in crime prevention and reduction.

After the first two pairing finished, it was time for lunch. When lunch was finished the judges announced the winner of both pairings. Then those two winners debated against each other. Meanwhile this same format was happening in the other room with the 4 other teams. In the end each room had 1 team that was the winner, the rooms came back together again and these 2 teams debated in the finals to have a final winner.
This was all very interesting, but I will admit at times also a little boring, since it was the same topic debated each time, and almost every group made the same points.
The only thing I did not think was fair, though I know it was fair. The team that ended up being the final winners, for each of their rounds they had the affirmitive position, which I think was the easier position to defend.
My main observations was that the teams which had the negative side had a hard time coming up with substantial points/arguments and the confidence that they were believe what they said. Now I know that they didnt believe it, and I was talking to my students in the audience about this, that the point of debate is not whether you believe it or not, but you try to make yourself the stronger team by having the best arguements and by being able to pick apart what the other team said in cross examinations.
This in my opinion is where many of the students lacked. Now I think the main reason is that they are not fully comfortable with the English langauge so they don't know how to use ceratin words to give themselves an advantage or how to word a question so that you stick the other teams with saying something they did not want to say, but I guess that comes with time and experience. No surprise the 'best' debater went to a white boy. And I am not saying that he was not good, but in my opinion half the time his opposition was just so overwhelmed with the speed in which he spoke and flumixed by how he worded his questions they could never gain proper footing when he spoke to them in cross examinations or when they were cross examinning him.
Also in my opinion there were many openings that the negaitve teams had to try and win some points, but most of the time the students did not use them. The biggest chances they lost out on was the affirmative teams' usage of such definitive words, such as always, proven, or perfectly. These are powerful words to be used when arguing and I believe it could have given them a chance to score some points.
Though at the same time I believe that all the affirmitive teams failed to point out one of the most obvious points. So each negative teams argued that by using the youth in crime prevention and reduction they would be exposing the youth to bad things. They then went on to say the only role of the youth in the country was that they must go to school and be educated. What confused me is that not one group pointed out that by having the youth go to school and recieve an education that in itself is a from of crime reduction and prevention.
I also found it interesting that not one negative group asked the affirmitive teams how they would ensure that if the youth were used there would be some oversight so that the youth were just not being programmed to do something, aka ensurance that someone in power could not abuse it and make himself an army of youth(which we have seen happen in parts all over the world).

But hey, what can I say really, they are only students, and who knows how much experience they have in debating. While even though I have never formally debated, I am an expert arguer who has different life experiences so I can look at a topic differently from them.

Oh side note-- At one point of the debate I had to really restrain myself from not making too big of an outburst, I managed to control myself to only making a snort/laugh sound. You see in one of the cross examinations a students asked for an example of a stable African country, and the other student said Madagascar. Clearly the student had not been following the news this past week, cause if they had, they would have known that that example might not have been the best to use.

Well in the end the debate tournament was a lot of fun for the students, and I was definietely happy that I had come to watch it. On the way home the students had asked the bus driver to take the long way home so they could listen to music longer. On the radio an Akon song came on, and of course ALL the girls LOVE Akon, so the bus was filled with 20 girls screaming the words as loud as possible, all I could do was smile.

The only other thing to note about this day was that when I had agreed to go, I did not know it was a tournment or that it would take all day. We left school at 7.30 am, and did not return till roughly 6 pm. HA. and here I had wanted to run errands and see people from my program. But on the other side I did get a free lunch out of it, not to mention I was inside the National Police Headquarters.

Oh I forgot one more thing. The names of the two teams in the finals. When the man in charge introduced them as "the eagles", the team replied we fly high. The second teams was introduced as "the creme cakes," and what did they respond but we taste good..HAHA...

Sorry one more thing. Today in school I had a few teachers tell me they saw me on TV on Sunday. I had known that the debate tournament was being taped, and a few times they panned the audience, well guess what I got filmed, and I was on Rwandan tv..hahahaha. :)