Raven Report

Sequoia High School

Volume vii, Issue 5

1201 Brewster Ave. Redwood City, CA 94062

February 5, 2014

Spirit of Uganda electrifies sold-out Carrington

By CARMEN VESCIA
Feature Editor
The room pulses with energy
and vibrates with the pounding
of drums. Bright blurs of color
leap and whirl across the stage.
Voices and instruments seamlessly blend together and fill the
auditorium, where not a single
seat is empty. The audience
watches, spellbound.
Then, in a second, its over.
The room fills with the sound
of clapping and cheering as the
crowd rises in a standing ovation.
You are going to see what we
call power of joy. On stage well
just inspire you, said 20-year-old
performer Brian Odong.
Twenty-one performers, aged
12 to 21 years, from the Spirit of
Uganda dance and music troupe
lit up the stage at Carrington
Hall Friday Jan. 17.
I was surprised by how much
energy they had. They never faltered, [and] they were always
Photo by Simon Greenhill
smiling, said senior Gareth
Performers are from 12 to 21 years old and are on a three-month tour of the United States.
Wang who attended the show
and mingled with the Ugandans and made over $13,600.
she personally contacted Alexis boring countries in East Africa.
at a post-performance dinner.
Africause first learned of Em- Hefley, the President and Co- During sixth period on the same
It was really amazing that we power African Children and Founder of Empower African day, a teaser was put on for classes who attended.
shared so many of the same ex- Spirit of Uganda from junior Children, to share her idea.
The performers also worked
periences. . . yet our lives were so Nani Friedman, a club member
She was determined to make
different. Im really glad I got to who saw the group perform at it happen, and she rallied the with Sequoias Advanced Dance
spend time with people whose her middle school.
troops, and we just did it. It was class and held a drumming jam
lives were so interesting and had
The fact that people were so a beautiful collective effort, said session.
[The Spirit of Uganda helps]
so much to offer.
excited about it, and [how] peo- English teacher and Africause
people
realize. . . how rich and
It cost Sequoias Africause pleespecially once they met adviser Justine Rutigliano.
Club $10,000raised from the kidswere so passionate was
The show ran from 7 to 9:15 diverse [the culture] is, and even
ticket and merchandise salesto great to see, Friedman said.
p.m. and featured 16 differ- though there is a lot of suffering,
host the tour created by the nonFriedman first proposed that ent performances that included especially in Uganda, there are
profit Empower African Chil- the Spirit of Uganda come at various dances, songs and instru- beautiful cultures flourishing,
dren; the club surpassed its goal the beginning of last year, and ments from Uganda and neigh- Africause member junior Mari-

jke Silberman said.

The show was the first of the
troupes 12 performances of its
three-month-long U.S. tour. The
youth who perform with Spirit
of Uganda all come from vulnerable situationssome have been
affected by wars in Northern
Uganda, while others have parents with AIDSbut with the
help of Empower African Children, they have been supported
and able receive high-quality
educations.
Our payment is just the education that we get. We dont really get payments like salaries,
but the tuition, the care we get,
the health care, the insurance
we believe thats the payment,
18-year-old performer Sharon
Kyomugisha said. Also, weve
never felt like we need to be paid
. . . because we love what we do,
and we also want to preserve our
culture and come and show you
guys what we have in Africa.
Ticket prices ranged from $5
to $25. These prices were negotiated down by Africause tickets
at other venues can cost upwards
of $50 each and the show sold
out thanks to the lowered prices.
I didnt realize how magnificent and how intense [it would
be,] Rutigliano said. The culture is so rich and so beautiful,
and I think the Empower African Children raising money
piece was important, but it was
more to share the culture of the
Ugandans with Sequoia.
Additional reporting by Abigail
Wang

Robotics Team to compete in world championships

By SIMON GREENHILL
Editor-in-Chief
For up to 25 hours a week, about a
dozen students tinker away in a workshop that used to be a computer lab. The
room is typically covered with tools and
unused pieces of metal and buzzes with
the students passionate energy. They
brainstorm, build, deconstruct, rebuild,
test, codeand then break something,
and do it all over again.
The Sequoia Robotics Team, hot off
its December win in Hawaii and quali-

fication for World Championships in St.

Louis, is a small community of hardworking, uncommonly persistent individuals.
Everyone likes playing with Legos; I
wanted to take that to the next level, said
senior Dylan Roof, one of the teams leaders. Roof, like several of his teammates,
sometimes stays at school until 10 p.m. or
later working on the teams robot.
All the students who [are] on Robotics have quite a lot of perseverance and are
willing to make mistakes and try things,
said Laura Larkin, the teams adviser.
The Robotics Team is mostly unknown

feature:

opinion:

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Perspectives on Valentines Day

Page 5

on Sequoias campus. Other than its appearances at Club Day and occasional
community outreach activities, the team
keeps to itself, quietly but relentlessly engineering a robot of shocking complexity.
Ive always been interested in mechanical design and how things work;
robotics is kind of an extension of that,
said senior Eli Vigdorchik, another team
leader.
Sequoias robotics team is a member
of the FIRST Robotics Competition
(FRC), a competition series that assigns
teams all over the world the same chal-

lenge each year, and then hosts qualifier,

regional, super regional and world championship competitions.
This year, the robots task is to move
small plastic blocks into a series of crates,
which are balanced on a crossbar in the
middle of the court. Points are awarded
for each block that makes it into a crate,
and additional points are awarded if all
the crates are balanced at the end of the
2 -minute game. In addition, there is a
30-second autonomous period at the beginning of each round, during which the
Go to ROBOTICS, page 3

By the Numbers

Page 7

$7,500

Total cost of the Winter Formal

304

Tickets sold