link to wapo story
remember, we are a shining city on a hillIt's not easy to get robotics equipment through customs in Afghanistan, but that didn't deter this plucky bunch.
For months, a team of six teenage girls has been scrambling to build a ball-sorting robot that will compete in an international competition. Other teams received their raw materials in March. But the box sent from America had been held up for months amid concerns about terrorism. So the young engineers improvised, building motorized machines from household materials.
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The Afghan girls are not alone. On Tuesday, the leader of a robotics team from the West African nation of Gambia announced that they too had been denied visas to enter the United States. Mucktarr M.Y. Darboe, a Higher Education ministry director, told the Associated Press that no reason was given for the visa denials in April. Gambia is a largely Muslim nation. AP could not immediately reach anyone at the U.S. Embassy in Banjul for comment.