Girls Camp and stuff...

Fun times in Saint-Louis. I just got back to the apartment from running some errands. Just as I left the bank I saw a fellow volunteer, and as we were talking a cab stopped by us. I was thinking, “should I tell this guy I don’t need a ride, or just ignore him?” But as we finished our conversation, I looked at the cabbie, which was by then shouting to me. It was a friend from my village! There are several men from Khatete who drive taxi’s and buses here in Saint-Louis, and I’m always scouting for them, but never seem to find them.  My friend gave me a ride for free to my next destination, and en route, we greeted a friends husband, and my drivers brother, another friend. Crazy! Wonderful coincidence! I’ve been away from site for six days, and I miss it. This always happens.  I was going to go home today, but might wait an extra day to get dinner with a friend here in Saint Louis.

So, the reason I’m here is because of our regional girls’ camp: Camp Gem sa Bopp (believe in yourself)! Definitely a good experience. We brought girls in from villages where volunteers did the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship (helping middle-school girls with good grades, motivation to stay in school, and financial need with the means to pay for school.) Hopefully over this year I can establish a relationship with the middle-school (college) in my road town to do the scholarship there and bring girls from my village/region. It was really a trip being there for the first day, because two things I’m quite familiar with—university campuses and youth camps—were placed in a completely different context. So many similarities with just enough of a difference to be unsettling. The dorms had decent beds, and there were toilettes (of the un-seated variety so common here in Senegal) electricity and running water, but there was no air flow in the building. So, at night it was stiflingly hot and I think I got about 3 hours of interrupted sleep per night. Still, there was a lovely garden right next to the cafeteria where I was able to lay on a concrete bench, still cool from the night, and ascend every morning. In the afternoons, there was  a well ventilated room with a ceiling fan to ascend and nap to make it through the day. And, though I’m not sure how much help I really was, with no official role but “helper-with-stuff,” it was an experience I am glad to have been a part of. We had speakers about women in business, female specific challenges in Senegal, and women’s empowerment in education, and visited a great volunteer’s garden in Saint-Louis. We also made friendship bracelets and tie-died. And, since its camp, and in Senegal, there was a decent amount of singing and dancing.

My favorite moment at the camp was yesterday morning when I and another volunteer led a yoga session. We agreed to have a ten minute meditation at the end. While the other volunteer was walking among the girls explaining what they should do to meditate, I was sitting up front. I tried to interject, but it didn’t work. No problem. But the girl right in front of me wanted to hear what I had to say. I told her: there are no good thoughts. There are no bad thoughts. They simply come and go. So, you will have a thought. Just watch it. It will go. Then there will be another, so again, just watch it. Dropping for that blessed moment into beautiful stillness, and feeling it burning in our eye-contact… So, ya know, that is what it is. It was lovely for me, and who knows, maybe it will plant a seed of awareness. It’s impossible to know. But we sat there. I kept my eyes closed and used my first ascension technique. After, another volunteer said she’d opened her eyes to see what was happening, during the meditation time, and all the girls actually had their eyes closed. They were into it! Pretty cool!

I also just finished reading “Half the Sky”, so my brain is all into gender stuff right now, and I feel like I’m seeing some pretty surprising stuff that I had just… immunized myself to? But also, I feel like I have a blockage to truly seeing some stuff that’s going on around me. Like, even at the camp, they did a session of theatre about women’s challenges here: young girls being sexually harassed by teachers at their schools, women being expected to marry at 14 and give up schooling, that sort of thing. Even the basic fact that girls are basically Cinderella-ized here… I fell like this wall pops up inside me when I think about these things or am faced with them. What is that?? Nothing to do but let it be at this point. Keep aware of it. Anyway, for those of you who haven’t read it, it’s an excellent book. One point I’ll pass along: people who care about the suffering and oppression of women should not be called feminists. They should be called compassionate. Humanists. We don’t call people who think the holocaust was an abomination Jewists. We don’t call civil rights advocates racists. Wait, that’s what we call the people who hate people because of race… Point is, the term feminist is a misnomer that creates a negative association. People who support the freedom and empowerment of women would support the same for men who are mistreated or enslaved. But the fact is, women make up about half of the planet, and in many many places are at worst enslaved, or at least marginalized to the point of disempowerment. Okay. So, read the book. There are depressing part, but the overwhelming sense of the book is one of possibility and the goodness of the human heart. The power of one individual to see injustice and do something to correct it.CHYA!