Girls Camp!

Camp Geum Sa Bopp (Believe in Yourself) ended yesterday morning. I saw the girls back to village and then came immediately back to St. Louis to recuperate for 24 hours. It was an amazing (but exhausting) experience. We go through most of our lives Not paying attention to the FACT that women are still not given equal rights to men. I almost qualified that statement with “in some parts of the world,” but the fact is that even in America there is clear inequality in some contexts. It’s a difficult thing to face the reality of this inequality and associated hardship, more so when you feel incapable of doing anything about it. So, this past week was an emotionally charged oscillation between kin-tingling optimism and angry depression. But the knowledge that what we were doing must in some way add energy to the slow-changing situation here in Senegal kept us all pushing through the exhaustion.

Why do I say the situation here is already changing? I’ll give you, as an example, my very favorite moment from the week. It took place during one of the harder moments from the week, so let me explain. I was responsible for an activity to encourage the girls to look critically at gender roles. Tragically, critical thinking is not structurally encouraged here in the educational or social spheres. Education follows, pretty exclusively, a memorization and reproduction paradigm, and the culture is highly community focused, and people are expected to accept and conform to community standards without thinking for themselves about what seems right or wrong. This is an oversimplification, and I’m also casting it in a negative light when it has its advantages. However, for the purposes of the activity I led, it made things difficult. We started by doing an activity called “agree/disagree” where we read a series of statements to which the girls respond by taking a place in a line under signs that read “agree,” “somewhat agree,” “somewhat disagree,” and “disagree.” Responses encouraged conversation, at least between a few vocal people, about whether or not men and women had easier or harder lives and were more capable of working in business or not.

So, feeling optimistic, we split into small groups to continue discussing these issues and gender roles in general. Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding between myself and one of the counterparts that led these discussions to be more school-type question-regurgitation-ish than critical thinking, open conversations. The girls were simply reproducing lists of traditional gender responsibilities and NOT talking about where these standards came from and how they were restrictive or supportive, reasonable or not, etc. In fact, when a friend of mine asked her group “where do these ideas about gender limitations come from?” Someone responded “God,” effectively ending all possible future explorations there. So when we asked two girls from each group to get up and summarize their group conversations, we were all freaking out a little. It seemed that rather than encouraging women’s freedom, we were enforcing traditional gender roles! We didn’t know what to do. We tried to ask them to talk about how they felt about the roles or what they thought about them, but it was like we hit a wall.

When the second group got up to read their list, I told them to skip over anything they had that had already been said, and to only say things that hadn’t already been covered. This group, with a wonderful young woman from my village leading the summary, skipped to question three, which was “Think about your grandmother, your mother, and yourself. How have gender roles changed over time?” What she said still gives me chills. She explained that her grandmother wasn’t allowed to speak in the home and was expected simply to do what she was told by the men of the house. That even her mother wasn’t allowed to make decisions about her own life, that she had to married to the man her family chose, and again had no voice in the home. But, she continued, her generation was the first to have a voice. They were allowed to speak their opinions in the home, to chose who they want to marry and reject those they don’t want. Silent all these years… … Okay, I will not cry in a public café… Saving grace. This activity was immediately followed by a talk with a Human Rights Jurist. She’s a Senegalese woman who has master’s degrees in human rights and international development. And there was nothing compromised in what she said.

Clearly parts of the camp were pretty heavy. And we were regularly reminded that these beautiful young girls, full of so much promise, lived in the same world we all do, where far too many women become victims of abuse. Sometimes it seems to me that innocence is dead. Then I see the smiles on the girls as they sing songs and drum along, when they saw the ocean for the first time, when they were just sitting around talking together, and I know nothing can kill LOVE. And I know that because of this camp, for one week, these girls were given a boost. They were given a chance to lighten their loads, they were given encouragement and knowledge of how to pursue what they want in their lives, they were given a community where it’s normal to be strong and intelligent, they played and laughed and sang and danced.

Meanwhile, we volunteers got to learn some really fun new camp songs and bond both with the girls from our villages and with some amazing Senegalese women,  a couple of whom I’d like to take home with me just to be present in my village. True role models.

It’s a bittersweet ending, as camps always are. You wish you could all stay, but you know you have to go back to your daily lives. You hope the lessons learned and the energy created persist in the campers’ lives, and you just have to trust that it will have some impact.

Finally, I just want to say again, THANK YOU to all our donors. You guys made this possible, and at least for me, this has been the most meaningful thing I've done for the people of Khatete so far. Please know that your support, both financial and in spirit was greatly appreciated, and truly made a difference. THANK YOU! I can't say it enough.

Geming Sama Bopp in preparation for Camp Gem sa Bopp

Arriving at your favorite cafe in Saint Louis directly from village with your pants still wet from getting water from the well.... fabulous.

Okay! Just want to give you guys a little peek into the preparations for Camp Gem Sa Bopp (Camp Believe in Yourself), because I'm frickin' exhausted, but having a great time getting ready.  Joy of joys, this year I will be bringing three bright young women from my village to participate in the camp. And in order to make that possible, I had to test some serious boundaries of trust. First, my counterpart--who has yet to help me with a single project beyond brewing tea while I work--told me that she had to be invited in order for any of the families there to allow their children to go away with me for a week. I can absolutely understand her point, but she's not exactly the ideal camp counselor. See the lack of help working comment. Plus, we already have all the counselors we need, coming from other villages. And the directrice is a Wolof woman as well, so it's not like these girls are going to be with toubabs rekk. But, beautiful silver lining, my good friend's little sister is a college student, and helped me immensely in finding the girls who have now been invited to camp. She wrote me a list of names, then taught me about their grading system.

Over the course of three days, I went to each family, explained the camp and asked to see the girls' grades. Finally, I found the three candidates. One girl, the youngest of the three, had incredibly high scores, and her father was immediately happy to have his daughter participate. The mothers, however, mentioned briefly that a week was a long time to have one of the household workers absent. I held my ground and argued that the benefits to the entire household of sending a girl to this camp would, in the long run, far outweigh the damage of missing a week of chores. And hey, Papa agreed with me! Awesome.

Fortunately, the girl who helped me also had the highest scores in her class, and her mother and I get along really well. Her father passed away several months ago. It is with great pleasure that I was able to invite her to the camp, both because she's family friends and because of her help and automatic support in the process.

The third girl is the daughter of our village cheif. He is regularly absent from village, working in various other cities. She's the daughter of his first wife, who is a lovely woman and the sister of one of my best friends there. Plus one day she came to a tour with butt padded underwear on, extending her already sizeable bottom to ridiculous proportions. Plus at another tour she taught me to dance. Aaaanyway, we had to call the father to get his permission (sure, mutual parental concent is important, but this was clearly a "man gets the last word situation.) So, here is my best work moment so far in Peace Corps: On the phone for the 2nd time in one day because the first time he said "the problem is she won't be around to work in the feild," and then I ran out of credit. Ready to make the case, so much more so because of the BEAUTY of the barely restrained shaking in the mothers voice as she told me YES she wants her daughter to be able to go so she can have a good life, and here's what I needed to tell her husband to make sure he agrees.  So I spit it out, conscious of my slowed, extra clear articulation to mask MY internal quivering, and he says "It's no problem. When are you guys leaving?" And I turn to the girl as I pass the phone to the mother, and we just smile and laugh, and, man I almost did a happy dance.

Lot's of work left to do. By writing the grant, I agreed to be in charge of all the money, which means reviewing all the budgets and buying things and writing checks and stuff. And then I agreed to be co-in-charge of a day of the camp, which means preparing events, writing a schedule, and then writing my own budget for them. And meanwhile, my program director is coming to my village on thursday to explain to my village that, yeah, she's telling you the truth when she says she's here to work along side you guys, not for you, and she can't write a grant for anything without you guys contributing. ... Long story about how they still don't get that... But man, I love them. And now, I finally feel like I've been able to do something substantial that will (inch'allah) actually help my village.

Camp starts Sunday, so stay tuned for camp stories and pictures! And once again, HUGE thank yous to all of you who donated!!! I can't tell you how excited these girls are and how excited we volunteers are!