Work! So a while back, I wrote about my building anticipation for our region’s girls camp. Ladies and gentlemen, girls camp has come and gone. And as predicted, I slayed the children in various competitive sporting capacities. Also as predicted, I had a really good time.
The girls we invited to the camp were all top students in their middle school classes, nominated by their teachers and schools based on academic achievement, leadership, and financial need. Consequently, they were a smart, sassy bunch of ladies. After spending so many months seeing girls only in their home modes – aka cooking, sweeping, running out on errands, trying to study in the small window of time between cleaning up from dinner and falling asleep from exhaustion, and usually just sitting quietly, it was incredibly refreshing to see girls just being girls, laughing, dancing, and getting riled up. Our camp had a different theme each day, covering topics like health, environment, money, creativity, and the future. We, the Peace Corps volunteers, organized sessions and activities, but for the most part, Senegalese counterparts and campers from last year took control in leading and executing most of the plans. It was pretty cool to see: a project made possible by Peace Corps volunteers organizing logistics and funding carried out in a huge way by the local population.
Personally, I had many favorite moments from camp. As a health volunteer, I was ecstatic to see how the girls responded to a question and answer session with the local nurse. True, some questions were kind of weird, like “Why do some girls smell like garbage?”, but many of their questions were just heartbreakeningly simple, at least by American standards. Watching a group of girls finally hear their burning questions answered, such as “What if I DON’T GET MY PERIOD BY THE TIME I AM 12 WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME????” is just really great. Knowledge is power! Many girls said this was their favorite session.
I also really loved one of the gender activities we did. We read blanket statements, like “Men are better at managing money than women” or “A man should be allowed to hit his wife,” and told the girls to stand on either side of the room, depending on whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement. For many questions, the girls were evenly split, but I was more impressed by the spirited debates that followed. They’d argue points and counterpoints and girls would be running back and forth, changing their minds and reevaluating how they understood gender roles. It was like seeing a visual representation of a confused 13 year old girl’s brain. I LOVED IT.
And of course, we did fun things like throw water balloons at them and send them on scavenger hunts. The wildnerness scavenger hunt included a direction to “find something living!”. We imagined the girls would bring back things like, I don’t know, leaves. Maybe a cricket. Our girls were so dang creative that they captured things like one-eyed toads and baby birds. Yes for thinking outside the box, children! Yes! Another awesome part of my week happened when I rode a donkey charrette for the first time. Pretty much everywhere in Senegal, except for big cities, people move around on rickety wooden carts pulled by donkeys and horses. Until camp, this opportunity had been denied me,. But camp finally gave me that common Peace Corps experience of holding 30lbs of leaky fish on my lap as I slowly felt like I was sliding off a wooden cart to be trampled by domesticated animals on African bush paths. Now, I have lived!
So even though girls camp was only a week long, and even though it required a ton of stress and organization and logistics, I have no doubt in my mind that the camp was well worth it. It’s strange to me: sometimes I really have to stop and remember where I am, because sure, I’m surrounded by health tragedies and economic injustice and poverty, but at the end of the day, the lack of creativity and fun and learning is what I continually notice. It sounds cheesy, but to me, I guess that’s what the life of life has always been about. And consequently, having a week full of those things made girls camp one of my favorite weeks in Senegal so far. So much thanks to everyone who supported our girls camp this year… it was a good thing.
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