Girls Camp 2012!

And with that, Thies Girls Camp 2012 is complete!  After a wonderful week of talking about nutrition and reproduction and the environment and gardening and possible careers and business and marketing and everything in between, camp came to a tearful close a few Fridays ago.  And yes, when I say tearful, that is what I mean.  The girls started thinking about departure a full 24 hours before it actually happened, which added a flair of drama to Thursday night’s talent show.  One moment, everyone was dancing to Rihanna and having the time of their lives!  In the next moment, Beyonce’s Halo had reduced all of the girls to blubbering messes as they clutched their new friends in a swaying dance circle.  Lesson?  You can put a girl in a week-long camp and help her escape a week’s worth of housework… but she can never escape her teenage hormones.  In the best way!

Kathleen, Rita, and I pose with Aissatou, one of our counselors, and my some of my Thies girls on the last day of camp.

No, but truly, camp was wonderful.  All of my fellow PCVs did a fantastic job with the sessions they’d prepared, forcing the girls into three-legged races, teaching them about dental hygiene, showing them the beauty of the environment, and awakening their quiet entrepreneurial spirits.  All of our Senegalese counterparts did a phenomenal job as well, inspiring the girls to try eggs instead of just chocolate for breakfast, clarifying mystifying concepts like the power of the moringa plant, and giving them honest, and thoughtful advice.  And the girls?  The girls were amazing: they jumped right into the spirit of camp from day 1, participating in every session, asking questions, taking notes, making fantastical artistic creations, never complaining, and as it appeared to me, never sleeping.  By the end of camp, they were all resolved to start their own clubs in order to teach other people what they’d learned, keep in touch, and maybe even take field trips to the other cities.  Win!

Somehow, I was put in charge of explaining the idea of dreamcatchers to the girls.  It went something like this: "You hang this net over your bed and nightmares get caught like fish and good dreams pass through!  It is a traditional object from the first Americans who lived among the environment!  Put yarn to kill nightmares!"  

Hard at work making moringa porridge for tomorrow's breakfast.  

Rita and Chelsea use our beautiful training center to show examples of plants and live fencing.

The girls painted tires to use as recycled plant containers.  My host sister Fatimata is in the neon!

Out of all the sessions, I think the one that really came to define camp, at least for me, was the presentation given by our gender and development advisor, Awa Traore.  I’ll give you a little snapshot of it (with words, because no one had a camera during this session):

Before Awa came, the girls watched a Peace Corps-produced movie following five working women in Senegal, Awa included.  Each of the women told her personal story, paying special attention to the challenges she’d faced over the course of her life.  The women talked about balancing work, family, and tradition, especially emphasizing the important and irrefutable role that Senegalese women play in society.  Then, at the end, they challenged the girls to continue their educations and find a way to improve life in Senegal.  I led a brief reflection after the movie, mostly quizzing the girls to see if they’d paid attention.  They had.  In fact, a few nights later my host sister called me into the living room to point excitedly at the news, where one of the film’s women was being interviewed on TV. 

But what made an even bigger impact was the appearance of Awa herself after the film, a living and breathing version of the figure they’d just watched on-screen.  Awa worked the crowd like nothing I’d ever seen.  In one instant, she riled them up with an improvised skit about how boys flirt in Senegal --  only to bring the girls to a hush moments later by asking them soul-jarring questions.  She found a way to make the room’s atmosphere both completely safe, completely honest, and completely empowering. 

The first point she talked about was ROMANCE, which obviously hooked the girls from the get-go.  In addition to that reenactment of flirting, she also talked about the difference between provocation and confidence.  Then, in one of my favorite moments of camp, she said, “Having a boyfriend isn’t a problem!” (dramatic pause)  “But when DOES a boyfriend become a problem?”, which led to shouts of “When he takes time from your studies!” “When he asks you for money!” and “When he gets you pregnant!”  From there, Awa segued into a frank discussion about sexual violence, incest, and the rape, but did it all with the effervescence of a sage.  The girls rose to the occasion, gravely absorbing each word with wide eyes and nodding heads.

Next, Awa asked the girls about their future plans.  Hands shot up.  “Doctor!” “Lawyer!” “Diplomat!” “Engineer!”  -- all of them had a chance to share with her exactly how they saw themselves.  Then she asked all of the girls to close their eyes and imagine a scene 10-15 years from now.  Where were they?  What were they doing?  Who were they with?  After a few moments, she asked a few girls to share, and I loved their answers:

•   “I was with my husband.  We were both studying in a library in America to be lawyers.  I was sending money that I earned there to help my family here.”
• “I was in Greece on a beautiful beach, living in a beautiful house with my family.  I had my degree on the wall.”
• “I was in my clinic that I owned as a doctor, in Senegal.  After work, I go home to my sincere, honest, faithful husband and our two children.”

After many girls had shared, Awa then asked, what would happen if you got pregnant right now?  What would happen if you stopped going to school right now?  Would these dreams still be possible?  The girls thought about what she said, and she then ended it with my favorite bit of advice:

“You all need to take responsibility, right now, for your choices.  Whatever those choices may be – you must deal with the consequences.  The consequences may be good or they may be bad.  But either way, you have a responsibility to yourself and your dreams to face them head on.  And you must decide how you will go forward.”

And to me, that kind of became my overarching theme for camp – not only that bit of advice, but Awa’s whole presentation: I wanted the girls to see how all of their choices do factor into their lives.  I wanted them to understand that they do have choices, even if that choice is only in how they react or voice their opinions.  And I wanted them to remember how capable Awa had made them feeI.  If they took anything from camp, I hope it was from this session.  And from the way I heard them continue talking about it, they did.

There were other amazing moments from camp, inevitably.  I’ll never forget the high-pitched squealing that accompanied each chastely romanctic scene from Bend It Like Beckham (such a good choice for Senegalese city girls!  The story about balancing the desire to be a soccer star with the disapproval of your highly traditional family resonated so well! Plus, they loved the Indian dance scenes, clothes, and really identified with the overly dramatic matriarchal figures!).  Throughout the week, I also adapted Valparaiso football cheers to various directions and moments.  A big favorite was the "Ooga ooga" chant, which we used to do things like "go to the back room" and "get ready for lunch."  I’ll also never forget how our talent show somehow became a comedic roast of me.  It’s not just at American camps that the camp director becomes the comic relief and buffoon!  I would have been offended if they hadn’t also done such great skits about how to not die from malaria or get knocked up.  Also, they kept serving me tea.

So, in essence, thank all of you for supporting me and my neighbors with this project!  It turned out far better than I expected, and I couldn’t have survived the process with so much encouragement from back home!  I’m excited to keep in touch not only with my girls over the next few months, but also a lot of the Senegalese counterparts who stopped by too.  Just yesterday, I stopped by the school to pay the registration fees for my scholarship winners.  So begins another year!  And so concludes this chapter of Thies Girls Camp: edition 2012.  All my love!

Campers, volunteers, and counselors, 2012 :)

And, for the blog cliffhanger, prepare yourselves for future entries about my recent brush with attempted robbery and a critical analysis of dancing in Senegal.  COMING SOON!