On Sunday, July 10th, 7 other volunteers arrived at our house (the 8th one the following morning) to work the very first Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) in Bohicon. With all the time-consuming preparations, stress, worrying, and hours spent grueling over how I would do this camp, by the time they arrived, I thought that I would have been running around and stressed out, but I was surprisingly calm, excited, and really happy. We had a really great group of volunteers helping out, all of whom we get along with very well. We had a little bump in the road when we realized that all of our office-like supplies were left on the PC shuttle and we wouldn’t be able to use them until Wednesday when the shuttle went through our town again, but that didn’t even worry me. We had a little mini-meeting for less than an hour when everyone got there and by the end of it, we were ready to rock the whole camp. I didn’t sleep at all that night because my mind wouldn’t stand still for longer than 10 seconds.
Day One (July 11th): Sleep deprived and all, we started day one bright and early and totally stoked with a 6:30am alarm. Craig and I were the first to leave the house after coffee. I realized half way there that I forgot the key to the room where we had stored everything, and we had to send Elaina back to the house a couple of times (she was the runner that day) for things we forgot, but other than that, it was a pretty flawless day. When we got there, there were already about 10 girls waiting for us and we got there at 7:30am! They didn’t have to be there for another hour. So that was really encouraging that they were excited enough about the camp to come an hour early. As Patrick, Andrea, and Rich were all doing the check-in, giving t-shirts, taking permission slips, etc, Sarah and Erin were teaching the kids songs. My personal favorite was Destiny Child’s “Independent Woman” in French. It was pretty awesome. We started our opening ceremony incredibly late since we were waiting on the Mayor, who never showed up. The media didn’t show up either as promised, which I was grateful for. Craig and I did our speech, my supervisor did her speech, and someone from the Mayor’s office did a speech. It went really well. We had sodas and the good cookies for all the adults for after the ceremony while the girls got their own less-expensive version of a beverage and cookies. We went over the objectives and rules of the camp and then got in our 5 groups (grouped by colored t-shirt). We had 8 girls that didn’t show up all week, but it was still a good turn out and didn’t affect the groups. We ate with our groups and then played a questionnaire-game to get to know everyone. The photographer showed up and took a group picture of all of us. Afterwards, we went over the next day’s program and then cleaned up and everyone started going home. So day one was really more of an intro for the week, games, activities, and getting to know them more than anything else. After the camp, Erin, Craig, and I went on a long run and inspired most everyone else to do a little workout of some sort. That night, we had a little pow-wow on how to make the next day run smoother then ordered chwarma (yum!).
Day Two (July 12th): After check-in, Patrick and Andrea played “Sharks and Minnows” with the girls and they loved it. It woke them all up and burned out their excess energy so when we started the next activity, “Qui Suis-je?” (Who Am I?) they were attentive. That activity was nice and encouraged them to think positively about themselves since they had to find a positive adjective for each letter of their name. The following activity that we did with them was a Myers-Briggs test. Once they all had their results, we ran off copies of the result page that each needed and spent time with them making sure they understood everything. They seemed to really enjoy it. Several of them said that the test results described them to a “T” and were really surprised that a pre-written thing could be so dead-on. After lunch, we played soccer. We broke up onto 3 different fields. One of the girls on Craig’s team, Hortence, was upset that her team was losing and started a strike with all of her team members and just quit playing. Ha! It was ridiculous and hilarious all at the same time. She was definitely the strongest personality out of all of the girls present at the camp. Following soccer, Gilles (my neighbor and collegue from the CPS) came in and talked to the girls about healthy relationships with other people and women’s’/girls’ rights. I could definitely tell that all these girls were truly the brightest in Bohicon because they all wanted to participate, they all wanted to answer questions, and they all were attentive and respectful to whomever had the floor. It was amazing. After Gilles left, Patrick talked about how to re-use water saches by using them to plant Moringa. Almost none of the girls had heard about Moringa before, so he explained and we decided to squeeze in a Moringa session later on in the week. We had a little pow-wow again that night on how the day went.
Day Three (July 13th): After the girls arrived and registered, they all went into a different room (shoes off) and did yoga/stress management, which was led by Rich and Andrea. None of them had ever done yoga before and they all really liked it. In our camp reviews, some of them said they didn’t like it because it made them sore all over the next day and that was the only reason, so I think it was a success! After that, we had a professional panel come in. We had someone from the mayor’s office (government), a teacher from a school (education), a nurse (health), someone from Bohicon’s women’s center (social work), and a local artist’s wife who runs his art business (entrepreneurial). Julien is the artist and he is also the Censeur (like Vice-Principle) of the school where the camp was. His art was featured in a museum in Chicago for 6 weeks and he speaks fluent English and is very friendly and warm to all Peace Corps volunteers who cross his path, and he’s been a great help throughout this entire camp. The day before, we set out a “Question Box” where the girls could anonymously ask any kind of question they wanted and it was a huge success. We originally did it so that they would think of questions ahead of time for the professional panel that we could give to them, but they used it for every session, which was really awesome. Julien’s wife, Pauline, the nurse (who is the sister of Craig’s homologue), and the teacher were absolutely awesome and very inspirational for the girls. The woman from the mayor’s office was mediocre…she got off subject a lot and would go on and on about how her father would beat her. The woman from the women’s center was terrible…all she did was talk about her rough upbringing and religion. Definitely not what I invited her to talk about, but oh well. Hopefully, someone got something out of it. After lunch, we played red light/green light which was a huge success with the girls. We were supposed to have the added moringa session after that, but the moringa cultivator that we asked to come didn’t show up. The photographer DID show up to give me the pictures that he took for us the first day and tons of girls wanted special pictures with their group, their volunteer, etc and it got kind of out of hand. We decided to limit it to a group picture by color and that was it. After picture-taking mania, we had someone from my CPS (Celine, the awful woman that was supposed to be my homologue in the beginning) come in and talk about family planning. She kept picking on the girls to answer questions, some of them were obviously new to the material and had no idea and she would pick on them anyway. She didn’t explain things well, if at all, and the only family planning method other than abstinence that she talked about was condoms. About half way through, Elaina and I got up there and co-led it with her to try to make it better. I don’t know why they sent her to do that session when I requested Gisele, the woman from my Amour et Vie team who is awesome at family planning, but that’s who they sent. There was a point when Celine didn’t understand that the girls didn’t know what they were looking at when they were told to look at a picture of a vagina, so Elaina sat on the table with her legs open (she was wearing pants) and put the picture in between her legs to show them what they were looking at. It was funny and the girls immediately understood. After the camp that day, upon receiving word that Bohicon had lions, we went to this mysterious place that ended up being a very sad zoo. Before we left though, while Andrea was trying to pose in front of a monkey that was not in a cage, the monkey ran up and smacked her on the head. Haha! Maybe he was camera shy? After the sad zoo, we went to Julien’s house to see his art. He has some very impressive stuff and I can understand why it was on exhibition in Chicago for 6 weeks. He gives PCVs the “family discount”, which is about 25% of what a tourist would pay, so Craig and I will probably be coming home with some of his art. After Julien’s house, we were all pretty beat so we made salads and watched a movie, which I fell asleep watching. We did realize that Craig’s keys (which have our main gate key on them) had somehow gotten left at the camp site and the gate was locked and there were people out at the bar, so we had to wake up our neighbors to open the gate for them.
Day Four (July 14th): As girls arrived this morning, we sent them to the back of the school where Patrick was leading a “planting Moringa in water saches” session. It was quick and went really well. They learned a lot about the Moringa and were completely done with their hands washed by the time our guest speaker for HIV/AIDS (Gisele with an NGO) arrived. We invited the same NGO that we had invited for our World AIDS Day event that we did back in December and they showed the same graphic photos. I think it got the point across though and the whole session went really well. After that, Andrea and I led a session on Self-Esteem. We talked about what it meant, what high self-esteems and low self-esteems mean and so on. We had them do a written activity where they list things that they like about themselves, among other things. After they were done with that, we went outside and taped a folded piece of paper on all of their backs and everyone wrote what they liked about that person on their backs and at the end of the session, they took off the paper and read what was written about them. I thought it went really well. Craig and Erin T. led the next session on goals and aspirations in life. They had all the girls write out a long-term goal, like what they want to be when they grow up, and then write out all the short-term goals that they would need to achieve to get there, like doing well in school. It was a good learning experience for the volunteers and the kids I think. I learned a lot about their school system during that session. And there were a couple tiny little girls who want to be police officers when they grow up, which I thought was really cute. After lunch, we played freeze tag. They didn’t understand it at first and everyone was just running around pushing each other, but after further explanation and examples, they got it. It was super fun and tired them out really quickly. After 17 minutes, all of the girls were back under the tree pouring water over their heads and panting. Haha! It was hilarious! They rebounded quickly though and went back out for more. Once they were all tired out, we went in and had a session on sexual harassment in the school system, which is a huge problem here. Someone from the CPS came to lead it, but seeing how the last one that they led went, I had Erin T. who is an English teacher here, co-lead it with them. It worked out well and we even finished a little early, which is amazing whenever anyone from Benin is in charge of a session. Things rarely end on time; they like to talk. Since we finished early, we all sat down after the CPS people left and answered questions from the question box. They were all really good questions and some of them were very concerning, such as one about whether or not it’s ok for a girl’s brother to have sex with his sister. I thought we answered them all very well and gave them a lot of really good resources to deal with serious problems like that. The last question was, “what does it mean for a boy to masturbate, how do they do it, and….is it good?”. HA! Patrick and Craig were supposed to take that one, but Craig was so embarrassed that he just sat there, beat-red and laughing, as Patrick demonstrated with a garden hoe how guys masturbate. It was pretty hilarious. Craig and I shared the information about the pen-pal exchange program through PC that he started up with Russ’s school (his former soccer coach) and instructed all the girls who were interested to write a letter in English that night to mail off to the States. There were a lot of girls from all over Bohicon interested in the program so we set up a system of communication with all of them to set up meetings once a month to exchange letters. That is really exciting for us since we’ve been trying to start this for forever now. That night, Patricia, who is on my Amour et Vie team that I set up, called me to ask me if the letter should be informal or not. I had no idea that she was at the camp, so I was really confused. Turns out, I totally didn’t recognize her all week! She had been in the camp all week and didn’t say anything to me about the Amour et Vie team either. Crazy! Now I would never NOT recognize her, that’s for sure!
Day Five (July 15th): This was our last day of camp and very bitter sweet. We were happy that it was coming to an end and everything went so well but sad to say goodbye to all the girls. During the week, I had handpicked 3 girls who were in 4eme (the highest grade level invited) and just passed into 3eme. These girls stood out to me as leaders and would not be invited back next year since they would be past the cutoff grade so I pulled them aside during registration to invite them to come back next year as junior counselors to help out at the camp with the other volunteers. They were really happy about the opportunity and gave me all their contact information. In the morning, Erin S. and I led a healthy diets and exercise session that went really well. Exercising to stay healthy isn’t in the culture here and one of our “Question Box” questions was how to have a flat stomach, stay slim, etc. So it was a good opportunity to address that. After our session, Craig, Erin T. and Rich all led a session on various study abroad opportunities. We talked to them about the Fulbright program for the States and different programs in Francophone countries. They were really interested in that and asked a lot of questions. I don’t think that anyone had ever mentioned the possibility of leaving Benin for school to them before. On our review that we gave to the girls, all of the girls really loved the session about studying abroad except for one and it was because she didn’t think that she had high enough grades to get a scholarship so it made her sad, but in order to come to the camp, you had to have the best grades out of the entire school. So it didn’t really make sense. Anyway, that session was kind of like my brainchild and I’m really good that they all liked it so much and got something out of it. Gilles came back to do a session on how to succeed in life, which went really well because it was all reinforcement by a Beninese person of what we’ve been telling them all week. We had lunch then did a little pop-quiz to measure how much they all absorbed all week (for grant-reporting purposes) and then gave them an evaluation to fill out about the camp. After those two formalities, we started the closing ceremony. Julien talked to them about the Fulbright program a bit since he will soon be a Fulbright (he’s planning on studying at Berkley in 2012 on a Fulbright) and gave a really inspiring speech to the girls. I spoke after him and just said a few words on how I would miss them all and how awesome they all are, because they truly are, and how they can go super far in life if they work hard and believe in themselves. It was a sad speech and one of the girls pulled me aside crying because she was so sad to see the end of the camp. By this time, there were only 5 volunteers left (one from each colored team) and we each gave out the certificates, group picture, and school supplies to each of our girls on our team. They all got really nice backpacks with 4 meters of khaki (for their school uniforms), 4 notebooks, a pencil, and 4 pens, which is already more than they’re required to have for school. We collected all the girls’ letters to be sent to the States after the ceremony and before the fête-ing (partying). Once the ceremony finished, we had cookies and the DJ played music that we were all dancing to. It was really fun and we all got to dance with almost all the girls. It was a great end to the camp.
We cleaned up, packed up, and headed home after all the girls left. Myself, Elaina, Rich, and Patrick all helped in a team effort to clean up our house since we had 3 new trainees coming to stay with us for the weekend. I was told that Erin T. (camp-planning super woman) was really impressed with our camp and Rich told us that this was the best-organized camp that he’d ever seen. Since the other camps that he’s participated in have been going on for years and years and this was our first camp and we hadn’t a clue to what we were doing most of the time, it was a huge compliment. After cleaning up the house, I read the evaluations of the camp that the girls wrote. They all really loved the camp and all the volunteers but not surprisingly, they only liked “a little” the people from the CPS. It was really great to read their comments and praises on the evaluations and doing so made all of the stress, work, frustration, and much running around all worth it. And after meeting all those girls and spending a week with them, it was also all worth it because every one of those girls was worth it. They were truly an amazing bunch of girls. We didn’t have any problems with anything. They all participated and were super well-behaved and even on time every morning (for the most part). All the girls had so much personality and were so strong-willed. I really do believe that they can do anything in their lives and hope that I will come back to Benin to visit in 15 years and see them all in successful careers leading lives full of happiness, reaped from all of their hard work. The thing that really made it all worth it though is the fact that I know that this camp will be like a fork in the road that will make a big difference in some of their lives. Whether it’s the lesson on family planning that keeps them from getting pregnant and dropping out of school or that they learn about a program in the States after the study abroad session and get a Fulbright to study there, I know that some of them will lead better lives because of this camp, and that’s enough for me. We will definitely be doing this camp again next year. Only it will be the new-and-improved version. You can find pictures of this on Facebook...the internet is too slow to upload them to the blog. Sorry!
A special thanks to the Wiricks for funding the t-shirts. The camp would have been totally different and not nearly as successful without the t-shirts and your support. Because of those t-shirts, we were able to have teams based on color, which was the foundation of how the camp ran so smoothly. Thank you a million times over!
