Girls Leading Our World

Hi everyone. It’s been a busy month. Well, life in general has gotten busy here now that I’ve got projects going on and whatnot. A few weeks ago my organization and I went to a training on beekeeping using improved hives. It was really interesting to learn about bees and their behaviors. For example, if the queen bee isn’t doing her job, meaning laying 2,000 eggs per day, the other bees plan to kick her out. But, the queen can figure out they are going to do this and she recruits some of her men to leave the hive and start a new one. Interesting, no? I can’t wait to get the honey from these new hives we’ve gotten. One of the youth groups we work with will be able to harvest more often and make good money from selling the honey.

Last week I went to Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) in Nairobi, which was organized by some other Peace Corps volunteers. It’s a leadership camp focusing on empowerment, self-esteem, decision-making, women’s health, and many other topics. I went along with 2 other volunteers in my group to help facilitate the camp. There were 28 girls and 10 female counterparts from all over Kenya who had been nominated by other volunteer. I went with two of my counterparts and one girl.

The camp took place in a forest right outside Nairobi at a campground facility. We all slept in tents and boy is it cold in Nairobi compared to Oyugis. Luckily it didn’t rain until the last night. We did camp games like figuring out how to get 15 of us over a 4 foot high rope while holding hands or untying knots in a rope without taking our left hand off. We got up every morning at 6AM to exercise and then make breakfast.

We had sessions throughout the week on empowerment, self-esteem, confidence-building, decision-making, rape, domestic violence, and women’s health. One of the days Denae, Amber, and I had an impromptu sex talk with some girls. It was eye-opening to hear these young girls (they’re all in secondary school) talk about sex and their boyfriends. They discussed myths they’ve heard like “condoms can leak and don’t protect against STDs” and “you can’t get pregnant when you have your period.” One of the girls told another that it’s not possible to have a boyfriend and not have sex with him. It was really encouraging though by the end to hear the girls giving each other advice on how to say no to someone pressuring sex.

We had a session on rape and it was interesting to hear the girls listing “wearing short skirts” as something that could cause rape. One of my counterparts then asked the girls if that meant babies who just wear diapers or small children who are naked are then asking to be raped. The girls started to change their minds throughout the session. There are some cultural beliefs though that made it difficult for their thinking to change. For example, there were a few Muslim girls who couldn’t wrap their minds around the idea that a husband could rape a wife. After the session the girls learned how to defend themselves in case anyone ever tried to attack/rape them. The girls did very well, and even a girl who had been raped in the past few months responded well to the session.

One day we did a session on health and circumcision came up. There’s a big campaign in Kenya to encourage male circumcision for the tribes that don’t usually practice it (Luos traditionally do not circumcise) because it reduces the risk of getting HIV/AIDs. I was explaining to the girls how circumcision can reduce the risk of men getting infected but that it doesn’t mean it prevents HIV/AIDs and one of the girls asked about circumcision in the US. We then moved on to birth control methods and we did a condom demonstration with the girls. I had to do it on a cucumber because somebody ate the banana we were gonna use and then a monkey stole the carrot we were gonna use. There were many mischievous monkeys: they figured out how to open the tents and stole cookies from a few people.

On Wednesday the girls did job-shadowing of professional women in the careers they were interested in. Thursday we went to Nairobi Women’s Hospital, where the girls and counterparts got to ask questions regarding women’s health. At one point the doctor was explaining how to do a self-breast exam and all the girls and counterparts practiced. It was a funny image: 50 women and girls sitting in a classroom examining their breasts over their clothing.

I had a lot of fun at the camp and really enjoyed watching the girls gain confidence throughout the week. I’m excited to help plan for next year’s camp. I want to do some more arts and crafts/theater things because the girls were getting really creative. One night after dinner they did creative interpretations of the things they learned that day and they also did lots of dancing and singing throughout the week.

Ok that’s it for now.