Girl power!

So I spent last week in Kilifi (on the coast) doing a girls’ empowerment camp (Camp GLOW) like I had done last year. I had so much fun this year and would definitely say it was one of the highlights of my two years here. It started last Friday when Denae and the two girls she was bringing came to spend the night at my house. We cooked Spanish rice and watched a movie. On Saturday we traveled to Nairobi along with my counterpart, Sophie, who was one of our adult role models we had at the camp, and the girl I was bringing. We got in pretty early to Nairobi so we went to Nakumatt to do some shopping and so the girls could see a mall. Turns out, they got to have their first escalator experience. They told us they were watching people using it so they could figure out how it worked.

Sunday we woke up early, along with 12 other PCVs, and girls from our side of the country to travel to Kilifi. It took about 10 hours and we were all sweaty and exhausted when we got there. In total at the camp we had 13 PCVs, 7 counterparts, and 46 girls. That night we made up rules and consequences along with the girls. Here were some of them:

-If you lost/misplaced your room key you had to spell out your name using your butt in front of everyone.

-If you were late to class you had to sing and dance

-If you spoke in mother tongue (as opposed to Swahili or English) you had to sing a song in your mother tongue in front of everyone

So, we had lots of singing and dancing throughout the week. I even had to spell my name with my butt since I had forgotten my key on a dinner table.

We had 2 separate camps doing the same activities and lessons, but we split them to have a more manageable number of girls in each camp. Most of the time we did the afternoon activities together though. All of us Peace Corps Volunteers were the facilitators and we had divided the sessions so we each had a few. On Monday I gave a session on decision-making, communication, and how to be assertive without being aggressive. I gave the girls real-life situations and had them come up with steps they would take before making a decision, and the possible consequences of the decision. I then did a lesson on how to be assertive since lots of the girls in Kenya are very passive or shy, especially when around boys. I had them write and perform responses in an aggressive, passive, or assertive way to pressure lines that boys might use to get them to have sex with them.

In the afternoon both camps played name games and then got to play some sports. We also did team-building games like the human knot game. On Tuesday I did a session on family planning and condoms. We did condom demonstrations and then made water balloons out of condoms afterwards. We also had a bonfire that night, which will definitely be something I remember for a long time. The girls sang and danced and pulled people into the middle of the circle to dance. They wanted us (the PCVs) to sing something so we did the hokey pokey, which they seemed to enjoy. We had also gotten marshmallows and made smores. Most of the girls were 14-20 years old, but there was one girl who was 12. She was shy at the beginning of the camp but she really started coming out of her shell. She was going around feeding all of the PCVs marshmallows whether we wanted them or not, haha.

Wednesday we had a talent show and about 30 of the 46 girls participated. They sang, performed poems, danced their traditional dances, and performed skits. We were so happy/proud that the skits all focused on things they had learned in the camp. The counterparts made some shirts out paper and had some of the girls model them. We knew us PCVs were going to have to do something, but we didn’t have enough time to practice anything so we did the Macarena. The girls loved it and came up to join us.

Thursday we went on a field trip to an organization that does football clubs for girls and provides them with peer support. At one point while we were waiting for the girls to play football, some of the girls came over and started braiding our hair. Some of us got corn-rows others got French braids, they even braided the hair of the male PCVs and one of their beards!

Friday we had some good discussions and questions from the girls on the difference between love and lust. We finished our sessions early so we could go to the beach in the afternoon. Seeing the girls’ faces when we got there and went in the water will be something I will remember forever. Even some of the girls who had come from Nyanza had never even been to the lake, so it was their first time seeing a large body of water. We held hands as we went in and jumped over the waves. Some of the girls spent the whole 3 hours in the water, not coming out. We also made some sandcastles and buried people. That night we had a ceremony to give the girls certificates for participating and then we had a disco. Boy, can those girls dance and shake their booties. They even tried teaching us how to shake our butts like them, not sure how well it worked, though.

It was definitely the best week I’ve had since being here, even though it was exhausting. We were up most nights until midnight because we had meetings to coordinate things after the girls went to bed and we were up around 6:30AM/7AM every day. Some of the girls were crying as they said goodbye and it was also really nice to hear them talk about how much fun they had and how much they learned.