Girls' Camps

Come, my friends 'tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all western stars until I die. It may be the gulfs will wash us down. It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, and see the great Achilles whom we once knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts; made weak by time and fate, but strong in will; to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

Greetings, dear readers! I have evolved from a frequent and enthusiastic blogger to an absentee one, which perhaps reflects how this ever-changing experience continues to...ever change. It becomes harder to focus a blog entry on just one subject or experience as I am busier than ever with work in village, preparing for the new training group that arrives in June, a visitor from home and, eventually, to go home for a month...and come back for another year! My third year details are not yet concrete and thus will constitute a blog to come.

Before I report on recent goings-on, however, an administrative note:

My address will change until I am settled in my new situation next fall, thus, mail should be sent to the Peace Corps office in Ouagadougou until further notice:

Chrissy Hart, PCV
Corps de la Paix Americain
01 BP 6031 Ouagadougou 01
Burkina Faso
West Africa

Also, since Google is LAME (ok, lame in regard to this particular gripe) and doesn't give loyal users more than a Gig of memory per photo page AND blog, I can no longer post pics on either my Picasa site or this blog. So, I have a new photo page and, upon returning to the BF for year three (yikes!), I will start a new blog, so that my entries will continue to be aesthetically AND intellectually stimulating.

Chrissy's Pics (Picasa Page # 2): http://picasaweb.google.com/chrissydhart

Now on to village news. This entry's topic is the recent smashing success of two girls' camps that occurred in my village, Diabo, and Diapangou, that of my PCV neighbor, Orelia (photos from the camp are posted on my new site, link above). With the aid of funding from PC Burkina's Gender And Development (GAD) program, members of the congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Church of East Aurora and many of Orelia's friends, we organized two three-day camps for female students (13-16 year-olds) in each village focusing on decision-making, confidence-building, thinking about the future, as well as a variety of health topics - female physiology, menstruation, reproduction, methods of birth control, STDs, etc.

We collaborated with our village high schools' administration and faculty, the staff of our local clinics and Action Sociale, a government ministry focused on social welfare, particularly issues pertaining to women and girls. We had a midwife, nurses, the director of my village clinic and the AS facilitators explaining menstruation, fertility, reproduction, birth control and STDs, while Orelia and I facilitated the "Life Skills" elements of the camps. We have a great Peace Corps-developed "Life Skills" manual with lots of culturally appropriate activities dealing with an array of issues facing school-age youth in the developing world. We used a few activities from the book to elaborate upon the importance of all the health information provided during the camps by providing strategies for positive behavior and responsible decision-making.

Overall, the camps surpassed our hopes and expectations. Ou collaborators were stellar - knowledgable, patient, and committed to providing as much information as possible - and the 50 schoolgirls who participated were more engaged than we had imagined possible. We had some really frank, productive dialogues which were enhanced by the presence of the Burkinabè women facilitators who were more capable of responding to questions and concerns regarding relationships and sexual behavior in Burkina.

The camps have been one of the most fulfilling projects of my service and a positive note on which to end my work in village. My service won't end until late July, but I'll be spending time up north for 6 of the 11 weeks of training for our soon-to-arrive newbies and well as travelling a bit with my first visitor from America! It's hard to believe that my time in village is up, I have no doubt that it will be incredibly sad to say goodbye. I am, however, ready and excited for the next phase of my West African adventure.

If it were customary to send little girls to school and to teach them the same subjects as are taught to boys, they would learn just and fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences. Indeed, maybe they would understand them better...for just as women's bodies are softer than men's, so their understanding is sharper.

La Cité des Dames [The City of Women] (1404)

by Christine de Pisan