The "Negative" side of Camp GLOW

Well, the craziness is over. After the weeklong bike tour, Camp GLOW, and a week in Cotonou planning stage; i'm back in Parakou and heading to post today. it's really nice to miss my post and know that i'll be welcomed back like family when i return...as long as i bring presents. it's a cultural thing here, after a long trip one MUST bring something, normally bread. my friends are definitely not shy either about reminding me. Camp GLOW ended on a fabulous note. I continued to be shocked all week by the enthusiasm the girls put forth, especially mine YEAH Guinagourou! Some girls got a bit snotty a few days before the end so instead of making bracelets as scheduled, we sat in village groups and talked about why we were all there and what we plan to do with this information that has been dumped on us througout the week. my tutrice (model woman from village) surprised me yet again by saying she would like to start having sensibilisations for at least the young girls and boys in Guinagourou about the things we learned. namely AIDS and environmental issues. my favorite session all week was a money management class i gave with a mama who owns two restaurants in Parakou. her story is amazing! she ran away from home before she finished school and started selling peppers for 25 francs a small bag. she realized the importance of saving and started a bank account so the minute she had 5.000 cfa ($10) saved she started a bank account, something NOT NORMAL here. people squirrel away money and eiither are pressured to give it to family or have to invest it in a half-constructed building so they don't blow it on something else. she saved and saved until she had 1 MILLION cfa....that's SOOOO much money, even in the states. currently, the exchange rate is about 489 francs to the dollar, you do the math. at the end of the session, the girls and even tutrices were walking away in a haze of simple accounting methods and the promise of success if one was motivated and patient. There have already been positive success stories that have emerged! One of our guards asked if his daughter could attend a few session so he took the schedule home and really talked it over with his two wives (who actually get along). One of the sessions they chose was AIDS education. A few days ago he told us how she had come home and convinced him and the two wives to go with her and get blood tests!!! this is something that is really difficult get some people to do because of the stigma, even though there are free clinics. all 4 are negative. I feel this best demonstrates how Peace Corps actually works. we're not here to save countries or even villages. the few lives we can really impact are just as precious and at times i feel more sustainable. these people can now spread the word which will do ten times more than i ever could simply because i'm an outsider.

Camp GLOW - 2 days in

well, Camp GLOW (girls leading out world) has kicked off. sunday, we were all supposed to arrive between 2 and 4 pm.....my group from Guinagourou showed up at 6:30. we hada great excuse though....i was sitting in a churchfor SIX hours. keep the sinner comments to yourselves folks, i was at the baptism of one of my camp girls. though long and extremely hot, it was really good to see how a church ceremony got going here. having no previous experience to draw from, i must say it was quite the production. chickens were presented and egss passed around, translation into Bariba is also something that differentiates churches here from back home. all in all, great but our schedule definitely got off to a late start.
we walked in right as dinner was being served so we ditched our bags and ate. the group i brought is me, a model woman from the community (we call them tutrices), and 3 girls in 8th grade. the girls were pretty excited from the get go but i was reluctant to think they'd really seize the moment and jump in the groups, especially b/c we were SO tired from travelling.....and church. After dinner we had a dance party with Beninese and American music. the girls were AWESOME! all of them! Lizzie made the party by using her aerobics instructor skills and leading an improptu class to "Barbie Girl". it was a vision. one of the guars at our workstation is a musician and brought his drum to play. he asked to girls to sing local songs from their villages. after a few timid volunteers, they really opened up! i almost fell over when two of my girls sang and danced for everyone, it was SO COOL! it was neat to see how the dancing varies by village also. around 9:30, heads started to drop, even the volunteers so we called it a night. mosquito nets were hung and everyone passed out. this week is all about health, nutrition, good environmental practices, womens' rights, and the like. my favorite session so far has been sports, when the girls relly got to let loose. duck duck goose has never been soo intense. things are rolling along smoothly, knock on wood!

bicycle, BICYCLE!

The bike trip was incredible. it lived up to be what I consider "the peace corps experience." I have been trying to think how to explain it to do it justice. So here goes….
I didn’t do a good job really explaining the bike tour before I left because frankly I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
15 volunteers, five beninese counterparts, and three fireman all geared up the next day. Before we left, we had an other volunteer give us a formation on AIDS formations. We broke off into five groups and decided the logistics of how we were get our information across. The five groups consisted of children, young women, young boys, old women and old men. Each group had three volunteers and one beninese counterpart...except mine. Sue, Betsie, and me were on our own with a translator that changed in each village. Our group was the old women and boy, were they a riot! These women probably were the best demonstration of village culture out of the 5 groups.
basically we had an hour with each group to give out information concerning AIDS. Some of the villages were so small that it could be possible they didn’t have a lot of information about the subject. Really we weren’t sure what to expect. We also had to consider that at each village we needed to find at least five people who spoke Bariba and could translate the french because not all villages speak french. For the older groups, we gave out condoms, showed them how to put them on (we have wooden penises!) had discussions about how AIDS is contracted and prevented. And for the kids' group, they got to sing songs and clap a lot!
Thursday, we kicked off with a day of training and an opening ceremony with teh mayor of Parakou, mayor of my commune of Perere, and some otehr representatives. we ate lunch and the press covered it all. we took off early Friday morning to Queen's ballad, after a small parade around parakou. By the end of the trip, all our beninese counterparts knew the words by heart! The three fireman followed us in the "chase car" with a med kit, a ton of water, and bike repair stuff. We each had a sack on our bikes with our clothes and our mats for sleeping. The rout wasn’t too long, a total of 200 or so kilometeres and we sensibilized about three villages a day. The first day was on the main dirt road and we stopped at several village along the way. Some villages were scheduled to feed us and others just fed us anyway. Lack of food was not a problem on this trip because it coinsides with beninese hospitality! At night we slept in health centers or just outside. We totally lucked out on the weather because it was cooler and cloudy most of the trip and we only had one major storm. That was another "total peace corps experience." The second and third day we took off the main dirt road and headed out small one lane dirt paths. On that second day, during the morning, a massive storm rolled in and caught us in a huge down pour laughing hysterically, having no idea how far away the next village was on a completely sand road. forget peace corps, this is hard corps! we were rolling though thigh deep puddles and screaming all the way. the firefighters following us must think volunteers are certifiably insane. The village was so happy we showed up even in the rain.
The logistics of the formations was awesome. In such small villages, it wasn’t hard to round up participants. The kids group was always the first to arrive. When a group of "estrangers" shows up on bikes, the little ones come running. People come out of the woodwork to see who just arrived in their villages. We were in Bariba land. (bariba is a language) and the culture here is quite different from the other cultural groups such as the Fon in the south. Most bariba villages have working kings and lots of fetishes with dancers and drums. We got to say hi to the king at each stop because it’s a sign of respect and it involves a lot of bowing and grunting inside a small hut and some guy sits on a huge chair with a big hat! Sometimes we would get gifts like live chickens and eggs! Thankfull for the chase car we didn’t have to ride with those on our handlebars. Lots of times the women fetishers would come out in the traditional outfits and dance to drums with us.
The personalities of each group was different so that each group of volunteers had a unique experience. In the kids group, we had lots of giggles and smiles, clapping and singing, cheering, sometimes crying, and by far the largest numbers! They understood that AIDS was a disease but they weren’t quite sure how you caught it. My favorite comment was "from a mean dog." The young women were fun because the our beninese facilitator was about their age and she was awesome! These girls got to talk with someone their age about the realities of AIDS and how to prevent contraction. They believed that if you were a virgin then you couldn’t get AIDS. The young boys got lots of laughs and usually they all wanted the most condoms. They said the condoms weren’t big enough, so they were educated on the elasticity wonderousness of the condom! The old women were almost like the kids in the village, laughing and hooting when the condom demostration took place. Comments like "my husband won’t wear them and sex doesn’t feel the same" came up and you can imagine the translation in the local language! And each time, the old mens goup took the longest and conversations were long and thoughtful and serious. We tried to hit home that they have a responsibility to educate the youth of the village but proverbs like "you can’t eat the banana with the peal on it" were used a lot. We got such a kick out of seeing how each group took on a personality of their own and were similar among villages. Some villages were more educated than others and the differences drastic, but that same, african hospitality, love of strangers, eager to have visitors resonated through them all.
When I signed up for peace corps, this is what I wanted. I wanted to meet people of a different culture, see how they lived, help in any way I could, speak new languages, make new friends and see life from a different perspective. I got that on this trip and my memories will last forever. This sunday kicks off camp glow so more posts to come! i'm working on the picture situation, stay tuned!