Kampti Girls' Camp 2011: Today's Motivated Girls. Tomorrow's Model Women.

Kampti Girls' Camp 2011.
Camp des Filles de Kampti 2011.

Theme: "Today's Motivated Girls. Tomorrow's Model Women."
Thème: "Les Filles Motivées d'Aujourd'hui. Les Femmes Modèles de l'Avenir."

I wanted my final project/activity at site to be a culmination of everything I've done during my two years here in Burkina Faso, but also a collaboration with fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in my region, community stakeholders at my site, parents, staff at the village medical clinic, etc.

It was modeled pretty much after the camps I did with Jon in January of this year. I worked a lot with one primary school but I wanted to implicate at least two others in my town. So we had a total of 20 of the highest-achieving girls in CM2 that were continuing to the next level (middle school). Only 17 actually came, but it was still well worth the effort!

The Camp's activities revolved around four (4) key themes: 1) Life Skills (setting objectives and goals, planning for the future, a panel of model women in the community speaking to the girls); 2) Health (proper hygiene and handwashing, malaria prevention and HIV/AIDS awareness sessions done by nurses at the village medical center, proper nutrition, Moringa planting); 3) English (basic greetings, numbers, simple objects); and 4) Sports (soccer).

The Camp itself was structured from 8:00am-12:30pm everyday at the middle/high school, Tuesday, June 21st to Saturday, June 25th. Everyday, we touched each of the four themes to make it as comprehensive and as interesting as possible. I'll let the pictures dictate what happened. Enjoy!

Preparing for the first day at my house. Of course, Hercules has to try to help!

Day 1: Hercules followed us everyday to the Camp site. So cute!

Day 1: Welcoming them to the Girls' Camp.

Day 1: Preparing for the English session. Drawing a diagram of the parts of the day.

Day 1: Heading with the girls to the CSPS (village medical clinic) to learn more about HIV/AIDS from my friend Koro. Next to the sign at my site!

Day 1: My friend Koro leading the HIV/AIDS presentation. We talked about what is HIV/AIDS, the modes of transmission and the modes of prevention. Interesting stuff! It's never too early to talk about this.

Day 2: Jane helps lead them in soccer exercises. We did soccer every morning.

Day 2: A nutrition lesson on the three primary groups and how having a balanced diet is important to leading a healthy life. We had a lot of fun activities related to this to make it as interesting as possible; such as this matching game of the most common foods the girls eat at home.

Day 2: The girls gathering soil to start a Moringa nursery.

Day 2: Watering each girls' Moringa nursery seedling. It's Kadidja in this picture!

Day 2: Jane helping me lead the self-esteem/Life Skills session of the day. We read fictional stories of girls that excelled in certain areas (did well in school, were respectful to their teachers and parents, etc. etc.). We made a list on the board, asked the girls if they thought they possessed that quality, and asked them to repeat it aloud as an affirmation. Very powerful!

Day 2: English time. They love this stuff...and they're so adept at it, too!

Day 2: Brenda preparing the stickers, our main form of rewards for the girls.

Day 2: The girls reading the Moringa information booklets we gave them. Thanks, Peace Corps!

Day 3: While the girls were playing soccer outside, I caught Hercules trying to intimidate a cow after a herd was passing by. Really, Hercules? A cow? That thing could've easily beat you up in a second!

Day 3: Daniel arrives and he leads the training on how to make liquid soap.

Day 3: Solange and Véronique taking notes.

Day 3: Funny story! Before Daniel started his presentation on liquid soap, I placed all the materials on the floor to show the girls. Tansagex, sea salt, water, buckets, perfume and coloring powder. While Daniel's doing his presentation, Brenda, Jane and I are just sitting on the side...until Jane notices something missing: the bag of blue coloring powder! Then I immediately notice that Hercules is gone, so Brenda and I run outside to find him actually eating some of it! Silly dog. And it was all over his mouth, too. Haha!

Day 3: Brenda and I do a little theatre piece on the differences between aggressive, passive and confident behavior, and how one's behavior can be portrayed differently by different people.

Day 3: The girls do their own theatre pieces! They're natural actresses!

Day 3: Continuing with passive, aggressive and confident behavior, we did a group activity showing that your body language can many times say a lot more than your verbal language.

Day 3: Starting the two-day process of making liquid soap.

Day 3: Group picture with Jane before she heads back to her site!

Day 3: Picture with my favorite student (Kadidja) wearing St. Joachim shirts!

Day 3: Daniel preparing for day four of making neem cream (a good deterrent for mosquitoes carrying malaria).

Day 4: The second day of the liquid soap making process -- mixing in the coloring powder.

Day 4: And finally bottling our liquid soap.

Day 4: Jon comes to help! During the break, we gave the girls popcorn as a little snack.

Day 4: I wanted to finish the liquid soap making so that it would lead in perfectly to my session on proper handwashing. Sweet!

Day 4: We also started making the neem cream for our malaria session the following day.

So cute! Carrying water to their house.

Day 5: Our three model women for our Model Women Panel -- Madame Sophie Ouédraogo, Director of the Caisse Populaire (local bank); Madame Korotimi (Koro) Wélingué, Midwife at the CSPS (village medical clinic); and Madame Monique Pooda, Director of Non-Formal Education Center in Kampti. I wanted motivated women from different fields (finance, health and education) to speak on their experiences growing up, talk about their work and give some words of encouragement to these girls. So inspiring -- I think I almost cried a few times!

Day 5: Handing out Certificates of Appreciation to our model women!

Day 5: And giving them a little gift of the liquid soap we made!

Day 5: Group picture with our model women.

Day 5: Daniel distributing the neem cream to be used to protect against mosquitoes carrying malaria. And it smelled really good, too!

Day 5: Handing all of our girls Certificates of Participation. You'll notice many of these pictures are with Kadidja -- I try not to have favorites but she is the most respectful, polite, intelligent student I've ever worked with! I know she'll go far in life.

Day 5: With my partner-in-crime for my whole Girls' Camp, Brenda!

Day 5: Distributing bracelets that the girls can keep to remind them of their time and all they learned during our Girls' Camp together.

Day 5: Final group picture!! <3

Overall, a HUGE success and I couldn't have been more pleased with my final project at site! I was also able to create a 43-page Girls' Camp Guide in French that details all of the sessions so that fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in French-speaking countries can replicate it. Everyone should be able to view it on the Peace Corps Burkina Faso website (http://www.pcburkina.org).

Special thanks goes out to fellow Peace Corps Volunteers in my region that helped out: Brenda (who stayed for the whole week!), Daniel, Jane and Jon. Also the many people at my site that made this event possible, most especially the women of my Model Women's Panel!

Girls' Soccer Match...gone wrong...

International Women's Day. March 8.

It's a day that's celebrated around the world and has particular meaning to me since I work primarly with girls at the school level. So I thought to myself, what activity could I do to promote girls, show the community something a little new and have fun at the same time? Of course, a Girls' Soccer Match!

Thanks to my Dad and his gift of some really nice soccer balls, I decided to add a little competitive edge as well to get the girls (and all the students, for that matter) motivated and excited. The idea was to give the winning class a brand new soccer ball, but I decided to also give the 'losing' class another soccer ball as well, so everyone wins.

The CM2 girls were in my Girls' Club last year and thanks to Ali, know a little bit about the rules and how to play (cultural side note: here in Burkina Faso, soccer is a predominantly male sport. Rarely, if ever, do you see women, let alone girls, play soccer). And my CM1 girls were currently learning the ins-and-outs of soccer at our weekly Girls' Club meetings.

Because of everything that's been going on in Burkina Faso, the soccer match had to be pushed back to April 12. Not a problem! Ali served as the referee and everything seemed to be set. The day arrived, school ended and all the kids were getting excited. The girls were even wearing jerseys that the school somehow had, stashed away in the closet!

It was absolutely exhilarating and exciting to watch these girls play, and certainly showed the community their ability to do anything. Seriously! Until things took a turn for the worse...

...I guess I should first start with soccer being not just a sport, but almost a way of life. Especially for Burkinabè. They take it very, very seriously, and losing is no easy thing to take.

Because it's been so long, I don't remember the exact details but the CM2 girls were losing and their CM2 teacher instantly got angry at Ali, the referee, for an alleged unfair call. The CM1 girls made a penalty kick and won, but the CM2 teacher wouldn't take it...so he stormed off the field and took all of his kids with him. Talk about bad sportsmanship, right?

At the time, I didn't quite understand what was going on until Madame Ouattara, my neighbor and CM1 teacher, explained. Crap! So now I felt awkwardly wedged between all of this confusion.

Long story short, I made certain that everyone knew that the school actually gained two soccer balls and that the community knew that girls can play soccer. And that's the essential message from all of this.

The girls in action, with Ali as referee.

Madame Ouattara leading all of her students.

Probably the picture that best describes all the chaos at the end...the two teachers on the left complaining and Ali in the middle of it all. Haha!

The winning class...CM1! Congrats!

L'amour-propre. Self-esteem.

When you literally translate the words l'amour-propre, it's 'love for yourself.' But the best translation is self-esteem.

For the past few weeks in my CM1 Girls' Club, my Life Skills lesson has focused on self-esteem and my final activity was where each girl writes her name on the top of each page, tapes it to her back and each person writes something positive about her.

To help them out, in past meetings, I told stories that I created that asked the girls to describe the girl with with certain, positive adjectives (ex: courageous, strong, intelligent, etc.) and it culminated with making a list of these on the board.

Good thing I brought my camera -- my girls are absolutely hilarious!

By the way, I finally went to the hair salon in Ouaga and she ended up annihilating my faux-hawk. It's back to my haircut circa high school days...Ali randomly took this picture. I feel like because of this hot season, I've been losing weight because all I do is drink water and sweat. Hah!