Educate A Woman, You Educate A Nation

Written December 11, 2009

Mary could not stop smiling and it seemed to me that her joy was contagious, slowly drifting over to me and filling my heart with a simple feeling of happiness. It was the afternoon of Thursday, December 3 and the sunny weather corresponded with the mood floating about the air. It was the fourth day of the week-long Camp GLOW, held in Mkushi at Ndubaluba Outdoor Centre, which has standard "camp" facilities similar to any average summer camp you would imagine in the States; bunk beds in small chalets, a dining hall, outhouses, an obstacle course, a climbing wall, a lake and trees surrounding it in the background.

Now back to Mary, her smile, and the happy mood in the air. Mary was busy participating in an activity which Ndubaluba calls "initiatives". She and nine other girls (half of the girls present at the camp) were unraveling the solutions to three problem-solving tasks. Most young adults in America also participate in similar “critical thinking and team building” games at some point in their lives. Fewer Zambian women, however, find themselves in such situations and observing the girls’ thought processes and teamwork to complete the puzzles was quite entertaining.

Mary and the girls had already solved their first two tasks, one where they figured out how to lead a small ball from a tree into a coffee cup, placed on the ground about ten feet away. They could not use their hands, rather ruler-sized, hollowed out sticks given to each participant to guide the ball along its path. I apologize I am struggling to find the correct words to properly describe this complicated activity to you, but hopefully you understand the gist of it.

This particular task took the team of girls about ten attempts before they accomplished it correctly. The first five tries were a bit trying to watch and at one point I feared they would get frustrated and give up on the activity before they solved it correctly. But slowly they caught on and with the guidance of one of Ndubaluba’s teachers named Sarah, the girls all learned to solve the challenge together by communicating with each other, engaging their full concentration, as well as believing in themselves. As soon as the ball hit the bottom of the coffee cup, such an eruption of cheers and high-fives broke out, you would have thought they had each won a hundred (U.S.!) dollars. But the only thing they had won was the simple satisfaction of solving a problem.

The girls went on to a task where a whistle was hung from a tree in a way that it was several feet above the team’s reach. The challenge presented to the girls was to have five different girls blow the whistle separately without anyone using their hands to guide the whistle to their mouths. This task turned out to be a breeze for the team; however an equal amount of cheer and celebration broke out once they were finished.

Their third and final task was called the “spider’s web”, which was a series of ropes tied between two trees so that there were ten different sections of “web”. The girls were instructed that they all had to pass from one side of the spider’s web to the other with a few rules: each girl had to pass through one of the sections and as they were passing through, they could not touch any part of the rope with their skin or even clothing. I myself was quite amused as I observed them working out the problem in their heads, figuring out how to lift each girl carefully through each section and coming to the revelation that the easiest sections to pass through must be saved for the first and last girls who passed because there wouldn’t be enough people on either side of the web to lift the first and last girls up and through.

This challenge took some time, but the team of girls passed it with flying colors and again, their success was celebrated just as they had their previous tasks. For many of these girls, it would be the first and maybe last time they would be exposed to such activities which demand such a unique use of the brain as well as coerce such communication with one another.

It was in these celebrations of completing problem-solving games that I had noticed Mary’s smile. It was in this moment that Sarah, the teacher leading the activities turned to me and said, “Such happiness from such a simple activity of team-work and problem solving. This is the real them.”

Later on that day, I glanced over at Mary and saw the same smile still glued to her face, as if it would be there permanently. And I thought to myself, “Oh how I wish everyone who made Camp GLOW possible could be here in this very moment to just see this smile.” It seemed that this would be a recurring thought of mine throughout the week.

It also entered my mind the afternoon we all went canoeing. I wished that everyone could have seen the girls as they all tightly fastened their life jackets and talked about how scared they were of water, but how at the end of the day, we practically had to pull them out of the lake they were having so much fun. Throughout the week, I kept getting asked when we would be going canoeing again.

I wish you could have seen them conquering the climbing wall, another one of their fears and their smiles every time another one of them reached the top of it and repelled back down.

I hope you can imagine the morning sessions where they learned from fellow Zambian women role models about everything from HIV to peer pressure, confidence, abstinence as well as safe alternatives, rape and sexual abuse and prevention of teenage pregnancy. Topics were facilitated through discussions, songs, dances, games and plays.

I wish you could have heard the comments from ten adult community mentors at the camp (each one accompanied a pair of girls from their villages) as they sat in similar lessons each day. After a guest speaker from an NGO in Lusaka spoke to them about recognizing, preventing and dealing with rape and sexual abuse in their community, several of the adults mentioned that the lecture had influenced their thoughts on the subject. Even a few added that they now have a better idea of how to handle specific incidents which were happening at that very time in their communities.

I wished you all could have been in the room with us as wee sewed sanitary pads together using local citenge material and bath towels. This took two nights to complete and the second night as we were sewing, we simultaneously watched the movie A Walk to Remember using a projector. I’m not sure how much of the movie’s English the girls understood, but it was the closest many of them had ever come to watching a film on a theatre screen and they at least seemed thoroughly entertained, laughing at random moments in the movie while us Americans could only guess about what it was from our culture which they found so humorous. We were proud, though, when some of the girls were able to pick out such themes as peer pressure and healthy romantic relationships from the movie, as these were similar themes they had been learning throughout the week.

A final activity which I’m sure you all would have loved to see was the talent show which concluded the end of the camp. There were many acts including singing, dancing, poetry and plays. I was particularly proud of the girls as I watched them on stage because most of their talents incorporated lessons they had learned throughout the week. For example one play told the story of two girls who found themselves pregnant and HIV positive after getting involved with some sketchy men. Several poems preached about making a better world for each other and others talked about testing for HIV and caring for those with HIV.

Even now as I write this blog entry a week after Camp GLOW has taken place, I can not get many of the songs out of my head which the girls sung repeatedly throughout the week. I am hoping the girls are also experiencing this as well, perhaps as another assurance that they will not forget the lessons and activities they experienced at Camp GLOW. I’m hoping that the songs will be a reminder to them to start girls’ clubs back in their villages with the assistance of the community mentor who attended the camp with them along with a local Peace Corps Volunteer. This way, the messages of teamwork, communication skills, abstinence (or safe, smart sex), confidence, goal setting and many other important topics will be passed on to many more girls.

To all of those out there who assisted in finding funding for Camp GLOW, I hope this blog entry has done a little bit for you to see what your money or good thoughts and communication efforts went towards. I can assure you that your support was used wonderfully. Mary’s smile is proof of that. :)