Camp GLOW

GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) is a global Peace Corps program that teaches leadership, life skills, and reproductive health to young women. (The equivalent program for boys is BILD--Boys In Leadership Development).

My absolute, very last, final, in-person project on Tongariki was to run a GLOW with the girls at Coconak School aged 12-17. Every day after school for three weeks, I had an hour session, with three half-day sessions thrown in. It was an absolute blast.

Collages

I did most of the leadership and life skills sections by myself. The program starts with talking about leadership styles, why you should love yourself, and tells girls that they need to think about their goals and dreams. We did a lot of talking about future goals -- what the girls want to do and where they want to go. Some of them want to be teachers or nurses and some of them want to live on the island and work in the garden. The point wasn't to tell them that they all need to go to USP (the university), but to get them thinking. How many children is it good to have? How much money do you need to have to live the kind of lifestyle you want? (Nowadays, pretty nice living on Atong is when you have a DVD player, a solar set up, a phone, enough nice clothes, and the money to buy things like biscuits and tin without worrying.) The point was to get them to think about how they can take control of their life. If they want to run a small store out of their house, they need to think about how to do it.

We also talked a lot about managing projects, and how women leaders have a really important role in the community. In America, 20% of senators and 18% of representatives are women. Women have a role as mayors, county commissioners, school board leaders ... In Vanuatu, there are 0 women MPs. I have heard of a woman in Tafea province who had some elected position in the province -- but that's it. Women leaders are more common in the church, and there are some women who play an active role in committees. But just because there's a place that is reserved for a woman doesn't mean that the woman who takes the position acts as a leader. The point was -- you have a right to be heard, to have a responsibility (if you can) to stand up for other people who are too afraid to speak up. 

Tie-dye

This was a program for young women, so we talked a lot about healthy relationships, too. I did these sessions with the help of my counterpart, the wonderful Elsie Daniel. We were talking to the girls about things like -- when is it good to have a boyfriend? How should you treat your boyfriend? How should he treat you? What is a normal fight, and what is abuse? The highlight was a Jenga game in which you had to add or remove blocks, depending on situations written on sheets of paper. The situations were like : Mom wants to use a condom, and Dad agrees, because they have enough children already. Dad hits Mom. Mom sends the kids to buy matches, but the kids just play and never go to the store. Mom cheats on Dad. Mom is sweeping the house, so Dad washes the clothes. Mom and Dad go to the garden, so Big Sister watches the little kids. Even the other teachers were looking at the situations after the students went home (definitely helped that this was on a day with a severe weather warning!)

Card sorting

The last section was adolescent reproductive health. In America, we teach youth about puberty and sex early, and build up it every year in health class. Vanuatu's curriculum has puberty in class 6 and sex ed in class 10. Many teachers are embarrassed, because this is a very conservative culture, and they'll skip it. Also, a lot of kids don't make it to class 6, forget class 10.

Luckily, Elsie was there, and she's the headmistress, so it was all a go. I am really proud of this week. Out of the 25 girls who took part in the sex ed section, only 3 said that their mothers or aunties had told them in depth about what sex is and how you get or avoid pregnancy. 

We started by talking about puberty. Step 2 was doing body ID cards, in which they had to put names to pictures of male and female reproductive systems. Then we did card sets that showed sperm production, the menstrual cycle, and how sex and fertilization work. (The cards are the best things in the entire world.) The last day was talking about family planning -- what it is, how it works, and who should use it. We told the girls that it's not just about limiting the size of your family but about spacing children and timing them as well, making sure that they understood that family planning is good not only for young couples who don't want children yet, but also for new mothers with smolsmol babies and for women who already have four or five children and feel that enough is enough. Many women in Vanuatu have five or six children, which is fine, but our point was to go back to the beginning, about what they want their lives to be like. It's great to have ten children if your husband is a big man and has lots of money and can build you a big house and hire a house girl. It's pretty crummy to have ten children if you all sleep in a kitchen and you can't pay school fees for any of them. As a young woman, you have to think about these sorts of things. We can have babies from our mid-teens to our mid-to-late-40s, in some cases, so it's not cool for embarrassment to block girls from getting the knowledge that they need.

The day before I left, last day!!

I feel really proud of my GLOW. It was a labor of love and I hope that the girls can use some of that information in the future. 100%, I want to do another one or two on Malekula this next year. It's just such a great program -- the Gender and Development committee run by PCVs here is absolutely stellar. The stuff they produce is so perfect for Vanuatu, and it makes it so easy for volunteers. I never would have thought I could teach a fun and interactive session -- about the sperm cycle. On my own, it would have been some boring lecture that would have been about as uninformative as possible. A round of applause to GAD! 

Women's rights = human rights

It's become increasingly clear to me, by living in Vanuatu, just how successful the American women's movement has been. When you read about society and gender roles in the States, you can tell that we have a ways to go before we live in a nation that's 100% fair and equitable. But we've gotten so far, seriously, and that's something we should celebrate. We're arguing over who should pay for contraception rather than whether a woman should be able to access contraception. We're talking about whether men do enough child care rather than assuming that that's a woman's role. We assume that our daughters should be educated for the workforce, rather than thinking that they're just going to get pregnant and stay home, so what's the point? We don't value our sons over our daughters.

I love Vanuatu. I really do. But one thing about Vanuatu that I think is bad--that I think is very, very, very bad--is the status of women, particularly when it comes up against rape or sexual assault. It really sneaks up on you, because the people of Vanuatu are genuinely friendly and kind, especially to strangers. Vanuatu is not a country where you walk around scared that you're going to get jumped; it really is a place where you feel you can trust the kindness of the people you meet on the road. But it is a place that, when push comes to shove in a difficult way, seems to always value men over women.

I heard a really horrible story yesterday involving a 9 year old girl. It was probably the worst story I've heard here, but it had a lot in common with a lot of other stories I've heard. Especially in cases of rape or sexual assault when the victim is especially vulnerable -- a child, a disabled woman, a teenager who had previously been selling sex to her chief, a young mother off of her island--everyone just wants to brush it off under the rug. Even when they know exactly what happened--and in a small community, everyone does know exactly what happened--no one seems willing to get their head out from under the sand and actually do anything about the fact that a crime took place. I do understand, partially, that the men are family, too, and that it probably is much easier to downplay everything and to blame the victim. But it's so wrong.

I think it comes out of way too much respect in this culture and too much emphasis on communal harmony. It's like everyone wants to get along so much that even when men (and usually it is men) do really insane things, everyone just wants to brush it off and return back to normal. Like on my island, a man who was removed from the truck committee got mad, went down and spoiled the road so that the truck couldn't run down to the passage that week. He got a little side eye and some complaining, but everyone just carried their parcels up the hill and fixed the road. No consequences. Or three times I can think of on Tongariki, I've had men do these totally insane things--refuse to take no for an answer romantically and just make a total ass of himself, request to come to a workshop in Vila and just get drunk the whole time instead of attending, and grossly misrepresent the scale of a project then blame me for not getting 5x the number of tanks as we'd agreed. Every time it was "Oh, that's just how he is, fasin blong hem nao." It all slides away in the face of the fact that in a small community, you have to keep living together, and to do that, you have to ignore or purposely try to forget the things people have done. Most of the time, I don't think this is the worst strategy in the world.

When it comes to rape and sexual assault, though, it's really bad. If it's just a case of someone being a jerk or being unreliable, that's one thing. But there's so much victim blaming that goes on here and the police, both village and government, do not do what they ought to. I know of a case where a report was made and police straight-up refused to make an investigation. It doesn't help that, somehow, the police never have the money to make the rounds, so many times if a complaint is made, the complainants have to pay the price of the police visit. Depending on where you are in Vanuatu, that might be as much as 100 or 200 dollars, which is impossible for a subsistence farmer. Can't afford the boat charter, and the cops just won't come. 

And with victim blaming--so I led a workshop on Gender Based Violence. It went over really well, and I was very impressed with what everyone had to say. One session that did, I think, fail, was a session on how to prevent rape inside of a community. The way it worked was that it was one of the later sessions in the workshop, and I was listing their suggestions on a sheet of butcher's paper. There were lots of ideas of how a woman could prevent rape--stay close to your house, don't go walking anywhere alone, don't flirt with boys and give them the wrong idea, don't drink alcohol, don't wear clothes that will spoil a man's thinking, always stay with family--and, I think, two suggestions for how men could prevent rape. The first was "don't smoke marijuana", a drug which in Vanuatu has a reputation for making people violent and crazy, as opposed to lazy and prone to skipping Intro to Anthro. The second was "don't watch blue (pornographic) movies". As an American, I think we would say different things, like "ask the girl/woman if she wants to have sex with you" or "no means no." It's just a totally different attitude in which women have to behave within a certain very narrow set of parameters or else, well, that's what you get. And especially considering the extremely high rate of sexual abuse that happens within families and at schools (largely between students but also teacher-student), I can't say I can identify any one particular place that is universally safe.

It just makes me really angry. I know that at a certain level I am outraged because I am a woman and so I take these stories perhaps more personally than some other people. Women's rights = human rights, though. And here, in some cases, it's just so straight forwardly against what we in America view as proper and appropriate that it boggles me.

What's Going On In My Life Right About Now

I just wanted to make a quick post to explain what's going on in my life right now. There have been a ton of changes, but I feel like if I just wait around, I'll never get to typing it.

The biggest change is that I finished my service on Tongariki. This was my last month on that island. It's really strange for me that now I have to think of Tongariki as that place I lived on, and not that place I live on. I had a really busy, exciting last month. I applied for a shipment of story books from Darien Book Aid and just got notification that they've been shipped. I co-wrote an AusAid grant asking for a water tank for the kindy--fingers crossed, notification goes out in about ten days. I wrote a 45-page community profile, which was about the longest and most complicated thing I've written since I graduated. The health committee and I opened our water tank project -- thanks USAID! Ol smolsmol aelan blong Shepherds i gat wan bigfala nid blong saed blong wota, be yu yu givhan bigwan long mifala! I also held a Camp GLOW, which was absolutely the most satisfying workshop series I've ever done. GLOW is a girls' leadership and life skills program. It focuses on all the usual suspects--goal setting, leadership style, healthy relationships, adolescent reproductive health--but it was just a blast. In Vanuatu, sex ed isn't taught until class 10, which is such a terrible idea since A) most children do not reach class 10 and B) many of the students who do reach class 10 might be as old as 20, and thus well beyond the critical learning years. I left my camera cord in Vila, but my GLOW was just great. It was so much fun it felt like my birthday present to myself.

I also got ready to leave site ... and that was so hard. In Vanuatu, we have these feasts called last kakaes that most communities hold to say good bye to their PCV. My last kakae was the saddest thing imaginable. I was hoping to try and keep it together, but the second I got into the room and they started singing hymns, I started to bawl. I don't think ever in my life I've left a place and known, without a doubt, that you can never go back. I know I will go back to Tongariki, but I don't live there anymore. The greatest thing that Peace Corps does is let you come to love people who aren't anything like you. And especially on Tongariki -- as a volunteer, it was just me and my little village and my little island. The chairman of the chiefly council gave a speech, as did the health committee chair and the school committee chair, and two of the pastors, too. When I gave my speech, I was just crying the whole time. There's a certain way to give speeches here -- you have to address everyone, ol chief, ol mama mo papa, ol pikinini--and it was hard to get those words out. I told them that they treated me like family, that I consider living on Tongariki for these two years to have been one of the greatest blessings of my life, and that when I'm an aged grandmother I will think back to them and remember them always. The students sang a song and I accepted a bunch of presents, did a kava ceremony, had lunch. I had cried so much I felt sick for the rest of the day. It is devastating. 

I had about one more week on the island. I finished my GLOW, sold all of my things, and cleaned my house up. I also had the swellest birthday party ever. Last year, my birthday was pretty sub-par, but this year, I wanted to have a party. After a lot of asking, I bought a goat for 40 bucks. My papa helped me kill it (!!) and then he and the other men in the family butchered it. We made a big pot of soup and invited everyone in the village and all my good friends from around the island. It ended up being (happy) speeches, (happy) church hymns, and then (happy) kava drinking and (happy) dinner. I had also bought a bottle of "spirit drink" (sounds high quality, right?) and it was just a lot of fun. A lot of people came to celebrate, and it was just a really nice time. My party was on 16 October, even though my birthday is 18 October, because ....

I was waiting for a cargo ship. So, originally I'd thought I would try to put my stuff on a ship and then fly out, or just take a small boat charter to North Efate. But plans change, and Jo-Ellen 2, the newest cargo ship, was coming to pick up delegates for the Central Island Presbytery meeting. Long story short, I spent my 25th birthday sleeping on a sack of kava, and I got into Vila at 3 in the morning.

So here's the big news which I haven't written here. I have moved to Malekula island, in Malampa Province, to the north a bit. Starting in January, I will be living in Lakatoro (the provincial center) and working at the provincial disaster office. I'll be doing awareness about climate change, disaster risk reduction, and first aid, as well as liaising with other offices to further their disaster work in the province. I've been pretty sure that this is what was up since about July, but it's been a while in the making. I'm so excited about this! I love love love Vanuatu and don't want to leave just now. It's a big change but I'm thrilled. It's a new adventure for 2015.

Culture clash

This is going to sound crazy, but I think that, superficially, Vanuatu's culture doesn't look that different from the US. Anyone who's seen any photos is going to put up their finger and say, hey, wait a minute, so let me explain.

Vanuatu is filled with some of the friendliest, kindest, and most generous people on Earth. Ni-Vanuatu are also, coincidentally, really, really good at hospitality and being open to strangers. This is not a culture in which volunteers feel like they are constantly hitting themselves against a brick wall to try and make friends and connections. Add the fact that Bislama is very similar to English, and it's very easy (I think) for volunteers to make the transition here. You can start making jokes in Bislama and being funny, friendly, and interesting to talk to, in maybe a week or so, to start. Don't get me wrong, it takes much longer to learn how to speak it correctly, but I think the level needed for an entrance-level social life is pretty low. And everyone is so nice! 

Because of all of this, I felt like I integrated into Vanuatu very quickly. To a degree, while I think I understood on an intellectual level that Vanuatu's culture was very different, it was easy to downplay things as being differences in clothes, kastom, and food. Don't get me wrong, Vanuatu is physically quite different from America, and, of course, they don't do things on the same time or organize themselves like the States or really do much of anything exactly like America. But what I'm trying to say is that it's very, very comfortable for me to be here. It doesn't really feel like I have to exert myself too much. Like, I can just hang out and be me barefoot in some grubby clothes with my hair like a mess sitting on the ground and that's okay. I've been able to get a lot of work done, but I also feel very comfortable here. Especially now -- it's a no brainer. It's so easy to live here.

Honestly, though, the longer I'm here, the more I am able to pick out the things that I don't like, and that I'm not comfortable with, here in Vanuatu. The biggest one is, obviously, the status of women here. It's not like it's a secret that Vanuatu is a very male-dominated culture, but it's appalling how much violence against women there is, and just how blasé many people's attitudes are. I always feel a tension in this blog between the fact that I want to tell the truth and the fact that I realize I'm a foreigner in this country and I don't want someone reading my blog and saying, "Oh luk wan pis kop i stap talem ol rabis toktok abaot on man ples, olgeta oli stronghed tumas, oli no shud tok tok olsem ..." It's frustrating because on the one hand, I feel like people should know that the X on Y island did Z, especially when Z is the sort of thing that even here makes people go, Oh my God. 

It's unsettling to realize that a specific group you feel so close to puts up with some of its members behaving exceptionally, criminally, badly. They do it for a number of reasons, everything from perhaps that they don't think domestic violence is that bad to it's easier to resolve community conflict over a rape by saying that the girl (not woman, girl) is responsible too, to just I don't even know, the fact that the chiefs are all men and I've heard of exactly one female provincial councilor. I'm not really sure why it is this way, but it is. And the more I'm here, and the more I hear, I just get this intense, visceral reaction that the situation is just awful, nogud, rabis fasin blo evriwan we i gat kaen tinging olsem. 

Vanuatu ... Man, what do I say about this place? I think that living here, you really do come to love people. Ni-Vanuatu people really embrace us, and definitely I feel that love in return. At COS, we were talking about how to describe Peace Corps when we got home, and the obvious answer is that I've been getting my mind blown, my horizons widened, and my butt kicked into shape. I wanted something that was going to change my life, because I didn't like what my life was turning into back home. I felt very constrained and like I didn't have the skills or the drive or the confidence to go from where I was to where I wanted to be. And Vanuatu ... Vanuatu delivered. My friend Michelle Wong and I were discussing this recently, how we both felt like we came to Vanuatu as college kids and turned into adults. I owe a lot to this place and to the people here. It's been hard and good and weird and beautiful and boring and tough and easy, peasy, lemon-squeezy. I love it and I'm not going anywhere for now.

But it's not all smooth-sailing. I still learn new things about this place all the time, things I like, and things I don't like, too. I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Peace Corps is going to deliver something wildly out of left-field at every turn. It's not easy all the time to be an American and work in Vanuatu, because Vanuatu isn't America. Culture is an iceberg whose top quadrant is the only part visible above the water. Et cetera.