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! 

I AM IN AMERICA

I AM IN AMERICA, YALL. America is the best. God bless. Seriously -- today is Day 3, and I had basically forgotten how easy it is to live here (and how great it is.)

1. They now sell gingerbread-flavored Twix bars. Australia needs to bow down and acknowledge American supremacy in the snack market.

2. Customer service is amazing here. In Vanuatu, I had forgotten what it was like to have someone come up to me and be like, "Hi, how are you doing? Can I get you anything else? Did you see we have a jacket that goes with that shirt?" So nice.

3. I saw a big chunk of my family on Thanksgiving, which remains the best holiday ever. Naes dei! My cousins are all gargantuanly tall. So good to see all of them.

4. Immigration and customs are the easiest, quickest, most painless things. I had forgotten what it was like coming back to America -- so, so fast. When you're at LAX, if you look just the slightest bit lost, the staff comes up to you and asks if they can help. So nice.

5. I had forgotten about things like Netflix ... and the fact that internet is so fast on iPads ... and like, life, and stuff. Everything is so easy here. You can just buy things, you know? And they have exactly what you want. Even houses here, the way that they're built, is exactly the way that I like to live. No more cement floors!



A few things that are weird about America:

1. Air travel. In Vanuatu, to take a domestic flight, you just show up at the airport, tell the check in people your name, and maybe pay a little extra if your baggage is overweight. In that baggage, you can basically take anything that isn't flammable. You can pack up a chicken. You can carry a knife onto the plane, if you so desire. You're totally free to do what you like. Sometimes, people will even ask you to transport things -- a box of oranges, a baby -- and it's like no big deal. There are so many rules in America. On the flight from Fiji to LAX, people had to throw out water bottles they had purchased in the airport. I thought that was the normal deal -- anything you purchase in the airport, you can take on the plane. Since from Fiji to Samoa, you don't have to throw out water, I assume it's a rule from the States.

2. People here are not so good at waiting in lines without complaining. I went shopping on Black Friday ... and honestly, the deals were great. I got a bunch of clothes, everything 50% off, at Old Navy. My mom and I waited in line half an hour, which ... seems reasonable, for half price clothes. All the managers seemed really concerned, but how could you get mad? It's half price clothes. Who could reasonably expect that half the Earth wouldn't want to get some cheap t shirts, too?

3. So hurried! So much hurrying! I do like the Ni-Vanuatu time schedule -- things will happen when they happen.

BABY!

RENATA AMANDA! YU NO KAKAE PIJIN!

Little Amanda is the age where she puts everything ... everything ... everything into her mouth. Her brother Kiki caught the bird -- and unfortunately, it was not dead in that photo. Or should I say, fortunately it wasn't dead? Germs.

My diaries

Before I came to the Peace Corps, I had never reliably kept a diary. Never once had I finished a diary, either -- I would usually get about six entries in and abandon them. 

I just finished my fifth diary. I've been rereading them, and they're pretty funny. I mean, no one can ever be allowed to look at them. They're 30% moping, 10% recording what book I was reading, 5% discussing whether I had manioc at lunch and yam at dinner or the reverse, 15% elation, 10% future plans, 10% oh-by-the-way-that-big-thing-happened-while-I-was-off-island-and-here-are-all-of-my-feelings, 10% tirades about materialism and consumerism, and 10% plans about the things that I wish I could purchase. Especially the last two parts -- it's screamingly funny how few pages separate entries where I'm all like, Americans are suffocating under the weight of all of their possessions! and entries where I'm like, when I get to Vila, I want to get my eyebrows done and then I'll go get a mojito and then ...

Gain some, lose a lot

Moving out of Tongariki has been a mixed bag. Truthful talk: my life on Malekula is a lot, a lot, a lot easier. I used to feel like living on Tongariki day to day was something of a physical struggle--go get firewood, go carry water, go sweep everyday but still have leaves all around the yard ... and that's forgetting my biggest complaint of all time, which is arranging boat travel!

I like the new regime: electricity is pretty cool. Everything is more of a no-brainer--I can walk to the airport. It's just really easy to live from day to day.

BUT AWO, ATONG! I feel so anonymous on Malekula. I don't have -- and won't develop -- the sort of easy relationships with everyone there that lead all the little kids to come to my door demanding that I take their photos. You gain some, you lose a lot.

Obama Kava Stall

So a lot of Ni-Vanuatu don't know a lot about America, which makes sense (America is very far away and America is not a country that Vanuatu interacts with a lot on cultural or business levels). One of the most frequent questions that people ask me about America is about race. Specifically, a lot of people ask me if there are black people in America, if there are Chinese people in America, if there are only white people in America ... Hollywood movies are pretty common in Vanuatu, but I don't think it's always really clear where they're set, if you don't speak English very well. And since the majority of foreigners who come to Vanuatu are white Kiwis and Aussies, I think some people assume America has the same racial makeup.

I always say the same thing: America is really diverse, mifala i gat ol defren kaen man (we have all different sorts of people), et cetera, et cetera. A lot of times (and I mean, this is a conversation I have with strangers several times a month) people ask if it's true that America has a black president and if he's from Africa. I'll be like, his dad was a black man from Africa and his mom was a white woman from America, and yeah, he's our president.

Anyway, this photo is from back during Independence, and I thought it was pretty cool. Obama Kava Stall: serving only the very best spicy mud-flavored intoxicants!

 

Goals 2 and 3

The mission of Peace Corps is

To promote world peace and friendship by fulfilling three goals:
- To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women
- To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served
- To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

I think the biggest misconception that people have about Peace Corps is that we're a development organization. We are ... and we're not. Peace Corps is a service organization that also is an intercultural exchange that focuses primarily on development. But the point is: world peace and friendship. Work is important, but what's also important is how the work is done.

Projects can be fantastic, but they are also just things. Sometimes projects go perfectly and all of southeastern Zambia now engages in backyard tilapia farming. Sometimes projects fail, and a beautiful aid post falls into disuse. Volunteers come and go. Projects can be well or poorly designed. There might be a war or a natural disaster or people in a village might just have other priorities that take precedence over what you wanted to do there.

I just feel like volunteers need to remember goals 2 and 3, and not exclusively focus on goal 1.

In a way, PCVs are like mini-ambassadors about America. When we're friendly and interested and have gud fasin, we lead our communities to think positively about America and Americans. In Vanuatu, most people won't meet an American who is not a PCV (and, besides, we're still riding strong from World War 2), but that's not the case everywhere. I think in many countries around the world where people have greater access to news media, there is a prevailing view of America as a place of violence, a place that causes wars or a place that interferes. I think in countries where people have a negative view of America and Americans, it's even more important for PCVs to remember goal 2. 

And as far as goal 3 goes -- before I moved to Vanuatu, I couldn't have picked this country out on a map. I knew nothing about Vanuatu in specific and very, very little about the South Pacific in general. From reading Jared Diamond books, I had some vague idea about chiefs and pigs. I had read kids' version of Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson. I think I knew that there would be coconuts. My ignorance really was astounding. And, to be honest, one of my real goals in this blog is to try and tell anyone who reads it a little more about Vanuatu and about life down here. It's good and bad and weird down here, and I wish more people in the States and around the world knew that there are countries like this.