Girls Club

I met with my girls group on Friday, and I would consider it a success. It appeared as if all the girls from my list were present, but I can’t be sure. The room was definitely jam-packed; some desks even had four girls squished side by side (these desks are meant for two people, but it’s not uncommon to see three students fighting for elbow room during class). This meeting was our first official girls only session. A teacher and I assembled the girls in one of the classrooms and he briefly introduced what I planned on discussing, then he was off. I thought the best way to go about forming and sustaining this group would be to ask the girls what they were interested in and what the wanted to learn. This seems like a better idea than just gallivanting in and teaching what I think is best. It also gave me a chance to see how much the girls already know about health related issues.

As always, I started off by saying “If there is anything I am saying that you don’t understand, please let me know…do you understand?” “Yes, madam” was the response. Except that always seems to be the response to everything, whether they understand or not. English Comprehension will be my next club. Before we started anything, I called Bernice and Emelia to the front of the class to be my note takers and translators. I walked around the class and asked them to suggest potential discussion topics. It was bit rocky at first, a couple awkward silences, but eventually the girls found their groove and began raising their hands. I have to give a shout-out to all the teachers out there, talking in front of a big audience is one thing, but getting a bunch of teenagers to be quite is quite a task. As Ghanaians like to say, “you’ve done well.” As soon as you got one side of the room to be quite, the other side started talking, so I found myself shuffling from one side of the room to the other “shh-ing” the girls. It felt like herding cats.

I was quite impressed with their suggestions, eight in total…

1.     How to dress (although I’m not sure I can be of much help on this topic as any sense of style has gone out the window due to the fact that I’m in peace corps and wear mish mash of clothes and colors every day).

2.     How to wash our hand

3.     How to use pad during menstruation

4.     How to respect our elders

5.     How to avoid our self from sex

6.     How to prevent our self from teenage pregnancy

7.     How to lives a chaste life

8.     How to use our time

I copied these suggestions verbatim, so the grammatical errors are not mine, although I’m sure I’ve committed a fair share of my own throughout this post. Please, hold the judgment.

At the end of our meeting all the girls clapped and for the most part seemed pretty enthused about our next meeting. I did see a few girls who looked like they had better places to be, but hopefully that will change. BCS has given us behavior change materials like flipcharts and trigger sketch manuals, which will help us conduct lessons like I will be doing with this club. I don’t have the full set of materials yet, but I will be going to collect them on Tuesday. What awaits me will be even better than the materials I already have. We were trained on these other materials a few months ago, and from what I remember there is a lot of useful information and activities that will work nicely in the girls club.

We are planning to meet again on Monday morning, and I think I will start with a hand-washing demonstration. It’s “hands” on, pun intended, and it’s definitely something everyone should know. I’ll bring some rubber bowls and soap to the school and set up a washing station in our room. I think it will be a good first activity. It’ll let me see the level of engagement and enthusiasm for when we move into more sensitive topics like abstinence and condom demonstrations. Hopefully a few class leaders will emerge, but I’m not getting my hopes up, something I’ve learned to do during Peace Corps. Not that I’m being pessimistic, it’s just that things work differently, and much slower, here in Africa.

On another note, I’ve been making some headway in the two books I’m reading – Africa, and Guns, Germs, and Steel. Both are very interesting and so hard to put down. I was reading all morning today, but took a break to do some much needed laundry. Luckily my sister, Ama (Saturday born), aka Ruby, was helping me. You don’t turn it down when a Ghanaian offers to help wash your clothes. I’ll probably be the cleanest I’ve ever been.

My brothers, sisters and I are going to watch the France/Spain game this evening, assuming the lights (you say lights instead of electricity here) comes back on. It’s been out for almost 24 hours, the longest outage so far. Here’s another shout out to all my PCV friends who don’t have lights – you guys are troopers!

Take it easy!