When I last left off, I had written mostly about Camp UNITE. Now I am sitting in my room, writing this blog entry, the Sunday before heading back up country to the Peace Corps training center to be a camp counselor for Camp Espoir.
Sundays are quickly becoming my favorite day for writing blog entries. Everyone is at church, and so I have the entire morning to myself to do as I please. In this regard they feel a little bit like Sundays at home, albeit without the big bacon and eggs Sunday breakfast. Occasionally I have made eggs, though they are a hard find, as they are not available in village (despite my best efforts to promote chicken raising), and transporting eggs, by bicycle, over the five miles of bumpy dirt road from my market to village, can be a tricky task. Still, eggs without the greasy goodness of bacon seem incomplete, and bacon is simply non-existent in this country. The last time I’ve eaten pig of any kind in this country, it was from a bag of picnic bacon sent by a caring and devoted well wisher from the states. To her I am sincerely indebted, and she is all the more dear to me, thanks to the generous and hearty gift.
Fresh bacon, however, is hard to come by in these parts. The people of the south tend not to raise pigs, and though I’ve found no one with a specific food taboo against eating pigs (with the notable exception of course of the entire Muslim community), southerners seem to generally have an aversion to big not shared by their counterparts up north. When I mention how much I enjoy pork, and the various products to be made there from, friends in village look disgusted, and starkly exclaim “Pork is gross, if you eat it, you’ll die”.
While I know that pork is a meat with the potential to make its consumers very sick, and for this reason it has historically been a food tabooed by many cultures, I was very surprised to hear this from a people who will, generally speaking, eat almost any kind of meat. In village, snakes, bush rats, moles and all sorts of rodents found in the field, and even cats and dogs, are considered delicious fair. I know of several volunteers who, upon returning from a vacation out of country to their village, find that their beloved cat or dog, which they had entrusted to the care of a neighbor, has in their absence become that family’s dinner (attachment to pets is not something very well understood in Togolese culture). Meat is a fairly rare item on the menu, and so generally speaking, any meat is good meat.
Interestingly enough, despite this generally open attitude towards a whole plethora of meats that we in the west would generally consider inedible (or at least gross), some Ewe do have very strict food taboos. Though there is no overarching cultural taboo, various clans, villages, and families observe certain dietary restrictions, and if you inquire deeply enough, you’ll normally find an interesting story concerning why this particular group of people refuses to eat a certain animal. One example that our French instructor back in pre-service training gave, was a certain groups taboo against eating bats. Long ago, this group was fleeing from an enemy tribe, and came across a cave along the road. Though they knew that their pursuers would likely scour every inch of land and inspect every available hiding spot, the group was desperate and exhausted, and so decided to take up in a cave along the road. As their pursuers came to the cave, their leader called for a halt, and it was clear that he intended to search the cave. Hope seemed lost for the fleers as their pursuers approached. At the last moment, a flurry of bats spewed out from the mouth of the cave, terrifying the pursuers and forcing their retreat. They assumed that no one could hide in such a cave so infested with swarming bats, and so continued on down the road. Because the bats rescued them, they considered bats to be a friend of the people, and so descendants from this group are forbidden to eat them.
Still, despite the partial truth concerning the dangers of eating pigs, I generally consider my Ewe friend’s aversion to pork to be misguided hyperbole. It also seems like an excuse to point out how gross other groups of people are who do eat pork. Though no one raises pigs down south, up north, they are as common as household guard dogs. I can’t imagine the folks up north would continue the costly practice of pork husbandry if every time they went to eat one, they died (as those with whom I speak in village would have it).
When I tell my objectors how often I enjoy a ham sandwich, or a cut of pork chop back in the states, they roll their eyes saying, “Of course in America you can eat them, but not here. Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca.” Just look how they will eat anything here, they will add, it’s gross (when I note to them how goats, the local favorite in mammalian fair have exactly the same dietary habits, they are un-phased in their opinion).
This response is the bane of any inquisitive foreigner’s existence. It is the catch-all term to extinguish any further discussion. The interviewed party walks always feeling that it has fully satisfied the curiosity of the inquirer, while the inquirer walks away with no further information gained, only that which, had he not noticed before beginning his inquiry, he likely would have never thought the inquiry necessary in the first place. What is most irritating about this phrase, I suppose, is that though often it used to demonstrate that a foreigner can’t possibly understand the way things work here in Africa, eg. “Perhaps in America AIDS has no cure, but AIDS here in Africa can be cured with the use of traditional medicine, ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca,” just as often it actually is the best response to a given question eg. “Why does it take four hours just to make a withdrawl from the bank?” “Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca”.
But I digress. Though I seriously doubt the considered option of my comrades in village, I refrain from eating pork due to some combination of: it being hard to find in the south, meat in generally being hard to prepare and store in Africa, fear of the off chance that perhaps “ici en Afrique” it actually is “comme ca”. So no bacon and eggs this morning, although I did have some delicious leftover local beans with taco mix from the states (thank you very much Mom and Dad for the generous care-package).
In general, I don’t buy too much meat for many of the reasons listed above. It is hard to find, hard to store, and expensive. At the market, it is hard to tell the quality of the meat. The only way to be sure that the meat is fresh, is to buy the animal and kill it yourself. Then you no only have to kill the animal, but skin it, prepare it, and find a use for all the little bits. When choosing to by “in detail” instead, getting the meat home without spilling meat juice all over your bag and everything else you bought at market that day is another chore. Many of the recipes I know of call for chicken breast, in order to obtain a chicken breast; you must buy an entire chicken. Chicken in particular are considerably smaller than our corn fed birds back home, so no matter what portion you buy, you’ll not get much meat, and since all animals here are free range, the meat is thinner and chewier than what we are used to back home. Finally, the local recipes which, unlike my American ones, are actually catered to the meat available in West Africa, aren’t terribly appealing. The standard recipe involves taking all edible parts, boiling them in water, and then adding them to whatever sauce will go with you fufu or pâte (the staple foods described in a previous entry). In general, I find meat here to be more trouble than its worth (considering your mostly buying bones anyway, which is not always a bad investment considering how few other sources of calcium are available), and too expensive (the 1000 F CFA that will get you a whole chicken could just as easily have fed you for a week on a diet of rice, beans, pâte and peanut sauce). So in general, the bulk of my protein intake comes from sources other than meat.
So tomorrow I’m going to Camp Espoir. Speaking of comestibles, a trip to the Peace Corps training center is always a treat because of the abundance of food there. The Peace Corps chefs, who are well versed in both European and African cuisine, work around the clock to ensure that all staying at the center are kept full and satisfied. Each trip I’ve made to the center, I and my fellow volunteers have done the pre and post stay weigh in at the scale which (I believe in jest) is found in the mess hall. The only time I have failed to gain a considerable amount was my week with Camp UNITE where I dined with adolescent boys (apparently it is a cross-cultural trait of boys 13-20 that they can eat), who actually ate enough to leave the kitchen staff wondering where their usually abundant supply of leftovers and second courses went, while the boys themselves clamoured for more. On this particular week, I actually managed to shed a few pounds at camp. I’m hoping that this week with Espoir, which caters to a generally smaller age group, will prove more plentiful for us counselors.
Weeks at the training center are one of the rare opportunities to find good, well prepared meat. However, given the centers location in the central region of the country, where there is a substantial Fulani population, it is often better to maintain more vegetarian habits to enjoy the African delicacy wagash. The Fulani are a migratory group of cattle keeps originally from Nigera. Wagash is their cheese, which is most similar though not entirely like mozzarella cheese. Often it is deep fried, but prepared anyway it is always delicious. The only thing rarer than a good serving of meat down in the south is one of cheese, and so often I am won over by the vegetarian options up at camp, the protein in which is normally the locally abundant wagash.
Food aside, I am truly looking forward to camp, although I believe I have described the camp itself in some detail in my last entry. It will be interesting to see how it measures up to the academic and very goal oriented Camp UNITE. I’m told this camp is generally more fun for the campers, but since we counselors deal with a much younger age group, it can also be more work for the counselors. Whereas at UNITE it sufficed to tell your campers to meet at the cafeteria at dinner time (as if those boys would miss a meal), at Espoir counselors often have to adopt the primary school method of head counts, and lining up signal file to march to the mess hall together. The potentially more juvenile concerns also include bed wettings and homesickness. Nonetheless it should be an interesting camp. At least this time, instead of the sensitive topic of sexual health and reproduction, I was charged with the more neutral topic of hygene and health. Far fewer would object to instructing children on proper hand washing techniques than they would proper uses of contraceptives. I would love to go on, but as always, my battery-life will not permit. Ici en Afrique, c’est comme ca.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Summer Camp
It has admittedly been a long time since my last entry. My apologies. These past two months have been without a doubt the busiest of my service to date. When I last left off I had just come back from a VAC (Volunteer Advisory Counsel) meeting, one representative from each region is given a forum to voice concerns, comments, and ideas on behalf of the volunteers in their region to PC Administration. Since then, I have been to two trainings for Peace Corps Summer Camps, one Camp itself, have published a magazine and somehow managed to start several projects in village at the same time. I’ll start with the camps.
The first camp for which I was already a counselor was Camp UNITE. The camp was started several years back by Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) working with the Associated Peace Corp Director (APCD) in charge of the PC: Girls Education and Empowerment (GEE we have many Peace Corps Acronyms (PCAs)). The camp was originally a life-skills camp camp for girls, but has since expanded to include school aged boys and girls who are either enrolled in CEG or Lycee (the french educational systems equivalent to middle and high school) or doing an apprenticeship (which would be analogous to a trade school in the states). For those of you who, like I was when I first arrived in country, are not exactly sure what all is included under the title of “life-skills”, think all those things you learned in school but weren’t aware you were learning, topics range from self-confidence to budgeting to sexual health. Each year, PCVs elect motivated students and apprentices from their communities who they feel would profit from a week of life-skills education. The applicants are then examined by the organizers of the camp, which is a mix of PCVs and host country nationals (HCNs). The result is that the participants are truly a mix of students, from all over the country, with all sorts of different background and experience. Because they are chosen from PCV’s communities, many are village students who have never before left home, while others are more cosmopolitan city dwellers. This approach allows the camp to reach children who normally go unnoticed by similar programs run by non-government organizations (NGOs) based in the big cities. Effectively, the camp works because of PCV’s involvement in the life of their host communities.
Over the course of my service I have come to truly admire this aspect of Peace Corps approach to development. What we lack in funding for project, expertise of personnel, permanence and stability in organization, the list could go on, we absolutely make up for by truly knowing the people with whom we work. We are literally the only organization that “walks among the locals”. In talking with other NGO workers, I am at times astonished to learn that some can’t even great someone in French, nevermind in a local language. Truly this is a something small, though I can’t tell you how many time’s just saying an Ewe greeting has broken through the awkward tension at the beginning of a meeting, and put my on the side of the community in their own eyes. All the same this small example is demonstrative of a larger problem in development work. How can you possible hope to be successful, working amongst a people whom you don’t even begin to understand? As an enthusiastic student of Anthropology, I applaud Peace Corps for this approach (though of course for the anthropologist two years in the field is a bare minimum (something of a rite of passage) to commence scholarly work and claim any sort of cultural understanding).
The camp itself was exhausting. I was a counselor for the apprentice boys. These are boys who, for whatever could not continue their studies in school and instead decided to follow a trade. Common trades in Togo include carpentry, masonry, tailoring, metalwork, and auto-repair. The age of the boys ranged from around 12 to mid-20s. Though it is frequently the case I am always surprised to learn that the people I am teaching (and in the case of UNITE was responsible over) are actually older than I. This is at times difficult because respect and age are very closely linked. While we in America are taught to respect your elders, here in Togo the hierarchy is more extreme. Younger people are often expected to perform services for their elders, such as running into town to fetch goods. More than once I have seen teachers pull a passing adolescent (who may be completely unaffiliated with the school) and tell him to erase the blackboard. More frustrating, from my perspective, is that when your elder says something, he is not to be contradicted by someone younger, even if what he is saying is blatantly wrong. Formations in which I enlist the help of a counterpart can therefore sometimes be frustrating. To cope with this disadvantage caused by my youth, I have learned to make as little mention as possible of my age (leaving Togolese in the dark as to my age normally works to my advantage since generally speaking they are very poor judges of white peoples age, if I keep silent, it is often assumed that I am well into my 40s with several grown children who, they assume, must now be approaching my actual age).
Fortunately for me as well, the rules are much less strict concerning white people. Unfortunately this is not always just a matter of HCNs being lenient for someone whom they know comes from a different culture and was raise with a different set of norms. More accurately, it seems at times that whiteness is a trump card. Though I may only be 23, have never lived or worked in a rural farming village before, and have no expertise in tropical agriculture, I am white, and so, very often people will simply listen to me. Like I said, this often works to my advantage. I often think that if I were constrained to the same rules as a Togolese 23 year old man (who, depending on whether or not he has any children, is often treated like a large adolescent) work would simply be impossible.
Of course, every situation is more nuanced than it first appears, and most stereotypes are based in some truth. Often the people with whom I work simply should listen to me. Frankly, my education and life experience have afforded my skills and knowledge that villagers simply don’t possess. To take an extreme example, I one day set out to disprove to an elderly woman that tuberculosis (TB) was caused by infidelity. She believed what may seem to us like backward superstition, because in lieu of any formal education that distinguished between bacterial infections and other aspects of human life, she drew a conclusion based on commonly held beliefs, likely based on some observed cause and effect relation. Often this seems at first glance like mere foolishness, but it is important to remember that even we Americans, in our high age of medical advancement, have some commonly held beliefs that simply aren’t true. Being in the cold, for example, has nothing to do with catching a cold, and once you’ve caught one, your campbell’s chicken noodle soup will in all likelihood fail to remedy your illness.
In arguing such cases with the Togolese, I’ve often come to the conclusion that your average American can offer no more proof that his view on infectious diseases is valid than a can Togolese person of his. We take at face value our accepted medical knowledge (I’ve personally never seen an airborne bacteria infect a lung), just as a Togolese takes his. Of course, we can always point out that TB is totally (or at least largely) eradicated in the US, while it, and many other totally preventable diseases, still run rampant in places like Togo and all over the developing world. Of course to blame this solely on a poor understand of disease transmission would be a hit below the belt to a people who already have enough going against them as is. The point is, at some point we simply take our medical professionals at their word. The average Togolese forms his opinions about health and medication in much the same process, taking for granted established belief, in much the same manner.
But I digress. Though camp was exhausting, it was also extremely rewarding. As a fellow PCV pointed out to me, Camp UNITE provided some of the most immediately satisfying moments in Peace Corps. Normally, when you are in village, you give a formation, explain things the best you can, give it you’re all, and walk away hoping anything you said stuck. At camp, because you are with the kids all week, you can see them during the formations, witness the momentary confusion afterwards, talk through it in small discussion groups, and actually witness the exact “a-ha” moment when it becomes clear that they actually get it.
All counselors are required to give at least one, but probably two formations during the camp. Lucky me, I was chosen as honorary sex ed teacher, and given the formations on adolescence and sexual health. In my talk I got to cover the gamut of subjects ranging from the biological reproductive system to masturbation (a concept which is very poorly understood out here). Unlike the American education system, which has at least one class a year for students from the time they are 11 until graduation from high school for sexual health, the Togo often have no sexual education whatsoever. This means that I had two one hour fifteen minute sessions to explain as best I could, the highlight reel of sexual health. Mostly, the end goal was to get the participants thinking more about the negative consequences of unprotected sex.
My role as sex ed instructor offered an interesting opportunity to see such a class from the other perspective. Through elementary and high school, I often found myself resentful of the way teachers used scare tactics and exaggerated the dangers of sex. I distinctly remember the efficacy rate of condom usage rising from about a 30% failure rate to prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy in 6th grade, to a 99% success rate by senior year of high school (I highly doubt the medical community made such profound breakthroughs in latex technology is so short a time). However, in looking at the problem from the other side, I totally understand the use of such tactics. I was teaching kids, many of whom were hearing this information for the first time, and only had an hour to drive my points home. Sure, in truth, the rhythm method to prevent pregnancy is actually fairly effective, but would you trust young kids to be able to follow the method, do I have time explain the method correctly, do I want to give them any excuse, given that early sexual experience with many partners is totally standard here, to think unprotected sex is a safe practice. Furthermore, what if through some misunderstanding, I lead a kid into believing he’s practicing safe methods, and he contracts a life threatening STDs. I’m not at all saying that I endorse the “scare tactics” method of sex ed, but after having tried to teach it a bit myself, I do understand why people use it.
All in all, camp was a great experience, and I am now looking forward to my next camp, Camp Espoir, happening the last week in July. Camp Espoir is entirely different from Camp UNITE. While UNITE is a life skills camp from students, which focuses almost entirely on education, Camp Espoir is designed to give children who have been affected by HIV/AIDS (some participants actually have the disease, others have sick family members, or have been left orphaned because of it, they are known in French as orphelin et enfant vulnerable or OET), an opportunity to have a fun week, almost as though they were attending a summer camp in the states. While there are still educational formations at this camp, the focus is much less on education and much more on the camp song, games, and just generally having a fun week. It should be a fun week.
Though battery life is forcing me to cut this entry short, I will say that for those of you interesting in what you can do from the states to support these camps and the efforts of the Peace Corps in general, a bunch of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) have recently formed the UNITE Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit aimed at raising money to fund Camp UNITE (available funding for these camps is always in question and hopefully the fund will soon provide a much more stable source of money). If I had internet I would find contact information, but since internet likely much more available for you guys back home, I would encourage you to try a google search for the UNITE Foundation. Anyway that’s all I’ve got for now. More updates to come soon.
The first camp for which I was already a counselor was Camp UNITE. The camp was started several years back by Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) working with the Associated Peace Corp Director (APCD) in charge of the PC: Girls Education and Empowerment (GEE we have many Peace Corps Acronyms (PCAs)). The camp was originally a life-skills camp camp for girls, but has since expanded to include school aged boys and girls who are either enrolled in CEG or Lycee (the french educational systems equivalent to middle and high school) or doing an apprenticeship (which would be analogous to a trade school in the states). For those of you who, like I was when I first arrived in country, are not exactly sure what all is included under the title of “life-skills”, think all those things you learned in school but weren’t aware you were learning, topics range from self-confidence to budgeting to sexual health. Each year, PCVs elect motivated students and apprentices from their communities who they feel would profit from a week of life-skills education. The applicants are then examined by the organizers of the camp, which is a mix of PCVs and host country nationals (HCNs). The result is that the participants are truly a mix of students, from all over the country, with all sorts of different background and experience. Because they are chosen from PCV’s communities, many are village students who have never before left home, while others are more cosmopolitan city dwellers. This approach allows the camp to reach children who normally go unnoticed by similar programs run by non-government organizations (NGOs) based in the big cities. Effectively, the camp works because of PCV’s involvement in the life of their host communities.
Over the course of my service I have come to truly admire this aspect of Peace Corps approach to development. What we lack in funding for project, expertise of personnel, permanence and stability in organization, the list could go on, we absolutely make up for by truly knowing the people with whom we work. We are literally the only organization that “walks among the locals”. In talking with other NGO workers, I am at times astonished to learn that some can’t even great someone in French, nevermind in a local language. Truly this is a something small, though I can’t tell you how many time’s just saying an Ewe greeting has broken through the awkward tension at the beginning of a meeting, and put my on the side of the community in their own eyes. All the same this small example is demonstrative of a larger problem in development work. How can you possible hope to be successful, working amongst a people whom you don’t even begin to understand? As an enthusiastic student of Anthropology, I applaud Peace Corps for this approach (though of course for the anthropologist two years in the field is a bare minimum (something of a rite of passage) to commence scholarly work and claim any sort of cultural understanding).
The camp itself was exhausting. I was a counselor for the apprentice boys. These are boys who, for whatever could not continue their studies in school and instead decided to follow a trade. Common trades in Togo include carpentry, masonry, tailoring, metalwork, and auto-repair. The age of the boys ranged from around 12 to mid-20s. Though it is frequently the case I am always surprised to learn that the people I am teaching (and in the case of UNITE was responsible over) are actually older than I. This is at times difficult because respect and age are very closely linked. While we in America are taught to respect your elders, here in Togo the hierarchy is more extreme. Younger people are often expected to perform services for their elders, such as running into town to fetch goods. More than once I have seen teachers pull a passing adolescent (who may be completely unaffiliated with the school) and tell him to erase the blackboard. More frustrating, from my perspective, is that when your elder says something, he is not to be contradicted by someone younger, even if what he is saying is blatantly wrong. Formations in which I enlist the help of a counterpart can therefore sometimes be frustrating. To cope with this disadvantage caused by my youth, I have learned to make as little mention as possible of my age (leaving Togolese in the dark as to my age normally works to my advantage since generally speaking they are very poor judges of white peoples age, if I keep silent, it is often assumed that I am well into my 40s with several grown children who, they assume, must now be approaching my actual age).
Fortunately for me as well, the rules are much less strict concerning white people. Unfortunately this is not always just a matter of HCNs being lenient for someone whom they know comes from a different culture and was raise with a different set of norms. More accurately, it seems at times that whiteness is a trump card. Though I may only be 23, have never lived or worked in a rural farming village before, and have no expertise in tropical agriculture, I am white, and so, very often people will simply listen to me. Like I said, this often works to my advantage. I often think that if I were constrained to the same rules as a Togolese 23 year old man (who, depending on whether or not he has any children, is often treated like a large adolescent) work would simply be impossible.
Of course, every situation is more nuanced than it first appears, and most stereotypes are based in some truth. Often the people with whom I work simply should listen to me. Frankly, my education and life experience have afforded my skills and knowledge that villagers simply don’t possess. To take an extreme example, I one day set out to disprove to an elderly woman that tuberculosis (TB) was caused by infidelity. She believed what may seem to us like backward superstition, because in lieu of any formal education that distinguished between bacterial infections and other aspects of human life, she drew a conclusion based on commonly held beliefs, likely based on some observed cause and effect relation. Often this seems at first glance like mere foolishness, but it is important to remember that even we Americans, in our high age of medical advancement, have some commonly held beliefs that simply aren’t true. Being in the cold, for example, has nothing to do with catching a cold, and once you’ve caught one, your campbell’s chicken noodle soup will in all likelihood fail to remedy your illness.
In arguing such cases with the Togolese, I’ve often come to the conclusion that your average American can offer no more proof that his view on infectious diseases is valid than a can Togolese person of his. We take at face value our accepted medical knowledge (I’ve personally never seen an airborne bacteria infect a lung), just as a Togolese takes his. Of course, we can always point out that TB is totally (or at least largely) eradicated in the US, while it, and many other totally preventable diseases, still run rampant in places like Togo and all over the developing world. Of course to blame this solely on a poor understand of disease transmission would be a hit below the belt to a people who already have enough going against them as is. The point is, at some point we simply take our medical professionals at their word. The average Togolese forms his opinions about health and medication in much the same process, taking for granted established belief, in much the same manner.
But I digress. Though camp was exhausting, it was also extremely rewarding. As a fellow PCV pointed out to me, Camp UNITE provided some of the most immediately satisfying moments in Peace Corps. Normally, when you are in village, you give a formation, explain things the best you can, give it you’re all, and walk away hoping anything you said stuck. At camp, because you are with the kids all week, you can see them during the formations, witness the momentary confusion afterwards, talk through it in small discussion groups, and actually witness the exact “a-ha” moment when it becomes clear that they actually get it.
All counselors are required to give at least one, but probably two formations during the camp. Lucky me, I was chosen as honorary sex ed teacher, and given the formations on adolescence and sexual health. In my talk I got to cover the gamut of subjects ranging from the biological reproductive system to masturbation (a concept which is very poorly understood out here). Unlike the American education system, which has at least one class a year for students from the time they are 11 until graduation from high school for sexual health, the Togo often have no sexual education whatsoever. This means that I had two one hour fifteen minute sessions to explain as best I could, the highlight reel of sexual health. Mostly, the end goal was to get the participants thinking more about the negative consequences of unprotected sex.
My role as sex ed instructor offered an interesting opportunity to see such a class from the other perspective. Through elementary and high school, I often found myself resentful of the way teachers used scare tactics and exaggerated the dangers of sex. I distinctly remember the efficacy rate of condom usage rising from about a 30% failure rate to prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy in 6th grade, to a 99% success rate by senior year of high school (I highly doubt the medical community made such profound breakthroughs in latex technology is so short a time). However, in looking at the problem from the other side, I totally understand the use of such tactics. I was teaching kids, many of whom were hearing this information for the first time, and only had an hour to drive my points home. Sure, in truth, the rhythm method to prevent pregnancy is actually fairly effective, but would you trust young kids to be able to follow the method, do I have time explain the method correctly, do I want to give them any excuse, given that early sexual experience with many partners is totally standard here, to think unprotected sex is a safe practice. Furthermore, what if through some misunderstanding, I lead a kid into believing he’s practicing safe methods, and he contracts a life threatening STDs. I’m not at all saying that I endorse the “scare tactics” method of sex ed, but after having tried to teach it a bit myself, I do understand why people use it.
All in all, camp was a great experience, and I am now looking forward to my next camp, Camp Espoir, happening the last week in July. Camp Espoir is entirely different from Camp UNITE. While UNITE is a life skills camp from students, which focuses almost entirely on education, Camp Espoir is designed to give children who have been affected by HIV/AIDS (some participants actually have the disease, others have sick family members, or have been left orphaned because of it, they are known in French as orphelin et enfant vulnerable or OET), an opportunity to have a fun week, almost as though they were attending a summer camp in the states. While there are still educational formations at this camp, the focus is much less on education and much more on the camp song, games, and just generally having a fun week. It should be a fun week.
Though battery life is forcing me to cut this entry short, I will say that for those of you interesting in what you can do from the states to support these camps and the efforts of the Peace Corps in general, a bunch of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) have recently formed the UNITE Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit aimed at raising money to fund Camp UNITE (available funding for these camps is always in question and hopefully the fund will soon provide a much more stable source of money). If I had internet I would find contact information, but since internet likely much more available for you guys back home, I would encourage you to try a google search for the UNITE Foundation. Anyway that’s all I’ve got for now. More updates to come soon.
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