Today I'm going to write in reverse order....
The air is filled with songs tonight as a group of maybe 15-25 girls are singing and clapping nearby. August is the month of initiation ceremonies (think girls becoming women and boys becoming men), so a lot of commotion in the village after dark. While this sound used to be so cool and "cultural" to me, now all I can think about are the potentially negative practices that might be happening. When I ask, people always tell me that during initiation, kids "learn to respect their elders." If that isn't a cover up then I don't know what is! But recently, a younger couple who I'm friends with dished a little more of the truth. Basically, both boys and girls are learning about sex and their changing bodies (puberty) as well as other cultural ideas/practices/behaviors by village elders. In our pre-service training for PC, we learned that SOME places are still doing old cultural practices like having the kids "practice what they've learned" about how to please their lover. In addition to being disgusting, this can also be horrible for 2 other reasons: HIV transmission and teenage pregnancy. It's an issue that is not talked about around the village. I hope that these things are not happening here in my village, but who knows. Anyway, now these songs just taunt me and make me feel guilty about not finding some way to change the negative cycles!
Rewinding- it's super dark tonight, so when I went out to brush my teeth, the Milky Way was just begging to be enjoyed. Sometimes I'm SO glad there's no electricity in my village because the night sky is just that much more incredible.
Before the sun set, I was with 3 of my SOLID volunteers/counterparts doing our very first Grassroots Soccer (GRS) SKILLZ Girl intervention! GRS is a global program that Peace Corps partners with to teach about and prevent HIV transmission especially in youth. The lessons are combined with soccer drills and games to make it more fun. The SKILLZ girl program is new because PEPFAR (one of our funders) discovered that youth girls are the most at risk for HIV. The curriculum includes lessons on identifying gender roles and how they can be changed, how the body changes during puberty, menstruation and pregnancy, abuse and locating support services, and HIV transmission and prevention. We had 26 girls show up this afternoon and 20 still around by the end of our day. We were only expecting 12-15, so this was a great surprise! We are doing an afternoon camp, squeezing 12 lessons into 5 days, since the kids are on break from school right now. We gathered this specific group because four of the girls are in our current SOLID training, so we asked if they wanted to do a SKILLZ camp with their netball team (like basketball). Things fell into place perfectly, and I think all three of us coaches who were training in GRS are so relieved to have finally started a program! It was great to see my two counterparts in action today as we agreed that the camp should be taught in Chichewa, so most of the time I was just sitting off to the side. My job-today as well as overall in Malawi-is simply to facilitate the transferring of knowledge and skills about healthy behaviors to motivated people in the community who then lead programs to teach others. Seeing our two coaches today filled me with so much joy; I felt like a proud mama! The girls were always exploding in laughter and were obviously having a lot of fun. The only thing that was discouraging to me was the fact that our male trainer pretty much led the show while our female trainer sat by and watched, helping occasionally. I'm hoping that through one-on-one encouragement and more experience that she, herself, will gain the confidence to empower these girls and be a positive role model for them by stepping up and taking control of the lessons. I can't wait to see her fly once she gets the confidence under her wings! We'll see. 1 day down, 4 more to go!
Besides that program this afternoon, I didn't do much else. Most of the morning I just sat on my porch drinking cups and cups of fresh Lujeri tea and researching for my upcoming trip to Mozambique! We leave in 6 days! I also studied up on Victoria Falls in anticipation for the Vic Falls Carnival at New Years that I've already bought my ticket for! 😝
I can't imagine a better life than what I have right now-working to empower people to help themselves, designing and implementing programs in a community that direly needs them, getting to travel to exotic neighboring countries during my vacation time, and learning/living a different culture. Life is good!
(I don't have any pictures from today, but here's one of my GRS female counterpart's granddaughter and me from a few days ago)