September 2006 Archives

Brian and I are off to Swakopmund, Namibia next week for vacation so I wanted to at least post an update on the YWE project before leaving. There have been so many great things going on, I just haven’t had the chance to sit down and write about it. Let’s see where we stand.

Okay, so the first thing is that we’ve expanded the number of participants from 10 to 20. The last time I wrote I told you that I had finally decided to cancel the exchange visit to Kasane and hold the income generating workshop locally. I was keeping the number of participants down because the Kasane visit was going to be so expensive. After canceling the visit and as a result of mentally restructuring the project to focusing on behavior change and peer education I decided that it was best to add participants sooner rather than later. That way there would be a solid base of peer educators who could get started on activities rather than having to recruit and train new people.

Adding new members meant they needed to so through the same HIV/AIDS knowledge training that the original participants completed. Since those women were already trained we asked them to conduct the second training workshop. That was a really big success. It was a success personally because I’m such a control freak that it really took a lot of willpower to let go and allow the girls to do the training how they saw fit. It was also a success for the girls because the trainers (original participants) did a fantastic job at conducting the sessions. In fact, they did such a good job that the post-test results were 96.6 percent. (The pre-test scores of the second group were much higher than the first, but the post-test scores were still truly remarkable.) I was really happy with how that training worked out. Just the fact that the original participants could teach others about HIV shows that the project is meeting some of its objectives.

Scrapbooking was a huge part of my life in the U.S. so one of the things I brought with me to Botswana was my “Things That Make Me Happy” scrapbook. (See picture at the top for images from it.) The scrapbook was just a fun way to record things about my life in the States that I loved and share them with people here. I will never forget showing the book to a neighbor shortly after being placed in Molepolole. Her name was Catherine; she was about my age with three children. She and her husband were college educated and she was working with the District AIDS Coordinator. So we’re at our house and I’m showing her the pages in my book. The layouts have pictures of Brian and I, friends and family. One layout documents the things I love about Christmas and another why I’m passionate about scrapbooking. You get the idea.

So Catherine is oohing and aahing at everything and then says something like, “I think it’s so nice that you know what you like.” That took me back for a minute. What did she mean that it’s nice for me to know what I like? Of course I do! Then I had this realization that Catherine had probably never sat back and looked at what made her life interesting. Never done something that documented her life. As somebody who has scrapbooked for many years I take the idea of recording my every day life through pictures and journaling for granted. This one scrapbook is just an inkling of the things that I have documented about myself.

Ever since then I have been looking for someway to incorporate scrapbooking into my work here. I finally found a way through Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World.) Camp GLOW is being coordinated by two other PCVs, Nicole and Lauren. This is the second year that camp is happening. It will involve approximately 50 young women between 13 and 16 years old for a week-long camp. The goal of the camp is to bring together participants who have the motivation to become leaders in their communities and nation. In addition to educational and practical sessions on issues vital to the empowerment of young women, the camp also includes sports, arts and crafts and teamwork games that will help evolve the participants into well-rounded young women leaders.