Girls Camp and Wedding

I've had a long, but good, two weeks. We just had our Girls Leadership Camp in my district. I don't remember if I wrote about this much before, but it was a week long camp for junior high school (JHS) girls in my district. We asked the headmaster of each village JHS (we didn't include the four town JHS's) in the district to have the 5 best girls from their school apply. Then we chose 3 or 4 from each school to attend, for a total of 50 girls. It was an overnight camp at the senior high school (SHS) in our district capital. We also had 6 SHS girls come as mentors and leaders for the JHS girls. So, we spent 3 days buying stuff and preparing for the camp, then 3 days of training of trainers (meaning we trained the SHS girls), then the 6 day camp.

At the camp, we played a lot of teamwork games, which were fun and funny. Since there is no concept of personal space here, some of the games were extra funny and slightly violent. We also did HIV, STI, hygiene, and budgeting education. Finally, we did lots of leadership and goal setting stuff. We had pretty much every minute of every day from 7am to 9pm scheduled. This camp was started by peace corps volunteers last year and I think its one of the best projects we've done in our district. The change in these girls just throughout the week is huge. The first day they were too shy to volunteer to speak and most of them spoke quietly with their head down. Then everyday they were more confident and energetic. By the end of the camp I think there were maybe two girls left who were still looking at the ground while talking. I was especially happy that one of the girls from my school was always the first one with her hand up to volunteer to read something out loud.

We also brought 4 career women to come and speak to the girls about how they got to where they are and to motivate the girls to set high goals for themselves. It was fun for me to go and find the women to come and speak and then see how the girls reacted. I think they really liked it. We tried to get women from a variety of jobs, so there was a university professor, restaurant owner/carter center worker, orphanage owner, and tie-and-die woman. When I was going around asking for people to come it was really nice to see how people were happy to do it. I was trying to get a banker (which failed because the camp was during open bank hours) and got sent to the highest manager in every bank I went to and they were all very interested if it had been on a weekend.

Apart from the girls camp, I went to a wedding yesterday of a peace corps volunteer who married a man from her town. It was a nice wedding at the church in her town. There were a few hundred people who came and there was tons of singing and dancing during the ceremony. Not at all like the weddings I've been to in the US. She looked beautiful and although I hadn't met her husband before, he seems very nice. After the wedding, a dance troupe in her town put on a performance of many cultural dances from Ghana. That was really cool. Then there was a reception just outside her town and we got a ride back to Tamale from the caterers. Before the wedding, all of us who were going got the same cloth made and had clothes made from it. So we were a big group of white people all wearing the same fabric. Stood out a little I think, haha. It was a lot of fun.