Last week was one of the craziest of my life because my sitemate and I pulled off a camp for the boys and girls of Cajolá!
This process started about 3 months back when we approached the health center and told them about the idea for the camp. We asked the health educators if they thought it would be useful and what health problems they thought we could target with the camp. They enthusiastically responded that they wanted to bring a camp to Cajolá and they wanted to give girls and boys the tools avoid adolescent pregnancies. (There is currently an effort in Cajolá to end pregnancies in girls younger than 14 years - yes, that is a major problem. Cajolá has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in all of Guatemala.)
So, we decided that we would have a week long camp geared towards kids ages 11-16. Girls would come in the morning for four hours and boys would come in the afternoon for four hours! Over the next few months we worked with the eleven health educators to solicit funds for the camp, invite participants, and plan the lessons. Each day was designed with a different theme and each educator was assigned to a specific day. The health educators were responsible for attending their assigned day and designing the lesson plans. The results were varied.
A few educators took to planning with gusto; they scouted for resources, asked questions, and prepared materials. A few other educators didn't show quite the same initiative and left my sitemate and I scrambling to prepare materials at the last minute. All in all, we were more happy than frustrated with the participation of the educators and very pleased to receive such support from their boss and the coordinator of the health center.
The week before the camp started, Whitney and I put on a two-day workshop for the educators titled, "Effective Strategies for Teaching Health". This is definitely the part of the camp process that I am most proud of. The workshop covered everything from the learning cycle to preparing for lessons to gender equality in the classroom. I hope to repeat this workshop with my teachers sometime during the school year and I hope that other volunteers have the opportunity to replicate the workshop in their sites. Here is a picture of the coordinator of the health educators leading a session on the "learning pyramid:
Finally, it was time for our camp to start! We didn't know quite what to expect and tried to prepare ourselves for anything that may happen. The theme of Day 1 was "Our Camp". We played games, got to know one another, talked about self-respect, and drew flags to represent ourselves and our futures (pictured below). The surprises of the day included the fact that the kids who came were younger than the kids we expected and the boys were way wilder than we expected. My favorite moment of the day was when a health educator was talking about self-respect and one of the Cuban nurses shouted out, "If a boy tells you you are ugly, you tell him he's ugly!"
So, we adjusted our lesson plans to suit younger kids and decided we couldn't ask the boys to stay engaged in any one activity for longer than 15 minutes. (Hence, many capture the flag breaks like the one pictured below.)
We got excited for Day 2, which had the theme "Our Values". We talked about leadership and put on skits where the girls and boys acted out situations that gave them opportunities to be leaders (pictured below). We talked about respect. The boys created some rules for the camp that we relied on for the rest of the week and really helped them to be more respectful campers. The girls created flowers that showed how different each of us really are (see picture below). We also learned about teamwork through some really fun games.
However, Day 2 was not without it's struggles. A boy got bit by a dog while we were playing basketball and we had to take him to the health center to get vaccinated for rabies. He was a real trooper and continued to come to the rest of the camp. Also, on Tuesday afternoon, many of the health center staff find out, that at the end of the year, they are getting laid-off or transferred to a different health center. This really killed morale and the health center staff stopped coming to the camp, with the exception of the a nutritionist and two amazing Cuban nurses (one of whom is pictured below) who came everyday. This was a big, big downer for Whitney and I who had invested months in the health center staff and had really seen this camp as a collaboration between Peace Corps and the health center.
Luckily, in the true spirit of development workers, Whitney and I were prepared for just about anything and we had other Peace Corps Volunteers to help in case the health center staff fell through. These traveled from near and far to help and share their expertise and we couldn't be more thankful.
The theme of Wednesday, which was the most fun day if you ask me, was "Our Bodies". The nutritionist came to talk about nutrition (pictured below) and we drew plates of a balanced meal. We also played hygiene jeopardy. Best of all, one of the other Peace Corps volunteers talked about exercise and led us in a Zumba class (pictured below). All of the kids participated and it was an absolute blast.
The theme of Thursday was "Our Families". While the younger kids played games (pictured below), the older kids talked about puberty, the dangers of adolescent pregnancy, and played a version of the game of Life, which highlighted the financial benefits of staying in school, having fewer kids, and waiting til later in life to have those kids. It was a lot of information on some very heavy topics. So, of course, we ended with some games!! All of these lessons were very tricky to navigate culturally. We could discuss the science of each topic, but had to be really careful about the opinions that we gave, especially concerning birth control.
Finally, Friday came, and with it the theme "Our Futures". Both boys and girls attended camp together in the morning as we created our "life plan". Each kid wrote one sort of exercise they wanted to continue doing, the career they wanted, something they wanted in their future family, three goals that they had, and they drew their future house. Probably the highlight of my whole week was seeing that a little boy had written, "I want an intelligent wife". Then, we celebrated with more games and finally had a diploma ceremony. Pictured below are all of the graduates with their diplomas:
At the end of the day, like most things in life, the good outweighed the bad and I am so happy that I had the opportunity to share this experience with the kids of Cajolá. They have been out of school since October, which means many of them have barely left their house in the past three months. I am happy that together we learned, we danced, and we acted silly.
The health center in Cajolá was just ranked 320 out of the 334 health centers in Guatemala. I am certainly not happy about this, but it did make me feel a little better that it wasn't just Peace Corps Volunteers that they are having a hard time working with. Next year, with new health center staff and a few lessons learned in our back pocket, I hope that we can do an even better job creating a camp experience for the kids of Cajolá!
