GLOW Camp

Often times during two years of service Peace Corps Volunteers end up doing a project that steps outside of their normal day-to-day responsibilities at site. Over the years they’ve proven to be productive opportunities for volunteers to collaborate and break up the monotony of plodding along on primary projects while alone at site.  One of these Peace Corps project mainstays is a GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) camp.  Essentially the idea behind a GLOW camp is to equip young Malagasy women who show potential for leadership with the necessary skills to make healthy life choices as well as advance their personal, professional and academic goals. The premise is that in most developing countries gender roles are much more rigid, in some cases to the point of being institutionally oppressive. In most cases the deck is stacked in favor of the men.  I’ve mentioned previously when I talked about family and gender roles that as far as Madagascar is concerned, there are certainly countries that score worse on the equity barometer.  Madagascar currently has a number of women running for President (out of 33 candidates). However, Madagascar still has a ways to go and there’s no way, no  how that a country is going to climb its way out of poverty if it’s dragging the dead weight of a marginalized population.  So with that in mind a group of five volunteers, myself included, decided to organize a GLOW camp.

We had five towns represented: Miarinarivo, Ampefy, Sandrandahy, Kianjandrakefina and Arivonimamo.  Five towns for the five volunteers in the central highlands region who came to country together in the same training group. In theory we were each supposed to select four young women each, ages of 13-16, and one adult chaperone to attend the camp.  Per usual though, preparation for the camp and finding the participants didn’t quite go according to plan.  I would say Madagascar threw me a curve ball, but it’s more like I stepped up to bat and pitchers began materializing to all lug curve balls in my direction simultaneously. 

Emma and I worked together to prepare the grant, which went off without a hitch.  Then came my part in Arivonimamo.  It was imperative to catch the girls before the school year ended so early one morning, the first week of June, I loaded up on applications and flyers and strolled across the street to meet the Director of the public middle school.  My first impression was that he was thrilled by the idea and he quickly agreed to call a meeting of all the middle school girls in the specific age group.

‘Alright,’ I thought, ‘this should be pretty simple.’

I turned up two weeks later, and was ushered into a classroom full of roughly 20 girls by the Director.  Rather than follow me into the room the Director quickly pulled me outside so that we were standing in the doorway and dropped this bomb on me as if he were telling a joke:

‘So I forgot to tell the teachers about the meeting thing and we didn’t really get all the girls together.’

‘Oh…ok. So who are they?’ I cocked my chin towards the interior or the room, and squinted in at a room full of 13-16 year old girls.

‘I just talked to two science classes and asked if they wanted to spend time with the vazah.’ (foreigner)

Great.

Despite the inauspicious beginnings I forged ahead with my little spiel about what GLOW camp was and why these girls might consider enlisting.  Thanks in some part to the less than productive introduction by the Director, many of the questions centered not upon women’s empowerment but rather my marital status and whether I can teach English.  I did notice a few girls who were listening with rapt attention and made sure to reiterate the importance of the camp to them personally as I handed out application forms.

And then the girls went on vacation.  I needed four girls and every time I would pass by the middle school office I would get the same response.  Two applications had been turned in, nothing more.  ‘It looks like those two are going,’ I thought.   The problem was, with school not in session, many of the students in Arivonimamo return to their rural villages, often times miles away down terrible roads with spotty cell service.  After some time I was forced to concede that one of the girls had disappeared into the black hole of highlands countryside. That left only her friend Lanto as my sole student. 

With only one girl of four picked out I was in a bit of a bind.  So, as is often that case when I’m in a bit of a jam here in Madagascar, I went to my buddy Jean Claude.  Turns out his sister is 15 years old.  Pretty lucky, huh?  So I asked him, ‘do you think she’d be interested?’ He enthusiastically said yes so I pushed a little further, ‘do you think she could find a friend to come with?’  Yup.

Then, with three of the four girls picked.  Or at least one picked, and with Jean Claude on the case, I figured I would be able to spend the next three weeks finding the perfect candidate to be the final GLOW camp girl.  That’s when the biggest curve ball of them all clocked me upside the head.  I came down with pneumonia and a pleural effusion in my right lung.  That story is for a different time but the doctors said it was likely a microbe that got into my lung and one theory is that I got it when I had entered a tomb at a recent exhumation ceremony.  Regardless, it laid me up in the hospital for about nine days followed by a little over a week of extra recovery afterwards in the Peace Corps medical unit.  With my health finally somewhat intact I scrambled back to site on Saturday morning, with the GLOW camp scheduled to begin on Monday and still one girl short.  Chanthiah! I thought.  Of course, why didn’t I think of her before?  A student in my computer classes for over six months Chanthiah had proven to be one of the most dedicated young women I’d worked with in Madagascar. Only problem is that she’s nineteen.  A bit outside of our target market.  I decided that desperate time called for desperate measures so I made the call.  Chanthiah was onboard without a moment’s hesitation once I’d explained the concept to her. With our four girls assembled and an Arivonimamo chaperone in tow we hopped a taxi-brousse for Tana that Monday morning. 

We had planned three topics to tackle over three separate days. Health, professions, and higher education. The first day, the arrival day, would be relegated to introductions and getting settled so as not to overwhelm the girls, many of whom had never been to the capital before and had certainly never had the experience of a week-long sleep away camp.  Two of our delegations were trekking up from pretty far down South and they weren’t expected to be in town until close to dinner. Upon the arrival of our Kianjandrakefana and Sandrandahy groups we herded everyone into the dining hall/activity space for a round of introductions.  Drawing upon our collective camp knowledge we framed the introductions as such: your name, your grade in school, where you’re from and the aggravatingly vague yet ever popular, something unique about yourself.  Now this presented an unusual challenge for these young participants.  As products of an education system that treats independent, critical thinking as something to be avoided, and a culture that shuns individuality in favor of the collective, I observed looks of confusions and an uncomfortable shifting in the chairs of many of the girls.  Thus as we went around the room introductions went something like a game of telephone, where one girl would decide to say her favorite color as her unique fact, a trend which would continue down the line for ten girls until one intrepid soul ventured the number of siblings she had, which then became the theme of the moment. 

As I previously mentioned, this pattern of behavior stems from entrenched cultural norm that is hardwired into most Malagasy people.  The difficulty that the GLOW camp presented us, and in some senses it could be seen as a microcosm of Peace Corps in general, was to find a way to tease out the leadership abilities for these girls by drawing on an entirely foreign cultural framework.  In America, a culture predicated upon individualism, there are certain understood attitudes upon which one can draw when teaching leadership skills.  The right conditions can exist too in Madagascar, one just needs to know where to look and what to appeal to culturally.  So how do you teach a group of young Malagasy women, who struggled to put forward a unique fact about themselves, to be leaders and to take stake in their own future?  Bring in other Malagasy people.

The first day was the health day and we put heavy emphasis on reproductive and sexual health. We had two Malagasy organizations come in to lead the sessions.  The first, PSI which stands for Population Services International, sent ‘peer educators’ to come and speak to the girls about the importance of protection and all things you need to know about sex.  When I first greeted these ‘peer educators’ they struck me as aloof Tana hipsters, which are the bane of my existence, but that’s neither here nor there. Besides, I didn’t even have a chance to see their session since most of the days discussions would revolve around sex, Nick and I, the only two men in the vicinity decided it would be best to recuse ourselves from the proceedings and go take care of some camp logistics around Tana.  Nothing could guarantee that these 14 year old Malagasy girls would clam up and fail to ask important questions about sex like the presence of two 25 year old white guys.  So Nick and I took care of printing the completion certificates, which we realized we’d printed incorrectly once the girls pointed out the incorrect date (a win for the Y chromosome, huh).  We also took care of buying bananas and condoms for the condom demonstrate that was led that afternoon by our second Malagasy organization, MAHEFA.  Again, Nick and I didn’t have a chance to see the MAHEFA session but rumor has it that they knocked it out of the park, teaching the girls about nutrition, reproductive health and, thanks to Nick and my superior condom and banana buying prowess, how to properly put on a condom.     

Our second day of activities, the third day of our camp in Tana, was our big ‘professional aspirations’ day, which for fun and because we could, we held at the American Embassy.  Needless to say the girls were floored by the grandeur of this little slice of America which happens to be the nicest building in Madagascar, think of that what you will.  After a slightly confusing security check in which the security detail tried to acquire identity cards from a bunch of 15 year old girls who live in mud-brick houses in the rural countryside guess what guys, they don’t have them.  We won that stand off and were all ushered into a side room where we were greeted by a senior diplomatic elf with a handlebar mustache and a green blazer.  He gave a quick introduction before ceding the floor to the group of Malagasy women, half who worked at the Embassy and half from a professional women’s association that we had scheduled to join us.  I honestly could not have been happier with the way things went.  Each woman spoke for roughly twenty minutes explaining where they worked, what they did on a daily basis, and what it was that led them to their position.  Team Arivonimamo asked a few good questions too so I’m counting that as a win.

We followed up our professions day with a stop at the University of Antananarivo where are professor at the school of agronomy who has worked with me previously was nice enough to meet with us.  The heat was blistering and though the Malagasy girls seemed to be putting up with it fine I was melting so we moved into the shade and sat on the grass to learn about higher education.  The professor, Fanja, happens to be one of the most impressive people I have met here in Madagascar.  She currently holds a doctorate from Cornell in the States which she earned while studying on a Fulbright scholarship.  Despite her plethora of commitments she was somehow able to set aside half a day and gather a group of students to speak with us and give us a tour of the University.  That afternoon the girls visited an English teaching program and passed by a center dedicated to helping Malagasy people study abroad in America.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the afternoon’s activities.  The combination of scorching heat in the morning and infected liquid I still had sloshing around my lung (I’d only been out of the hospital about a week), made it so that I was too wiped out and needed to rest in the afternoon.

The final day of the camp was designed to reward the girls for attending the camp and working so hard all week.  Since many of them had never been to Tana and those that had likely didn’t get to explore the big city much we made the day into a field trip around the capital.  We passed through Analakely, the premier shopping hub in Tana, where the teenage girls treated us like their not-so-cool parents and told us to hang back, since presumably the presence white people make things more expensive.  The day also included one of the most touching moments that I’ve experienced thus far in Peace Corps.  Back in the epoch of kings here in Madagascar, Antananarivo was ruled from the Rova, a castle perched on the highest hill overlooking the city. Naturally we felt this would be a neat place to take the girls but as we approached the front gate we noticed the entrance fees.  500 Ar for Malagasy people and 10,000 Ar for vazah (foreigners).  We’d budgeted for the entrance fee of 500 Ar but the 10,000 Ar for the five of us volunteers was a bit of a slap in the face.  To give some perspective, 10,000 Ar is roughly $5.  We make $4 a day.  So while $5 may not seem like a lot imagine spending more than what you make in a day to get into a museum.  You might decide there’s a better way to spend your day.  So, we turned to the girls and explained that, the five of us volunteers are just going to wait outside and the rest of you can go tour the Rova with the chaperones, we’ll cover your entrance fees and be here when you get out. That plan didn’t stick.  The girls were absolutely resolute that they didn’t want to see the Rova if they were going to charge the volunteers such a high price.  We tried to haggle with the desk attendant; our chaperones even stepped in, but to no avail.  I am sympathetic to charging slightly higher prices for foreigners in a country as desperately poor as Madagascar.  The people here should be able to afford to visit their own attractions yet at the same time tourism needs to generate sufficient income to contribute to the nation’s development.  However, we’d just completed a diversity and prejudice session with the girls the night before so they were acutely sensitive to discrimination.  By this point in the week they understood that we were volunteers living here, working on a relatively meager salary and that 10,000 Ar was nothing to scoff at.  The girls were incensed by the price difference, some of them so upset that they were moved to tears and in a unified act of defiance decided to refuse to enter.  So, in a very moving gesture of solidarity the girls led us back to the tour bus and we left the Rova to head back to our training center.

We held our closing ceremony in the dining hall shortly after dinner that night.  As parting gifts we bought nice purses for the chaperones and English-Malagasy dictionaries for the girls, along with pictures from the camp and certificates of completion for all the participants.  The overhead lighting was dim and everyone sat on benches arranged like pews in the center of the dining hall.  Each girl was called one by one to the front of the room to receive their parting gifts and had their picture taken while the rest of the girls clapped enthusiastically.  The atmosphere in the room was buoyant and familial, in a way only really found in the moment of anticipation before the end of an intense bonding experience.  Following some parting words by the five of us Peace Corps Volunteers, one of the girls stood up and explained that she had been designated to speak on behalf of all of the camp participants and proceeded to offer a thoughtful kabary (speech), thanking us for the experience. 

As we closed in on 8pm we sent the girls up to their room on the third floor and settled in for the night in our second floor room. The five of us were comfortably piled onto our pushed-together beds and about halfway through the movie we were watching we started hearing a faint cry from outside.  At first we put it out of mind.  We were exhausted, beat, we’d successfully pulled off the camp and it was probably just the girls playing around on the stairwell like they had the nights before.  Then it came a second time.  This time louder. 

‘Actually, maybe that’s bad,’ Emma said as she glanced over at me, alarmed and already pushing herself up off the bed.

The five of us quickly rushed into the hallway where I found two of my Arivonimamo girls, one cradling the other, on the stairwell.  They were surrounded by a few of the other girls and one of the chaperones who looked up at me with a mixed look of concern and panic.  One of my four girls, Sandatra, was collapsed in a heap on the floor, cradled by Iana.  With sweat on her brow and her eyes rolled back in her head she was alternating between a piercing wail and a possessed, hyperventilated breathing.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked Iana as I placed my hand on Sandatra’s head to check for a fever.

‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ she explained breathlessly. ‘She just started screaming and crying.  I think her heart is on the wrong side.’

‘Wait, WHAT?!’

‘You know how it’s here on us,’ Iana pointed to her heart, ‘well I’ve heard it’s here on her,’ she moved her hand a few inches across her chest.

So naturally I was in a panic.  One of the chaperones suddenly appeared with a glass of water and handed it to me.  We splashed some on her face and Iana tried mightily to force her to drink some but Sandatra continued to thrash and wail, which by now I was convinced meant her heart was exploding.  Her body felt feverish and one of the girls from Ampefy suggested we strip off her sweater to try to cool her down.  One of the chaperones then proposed that we take her outside so I threw her arm around my shoulder and carried her down the two flights of stairs and we slowly shuffled into the yard. 

Immediately, once Iana the chaperone and I sat her down on the concrete ledge outside Sandatra’s breathing begin to slow and she collapsed, exhausted, against my side as I tried to hold her up.

‘Eric,’ whispered Emma and Nick from the doorway, ‘Eric, come in here.  You have to come in, she just wants your attention.’

‘I can’t, I think she’s really sick,’ I said  

‘Eric, seriously, come inside.’

I propped Sandatra up, leaned her over onto Iana, and slipped back into the building.  Turns out, Emma explained to me, that this girl just wanted attention. My attention to be specific.  Or at least that is what the other chaperones and some of the girls were saying.  Now in Sandatra’s defense, at least two of the other girls were also having these episodic attacks and hyperventilating as well up in their room.  Some of the adults pulled us aside to explain that most of these girls hadn’t had experiences as intense or similar in any way to what they’d just been through at our camp and the idea that it was coming to an end was too much for some of them to bear.  I have Iana to thank for nearly giving me a heart attack but it turns out the ‘Sandatra’s heart is on the wrong side’ thing wasn’t true.  She was just heartbroken about leaving.  The chaperones weren’t impressed though.  She did it by your room so that she’d get your attention, they assured me.

Needless to say, the events of that final night threw me into a bit of a funk.  I was overwhelmed and unnerved by the whole thing to be honest.  The GLOW camp turned out to be an amazing success yet, despite leading a Girls Leading Our World camp, it turns out I don’t know much about teenage girls.        

Until next time,

Veloma