Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Camping and condoms and raindrops, oh my!

How’s that for a title, eh? Oddly enough, it fully encompasses my Friday and Saturday this week because I helped out at an overnight camp to teach family planning skills to a group of 36 youth (which in this case stretched from 9 years old to over 20). The camp was organized by that NGO I always talk about where I teach English but the facilitators included two from the health center, a German volunteer from the NGO as well as other staff, and leaders from the Club de Jovenes Ambientalistas (Young Environmentalist Club, mas o menos). The participants were members of the aforementioned club from two different towns in the municipality.

The two days involved various games/ice breakers, leadership activities, some environmental stuff, a bonfire, a hike, and talks about gender, sex, forms of contraception, and STDs/HIV/AIDS. Although the group got a little out of control sometimes and especially the second day didn’t always want to participate, there was definitely learning going on and most of the participants seemed to enjoy it.

Working hard


What would a sex ed talk be without putting condoms on bananas?
Some of the facilitators:


La Practica:


And of course, blowing up the condoms once they were off the bananas:


As always, the night was the most interesting part. Several of us were concerned about how the kids would be kept under control – especially keeping the boys and girls apart – but that was left up to the leaders. They set up three tents – two for the girls and one for the boys – a ways away from our center of activities while several of us facilitators decided to sleep under the shelter where we’d been working all day. We thought we’d get more sleep there.

Apparently the guys didn’t all fit in their tent so about half slept in the shelter with us, it didn’t take too long to quiet them down but then someone starting snoring like you wouldn’t believe so I didn’t sleep too well. Sometime around 1am the sky opened up and poured down rain and I woke up to find the folks who’d been sleeping down below in the tents running up to the shelter all wet and muddy. Turns out those tents weren’t water proofed by any means, so we accommodated all 50ish of us on the tarps in the shelter and lights went out for the second time just before 2am. Again I didn’t sleep well and before I knew it it was 5am and the kids were getting up already.

It was pretty cool to see something like this organized here – I didn’t think the topic got breached very often what with how religious people are and the especially high amount of Catholics (about 75% of the population). But they really reached a lot of people through the camp and another part of the project - organizing groups of kids to present short skits at local schools about family planning.

I intend to do my part by wearing my camp t-shirt to school so that while I’m writing on the board my students will read the back:



“A hero who helps you plan and really saves lives”

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