2013 Kedougou Youth Leadership Camp

A drum circle replaces guitars around a campfire, mangoes become the main snack, and the inability to stand for more than several minutes in direct sunlight becomes a main challenge in planning programming.  Yet, it is still camp.  Sessions are held in French, a language that is the mother tongue of no one involved, Griot story telling is the hit night activity of the week, and the trip to the hospital happens not because of a banged knee on the high ropes course, but because of a hand swollen to twice its normal size.  So many things were different during Kedougou Youth Leadership Camp, yet the spirit of camp that I know and love was still present throughout.

Although Senegal is at least 90% Muslim, the school year includes a two week break for Easter.   During this year’s break, kids from all over Kedougou came to the regional capital.  A group of 22 middle schoolers participated, enough to max out the capacity at the campement we rented out.   Malinkes, Pulaars, Jaxankes, Bassaris.  Muslims and Christians.  For many, it was the first time they had been to Kedougou city, and for some, it was the first time they left their village.

Nearly all of the volunteers in Kedougou came together to work on this project, and it was a blast to see everyone’s interests and talents that were brought out in the camps programming.  Drawing on my previous camp counselor experience, I led big group games and team building challenge course activities.  We worked with Senegalese adults who had been trained and certified as camp counselors, but the mentality of letting kids fail and work through a challenge together was really difficult for them, and they couldn’t help but jump into it and tell them how to do it.  In the daily evaluations, I found it fascinating that kids often put the fun sessions like tag or zumba as their least favorite, saying that, yes, it was fine, but it didn’t teach them anything that would help them get ahead in life.  These kids wanted to learn.  Some of the biggest hits were on family planning as well as the First Aid session that Pat did a great job leading.

Since the theme of the camp was leadership, I also led a session on assertive communication.  I prepared this session particularly with female participants in mind, since girls are often expected to be passive recipients of their fates.  I stuck in role plays about girls being told they needed to leave school to help around the house and condom negotiation.  During the session, I included a list of rights of young people (ie the right to be listened to and respected), which kept coming up again and again throughout camp.  I was amazed by the power of simply telling someone that they had a right to express what they wanted in life.

Condom demonstration during the adolescent health session--I recently recalled a thought I had in early highschool where I felt so bad for the nurse who taught us sex ed.  I thought it would be the worst, most awkward job in the world and couldn't imagine how anyone would ever end up having to do that.  Oh, how the tables have turned.  Now I'm all about it.

Role play of using assertive communication with the scenario that one friend wants to leave school to the gold mines and the other friend wants to counsel her against it.

I also facilitated an anonymous Q&A session with a midwife from the Kedougou Health Center.  She was a champ and answered the varied questions about health (but mainly sex) with a lot of tact.  Sex doesn’t really get talked about, but kids start really early, so it was such an important session to clear up myths and misconceptions and to help them at least understand what they are doing. I was glad that it was on the same day as the assertive communication talk so that maybe girls would feel empowered with knowledge and communication skills to say no if they wanted to.

Sage Femme Q & A with Diabou Cissokho, a midwife who is actually from the region of Kedougou, something that is really rare, making her a great example

In 2007, Peace Corps Volunteers made a film called Elle Travaille Elle Vit (She Works, She Lives), where they interviewed working women around Senegal about careers and gender roles.  We screened this film (with some technical difficulties, but it is Africa after all), and it opened up another really great discussion.  At one point, a girl named Mahawa raised her hand and said that she was so grateful for this camp, and that she would feel like she was able to go home and tell her parents what she wanted with her life, instead of living passively as she had done.  I had to try not to cry for the rest of the session.  This session also made me really glad that we decided to do a co-ed camp.  A lot of regions put on girls’ camps, but we decided to invite boys as well, as boys are essential in girls empowerment and really do need to be empowered themselves.  It’s one thing for a female volunteer to tell a girl that she can do whatever she wants, but it’s a whole new level when a boy raises his hand and says that he really wants to marry a girl who is educated.

The afternoon after we screened the film, Awa Traore, Peace Corps’ Gender and Development Coordinator who has a starring role in the film, came to give a presentation.  She is an amazing facilitator, and her skills combined with the sense of community we had created during the week turned into girls opening up about a lot of really taboo and tough issues.  We talked about female genital cutting--health risks and why it is illegal.  Awa shared her own story of being cut, which created a space for girls to share.  I have never heard anyone ever talk honestly about this practice due to its illegality, and I was amazed by their openness.  (I really think that teambuilding activities we did early on contributed to this.) We talked about forced early marriage and early pregnancy, and girls revealed things from their lives and their villages that were hard to hear.  I have known that these things go on (for example, teachers bribing girls with grades in exchange for sex), but to hear it from the mouths of these girls that I had quickly come to love brought my awareness to a whole new level.  Awa really focused on kids knowing who they are and relying on that knowledge when they make decisions. 

Mahawa and Awa role play a young girl being propositioned by an older boyfriend to exchange sex for gifts, a very common scenario.

Looking back, the week of camp can best be captured in soundbites:

-The songs bursting out of the bus of kids pulling up to the Peace Corps house on the way to the Dindefello waterfall—a first for every single camper.

-A late night conversation between two Muslim Malinkes asking a Bassari Christian about his religion and his upcoming initiation.

-The animated voices of the kids impersonating their parents in a skit about forced marriage. 

-Hurried footsteps running up behind me, bringing a drawing or note with “I love Sadio” written on it.

-Sobs coming from both boys and girls as they prepared to leave on the last day, leaving new friends and going back to tough realities.

This camp was funded entirely by donations from volunteers’ friends and family back home, and I know that some readers of this blog contributed and made this camp possible.  I cannot thank you enough, so I leave you with this video, with a message of thanks from the kids themselves.  As the former president of Senegal said, “If you want to see the future of a country, look at its youth.”