Camp GLOW stands for Girls Leading Our World and is a week-long camp organized by Peace Corps for Ugandan girls aged 13 to 18. The camp focuses on empowering women by educating them on a variety of topics and engaging them in activities that build leadership skills, self-esteem, self-awareness, and assertiveness. Campers are broken up into "families" of eight, and each family has an American and Ugandan counselor. This year, the families were named after successful African women. Mine was Proscovia Orumait, the youngest member of Parliament in Uganda and on the African continent. I welcomed the Orumait family on Sunday, May 4th in Northern Uganda and sent them off the following Saturday. The change I witnessed in those girls in a mere week was incredible.
During that week my campers, co-counselor and I slept together, ate together, and attended sessions and activities together. Being a counselor was literally a 24/7 job that was beyond exhausting and beyond rewarding. Each morning started with "movement," led by amazing people from the Ugandan organization of In Movement, and continued into sessions on different subjects such as Income Generating Activities, Human Rights, Reproductive Health, Public Speaking, Gender in Agriculture, and Reusable Menstrual Pads. Afternoons involved activities such as tie dye, creative writing, heroine presentations, a visit to a ropes course, and good ol' camp games, while the evenings had sessions also led by In Movement such as Late Night Art and Theater Improv.
I could not begin to describe everything that we did that week, but I can share some of the highlights and lots of pictures taken by Dan and Lantana, the camp photographers, and by me.
We had training with our fellow counselors the day before the campers got there - I was really sick but managed to get a ride with a friend!
We slept 30+ people to a room in bunk beds. Dorms like these are very common in Uganda for secondary schools and universities. It was enlightening to get a taste of what is everyday life for so many Ugandan students!
The Ugandan girls were almost the opposite of American campers in that you could not get them to stop bathing and doing laundry! They would wake up early (like 5:30 a.m. early) to bathe and would sneak off to was their clothes in secret during the day.
Getting to know each other on the first day.
My group, Orumait, was green. The public speaking session is where I first saw them coming out of their shells, engaged in a very hot debate over whether or not a rich man can treat a poor man like a slave if he pays him.
The Income Generating Activities session was amazing and my girls had so many great ideas for their own businesses.
We also talked a lot about value addition, such as drying pineapple to sell for more than you can get for fresh pineapple.
Gracie, one of the amazing Ugandans from In Movement, led a wonderful session on vision boards. She was an incredible role model for the campers, who fondly nicknamed her "Swag."
The Reusable Menstrual Pads session was also very popular, with each girl sewing and taking home her own kit. One of my campers said she planned to not only use it, but to make and sell them to her friends as well!
One of my campers with long "hair." Everyone in public primary and secondary schools must shave their heads up until a certain age. I've been told this is done to promote equality, as hair can be very expensive for women to take care of here and thus someone's hairstyle can easily denote their income level.
White ants, very common in Uganda, especially Northern Uganda, as a fried treat. (Yes, I tried some. They just taste like any crunchy fried things).
During the rainy season, they swarm, usually around lights. They lose their wings overnight (worst job ever, evolution) and basically crawl around until they die and you are greeted with a carpet of dead ants in the morning.
The girls went absolutely crazy catching them and we could not get them to bed that night. They woke up even earlier the next morning to cook them too!
My campers during a very powerful session on climate change.
Using the globe to show the distance between Uganda and America, and the distance between places in America that the counselors come from, really hit home with the campers.
Water, Flour, Air. Who doesn't love tormenting their counselors?
One of my campers after climbing the rock wall at the ropes course - I was so proud of her for overcoming her fear of heights. All the girls loved the rock wall, zip line, spider web, and problem-solving/team-building games we did throughout our time there. One of them even said, somewhat heartbreakingly, "I've never played all day before!"
One of my absolute favorite moments - Dan, a staff member and huge heavy metal fan, sharing his passion with the campers in a session. I never thought that they would be interested in heavy metal at all, but Dan had to practically beg them to let him close the session after hours spent head-banging, mosh-pitting, and crowd-surfing. Dan showed them something that he truly loved, and the girls responded in a wonderful way.
The Ugandan counselors also really enjoyed watching. One of them tried to quiet the girls while attempting to listen to a particularly raucous heavy metal song, and I practically died trying not to laugh at her command: "You girls listen! This is a very nice song!"
We also flash-mobbed the girls on their first day! We then taught them the dance and as a camp, sprang a flash mob on the neighboring boys' camp. Awesomeness. Also, every girl there could dance 1,000 times better than I could ever dream of dancing.
Orumait cheer during field games!
The Career Fair was one of the biggest hits, with girls talking and meeting with successful Ugandan businesswomen. I had a very earnest talk with one of the girls afterwards about her plan to implement her own business, and the way she talked so knowledgeably about her biggest challenges, "time and capital," was absolutely inspiring. I told her that in 10 years, she would be coming back to the camp just like one of the successful businesswomen she had seen that day.
On the last night of camp, we did an activity with our families where one girl sat in the middle of a circle with her eyes closed while the rest of the group told her what they had seen, loved, and admired about her that week. I wrote down the comments to give to each camper, and it brought tears to my eyes to see how much these girls had grown into leaders and how much they had come to care for each other. At the end, they even did it for my co-counselor and I. It's a memory I will always treasure.
The whole camp.
At the very end of of the week, all of the girls broke into groups with other campers from their regions and created action plans detailing how they were going to bring what they learned back to their community. We counselors circulated to help, but really, our help was not needed at all. The way they were excitedly and assertively discussing the sessions, clubs, and businesses they were going to implement when they returned makes me hopeful that the ripples Camp GLOW started are going to spread to young women all over Uganda. Either way, I know that Camp GLOW made a difference with them and is a week that they will never forget - because they told me so.
"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." - Marilyn Monroe
