Last week, September 18, marked one year in Cameroon, when we arrived in Douala for orientation and then training. Crazy. Here’s a post that sat on my computer desktop, half-written for some time now:

June 6^th marked my six months of being at post – and I woke up that morning and left promptly at 7 am, to help run a girls’ empowerment camp in Mora. The Peace Corps Volunteers of Mora Cluster – Liz A (Education Volunteer in Mora) Jess (Agro Volunteer in Mora), Martin (SED Volunteer in Mora) and Liz L (Agro Volunteer in Magdeme) aimed at ages 10-14. We spent four days talking about a wide range of issues, including effective communication, peer pressure, HIV/AIDS and other health issues, goal-setting, and budgeting money.

Gender equality and girls’ empowerment is a major issue all over Cameroon. Girls are seen as less equal and traditional gender roles are the norm. The women and girls do almost all of the housework. A few months ago, I was walking around my neighborhood and saw one of the nurses at the hospital do his laundry, which is normally something that women do. We said hello, and he then said, “See how I suffer?” Apparently, he was upset because his wife had just given birth that morning and was unable to do his laundry for him. Wow.

The girls’ camp was a great success. We were worried that no one would show up, but, in the end, we somehow had 50 girls, which got really hectic. A lot of girls seemed to have shown up purely for the free food, or to have something to do. Martin and I were in charge of registration. When we asked one very little girl the name of her father (which serves as the equivalent of a last name in the US), and she replied, “Baba,” the word for father in Fulfulde. Yup, you’re definitely not 10 years old.  (Edit: Okay, it turns out that “Baba” is actually a common name in Fulfulde and Mandara, but, still, the girl didn’t seem to know her father’s name.) Nevertheless, I think that a lot of the older girls at least got something out of the camp, and we were all really pleased. One of my favorite parts of the camp was inviting guest speakers, who gave the girls advice about staying in school. One of the women was Aicha, my Fulfulde teacher during training, who is a project director of UICN, Union Internationale pour la Conservation de la Nature. She talked about she was expected her to get married at 14, but, fortunately, her father saw the importance of completing her education and told people that he was getting ready to marry her off, when in reality, he had no intention of doing so. She now has a master’s degree and works at a NGO. She told us about how someone walked into her office and asked to see the director and was absolutely shocked that it was a woman. It was just very inspirational and poignant. After the guest speakers spoke, we had the girls do an activity where they discussed  their dreams and how they envision their lives in the future.

It was my first time collaborating with other Volunteers, and it was just really great to see everyone in action, especially Liz A., since she has spent the last year teaching English at the high school. I also got a lot more comfortable being in Mora – oh, such as telling my moto driver how to find Jess’s house, which took me months to learn, since I am terrible at directions and don’t go to Mora enough.

We hope to do camps again next summer, with some adjustments, such as having pre-registration. And maybe we’ll even hold a boys’ camp, since female empowerment isn’t possible without the involvement of males.

Here’s Jess’s post on the camp.

And because of the camp’s success, I decided to hold my own version in my village. I held a two-day version between the fete of Ramadan and the start of school, on September 2 and 3, with the help of Jess and Martin.

It went well, too, and it was also really great to build relationships with girls in my village. I want to continue getting to know the girls in my village through my work and outside of work, and I definitely want to continue working on issues of girls’ empowerment.