Late February

BLOGTIME!

The gender workshops went well. We kept men and women separate for the first 2 days of gender, and on the third day brought them together for a leadership session where the facilitators made them do teamwork games. All of the men were acquainted, and so were the women, so when talking about the sensitive issues surrounding gender people were very outspoken and were willing to contribute ideas. However, when the classes were joined, it was hard to break the ice between the men and women, since the latter did not feel comfortable participating with members of the opposite sex. As time went on and the games were played, the tension relaxed and everyone had a good time. One thing I did not foresee on Friday was the extended break-time for Call to Prayer. At 11:45 most people got up and left for the nearest mosque and did not return until 1 or1:15 after they were finished and had eaten lunch. I'll have to keep this in mind for future workshops in predominantly Muslim areas.

Friday I left the gender workshop early in order to attend an inter-school gender debate in the city. One school was for boys and the other was for girls, and both teams were pretty passionate about the motion being debated, "What men can do girls can do even better." There were many funny things being said by both sides. My favourites were "Behind every successful man in history there has been a woman," to which one boy retorted "why behind the success and not in front?" Also another boy said, "Men are allowed to have 4500 wives in some places. Why are women not allowed? Because a man is responsible to handle them all." The girls, on the other hand, said "That's because men are weak and can be easily seduced." My thought was "why would anyone want 4500 women, dealing with one is hard enough..." Then, the cherry on top was a girl saying "men leave the environment in a dirty condition and never clean it up." "If women can do things better than men, then what you're saying is that women are more dirty than men."

On Sunday white Mike and I went to Charles's mom's house, which is pretty rural and is half an hour outside the city. Charles is a local Kwacha Afrika volunteer, and is also the person who told me about "Thailand." It was a perfect day. We went for a 3 hour hike to a forested mountain, and I was expecting to climb it until Charles told us that we could go no further sincethere was quicksand and wild dogs that attacked you. We met his older brother, brother-in-law, mother, and his sister (who we already knew through Kwacha) Shiko turned up as well. At night we found a flat-topped 5 string guitar so we tuned that and wrote a song for Charles. Also Mike and I each got to chop off a chicken's head which we later ate for dinner. To get water for the morning bath we had to fill up buckets from a nearby puddle that accumulated water from a broken fresh water tap that is higher on the hill where the house is located. It was a great day, and we stayed overnigt and returned to town early the next morning.

This week is supposed to be very busy, since the career fair we have been planning for the last month is happening this Friday, so we have to finalize everything before then. I'll continue to keep everyone updated.

Also I was wondering how many people actually read this blog, I know the number is somewhere around 35 or 40 with my mom's elementary school class. After reading this could you just notify me that you're following it by making a quick comment below this. Thanks.