Week 91: GLOW II

As I mentioned last week I just completed a GLOW (Girls/Guys Leading Our World) camp in the southern region with 7 other PCVs and teacher counterparts. GLOW camps were started by a group of PCVs and their counterparts in Romania in the 1990s and since then have spread to numerous Peace Corps countries worldwide. For this camp we took 67 boys and girls from 10 schools and hosted a four day camp that included such topics as leadership, gender, HIV, and self-confidence to name a few. These camps can be extremely rewarding and a good test of patience. You learn what to do with 67 kids when dinner is three hours late. How to get a group of 30 boys to go to sleep since you will be the one waking them up in 6 hours to start the fire to heat their bath water. Throughout the weekend I fine tuned my disciplinary techniques as I was one of the volunteers sleeping in the hall with the boys. It was after 11pm one of the nights and the boys were still being rowdy, all I could think of was having to be the one to wake them up at 5am and that finally did the trick as I calmly threatened the boys with moving my sleeping bag to where they were sleeping. One of the ring leaders said, “No ma’am we are afraid of you” At 11pm all I could say was good go to sleep. Although that was not a highlight of the GLOW camp for me I do think it showed my growth. I know that previously I would have placed a higher value on getting all of the kids to like me however this year I was more comfortable being a disciplinarian and getting the kids to like me was secondary. First I wanted their respect and some sleep. I was so happy that I was a part of the Southern Region GLOW camp this year and I am also okay that it was my last PCV driven GLOW camp. Next step is getting my school to transition from vocal support of the camps to putting one on themselves. The best part of having a GLOW camp at Modisi (the school I work at) is that at 11pm at night I will have been sound asleep for hours and not sleeping at the foot of a bunch of 15 year-olds beds worried they are sneaking out.