Girls Camp

I feel like I don’t write about a lot of successes. The truth is life here can get you down. I fail much more than I succeed, and as someone raised always believing he could be the best at anything, well, its hard to feel like I can’t. There is this battle in our minds between who we are and who we desire to be, and it is a force that can be both reformative and destructive. I want to believe I can singlehandedly make the world a better place, and when I undoubtably don’t, I am deflated.

There was a lot I thought I would do upon coming here. I imagined coaching a team to the little league world series, opening a recycling factory, making the village sparkly clean. While I pushed at first, the engine eventually slows down. I don’t have the energy left I had those first few months in the village. How could I? The little (and stout and balding) engine could not.

I’ve talked here and there about feminism---about my mother, about what gender roles mean in our society. Its something I’ve wanted to convey to the girls at my school for some time now, to show them an alternative to the life they know. Go to school, get in to university, find a husband, settle down. There is a notion that if you are not married by 25, then you are doomed, forever to live alone, never to find love. An old maid at a quarter century.

It’s not that women are viewed as secondary citizens in the Ukrainian mentality. In fact, an argument could be made that there was more “feminism” in the Soviet Union than in pre-War America. Its just that in the Ukrainian village, each has their role. The man works the land, feeds the animals, and drinks the vodka. The woman milks the cow, cleans the house, and cooks the food. These are stereotypes, of course, but preconceptions grow deep in the Ukrainian soil.

There is more out there than what they know. That’s all I’ve ever really wanted to show my kids, to encourage them to imagine, to expose them to something different and new. There such a rote process to this still deeply Soviet education system that the notion of creating isn’t so emphasized.

This past summer, three of my students, all girls, attended a Peace Corps summer camp organized by the Gender and Development council, a Peace Corps Ukraine working group. The camp, which was organized by Peace Corps volunteers including two of my friends, Stephanie and Vanessa, was a week long bonanza where the girls would learn about important female issues as well as have the opportunity to meet other young female leaders from across Ukraine.

While all three of the girls are great, one of them, Olia, is a real All-Star. Olia is the niece of my director, Kolya, and my counterpart, Tamila. Barely 14 years old, she has the best English in the school. She is at the top of her class and popular to boot. She has a thirst for knowledge which I don’t often see in my students. Everything she sees, hears, feels, you can tell she is registering it all somewhere, tucking it away as if portended for later use.

While I was happy that I was able to give these three girls the experience, I of course wanted to help more of my students, as well. The Gender and Development group began offering small mini-grants to conduct gender-related projects, so Olia suggested we do a mini-camp for the girls at our school. All projects needed a counterpart---Olia, 14 years old, a girl whose mother succumbed to cancer two years ago, stepped up to the plate.
Together with Olia (as well as Yulia, another of my students who attended the camp over the summer) we organized a weekend “feminist training,” as it was entitled by my somewhat skeptical director. We invited two Peace Corps volunteers, Vanessa and Niza, to help conduct the camp, as well as Vanessa’s Ukrainian friend Sveta. Sveta is a rock star, a jack of all trades swiss army knife who works in Cherkassy, our Oblast center. She used to run a youth center there, but now simply goes from project to project, whether it is organizing a film festival about domestic violence, cleaning up the Dnieper river, or teaching girls in small villages about HIV/AIDS.

The camp took place over two days, a Friday and a Saturday. While I was incredibly nervous about attendance (it ain’t easy to get these kids, or any kids, to come to school on a weekend) the camp was heavily attended by a healthy cadre of 20 girls, ages 14-17.

The first day, Friday, was all about HIV/AIDS. Ukraine has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in Europe, and it is growing at an incredibly fast rate. While the official HIV rate stands at 1.3% of the population, only 11% of the population has ever been tested, leading to speculation that the actual rate could be higher. Sveta is a certified HIV/AIDS trainer through an organization known as PEPFAR.

PEPFAR is fascinating for a variety of reasons. First off, it is on the forefront around the globe of educating at-risk countries about HIV/AIDS knowledge and prevention. In Ukraine it has truly begun to make inroads, and Peace Corps Ukraine has two employees specifically delegated to PEPFAR programming. For me, however, the most interesting part is that PEPFAR was actually a brainchild of George W. Bush. Say what you like about him and his Presidency, he may have been the greatest ally (in terms of overall financial assistance) in the fight against HIV/AIDS that the world has ever known.

I did not participate in the Friday discussion, nor would I participate in many of the conversations that occurred over the next few days. These are serious topics--HIV/AIDS, transmission, stereotypes, prevention--and I wanted my students to feel open and unobserved. I am their teacher, but Sveta can double as their friend. The day was a huge success; using before and after questionnaires, Sveta showed me the marked strides my girls had made.

On Saturday, Sveta and Vanessa covered quite a few important topics, including Domestic Violence, Human Trafficking, and what it means to be a woman in today’s society. Meanwhile, Niza was preparing the painting of a World HIV/AIDS map. The map is color coded to convey the different HIV/AIDS rates that exist throughout the world. As you can see, Ukraine is much, much darker than the rest of Europe.



The whole time I was incredibly nervous. Would the girls enjoy themselves? Would they learn something? Would they care? I can’t even begin to explain how I felt when, at the end of the day, the girls didn’t want to leave. They truly had a great time. A handful of girls stayed two extra hours, just to make sure that the map was as beautiful as can be.

Olia was, of course, the last to leave. She cleaned the brushes, swept up the trash, put the tables and chairs back in place. This was all expected. This was Olia. But as she was leaving, she did something she had never done before. She gave me a hug.

Afterwards, she was embarrassed. I am, after all, her teacher. Yet that hug meant so much to me, because it really showed me that I had done something right. I doubt myself every day. I never know if I’m doing what I am supposed to be. Am I “developing the youth?” Am I making the village a better place? Am I a good volunteer? Olia’s hug was a wonderful affirmative, her way of conveying her appreciation and her growth.

The village may be the same, but Olia, and these 20 other girls, are already better.