Thats right, we women and girls run the world ;) Last week on Tuesday was International Women's Day (IWD), which was celebrated throughout the world and around Uganda as a national holiday. As you know, I started a project teaching school girls how to make re-usable menstrual pads, as it's a big problem here with girls skipping school during their period. We still had a lot of supplies left so we decided to open it up to teaching women within our community. We organized an event for IWD, but this culture makes it very difficult to hold a successful event, unless you are literally handing out money! We organized with a man in our village to advertise this event and get the word out. He was paid by my health center to ride around on his bike throughout the entire village announcing this event through a loud speaker. We decided this was the most effective way to get the word out to people specifically within my village. So, on the day of, of course no one arrived at 9AM as our advertiser had told them. Apparently women were telling him, "we will come but not until 10AM". This has been a frustrating aspect of the culture during my entire service that I have had no other option than to accept. By 10AM they still had not come and majority did not arrive until around 1130-12! As annoying as this is, there's not much we can do!
So once we had several women arrive, we gave them the supplies, instructed them on how to begin and they set off sewing! Most of the women who came were in their 20's with a couple younger girls and one older woman in her 40's. My counterpart Sam, our lab technician Livingstone, a former intern Elsie, and my local counterpart Mr. Kanhiriri all helped me make this possible. They taught the women about HIV prevention and the importance of using condoms not only for HIV prevention, but also to space their pregnancies and plan for their families. I was so surprised at how well received the condoms were - especially the female ones! Sam and I did a female condom demonstration, as they had never even seen one before (they are not as common as male condoms). After, I assumed we would skip the male condom demonstration, as it seemed the women weren't interested, but Mr. Kanhiriri didn't even think twice and immediately began demonstrating to them how to use a male condom. (A side note on Mr. Kanhiriri: He is probably in his late 60's and yet one of the most active, kind and generous men i've ever met. He is constantly moving around working with different groups of people helping them in different ways. He has been a huge support to me since I moved to this site, introducing me to schools and different people in the village as well as offering his knowledge in my projects. He is also very Catholic, however, a strong believer in family planning. This is hard to find around here, especially amongst the Catholics! He constantly talks about family planning and the importance of planning for a family you can successfully feed, care for and send to school.) He explained to them the importance of a woman also knowing how to use a male condom because her partner may not know and put it on incorrectly, therefore leading to possible accidents!
I think the most amazing part of this day was having 3 MEN, not women, teach these women everything and be involved, while I sat on the sideline offering minimal support. Sam and Elsie have been with me from day 1 in the RUMPS project and were the ones to assist the women in making them. Sitting back and watching everyone else implement an event, albeit small, made me SO happy. The number one goal in Peace Corps is sustainability; transferring knowledge and skills which people can then go on to teach and implement in the future without the need for your help. This creates sustainability and continuation of this knowledge and skills, long after you the volunteer has left. For the first time in my entire service, I finally felt comfortable to just sit back and watch everything take place. Im so grateful for the wonderful, passionate people i've had the honor of working with throughout my service. These are the kind of people who will help to bring about positive change within this country.
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Sam teaching the sisters of one of my friends in my village about HIV. They were the only ones to come on time (we actually walked there together). Sam is also the only one I work with who ever keeps time (He's becoming American!)
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| Some of the first few ladies to arrive |
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| Talking to the women about HIV (Livingstone, Sam and Mr. K). Although it looks like they aren't really paying attention, they had LOTS of questions after, so they must have been listening a bit! |
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| Sam and I demonstrating how to use a female condom |
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| Mr. K teaching how to use a male condom....I told you he's serious about family planning!!! |
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| Demonstrating how to use the RUMP |
