Changing lives one uncomfortable topic at a time

First and foremost, my neighbor got back from her month vacation visiting her family in Bobo. Since she's been gone, my life has been incredibly boring. The men have been all morose and bored, playing scrabble, I kid you not all day long, from 10 till 9, all day everyday for 3 weeks. 3 weeks! I've been so bored with them, but with her return on Friday they put scrabble away and we started chatting agin. Yesterday was her birthday and on a bien chauffe le coin. It was fantastic.

Last week and this week I'm doing a kids summer camp with my nearest neighbors. We're teaching 60 kids aging from 10 to 20 all about communication skills, HIV/AIDS, family planning, relationships, assertiveness, doing some condom demonstrations as well as playing soccer/volleyball/baseball and of course eating a lot of rice for lunch.

I was real nervous about this camp at first, I think because I've been around adults and a lot of Americans all summer, but after spending five minutes with those kids all my anxieties were gone. Kids are a hell of a lot of fun. I look forward to school starting again. So let see, last week I taught them how to set goals and the importance of planning to reach those goals. Talked about hand washing and hygiene. Taught them how to make liquid soap so they can do it themselves, sell it and make a little money so their families can eat. I talked to the big kids about early pregnancy and strategies to delay sex (they said some hilarious things about that- but madame, once you start you can't stop. Sure you can. But madame, what if you can't sleep without having sex. Come on now, you can sleep. If not, go run around for a while, release some of that tension and then you'll sleep like a baby). Talked about managing emotions and strategies to handle anger and jealousy and what to do when you're horny (best responses being "drink some strawberry juice").

Tomorrow I get to talk about HIV prevention and then we get to do a little puberty lesson complete with diagrams and pictures. Naturally I know almost no french words about the reproductive system so I'm spending this hot Sunday afternoon brushing up on ways to explain this fun topic to a bunch of awkward and equally uncomfortable children. Jealous?

So that's what's happening in my world right now. School starts next week, I am not at all prepared.