Peace Love & Polygons: We Rise High

Today, we finally had our first REDES meeting in Manjacaze. REDES stands for Raparigas em Desenvolvimento na Educação e Saude or Girls Developing in Education and Health. REDES is designed to have regularly scheduled meetings, each meeting highlighting a different important topic relating to girls’ health and well-being. REDES provides a curriculum, activities, discussion points, everything. The only thing we as facilitators need to do is round up some girls and schedule a date. Sounds easy enough, right?

Wrong.

Up until this point, I wasn’t sure if a meeting would ever actually happen (thus, it was uncertain whether this would turn into a project, or remain an idea). We did take three girls to a REDES workshop, where they learned a lot about being student activists for women and girls in the community, with the idea to bring the learnings back to share with a larger group of students…but that was in May.

Between May and August, we have been playing calendar Tetrus with myself, Amada (my Mozambican counterpart) and the students. Tenth, eleventh, twelfth and eighth graders go to school from 7am-12pm daily. However, ninth graders go to school from 12:15pm-5:30pm daily, and girls that live in the boarding school can’t be out past dark (boys can do whatever they want because they’re boys, but that discussion is for another time *eye roll*). This means that weekdays would not work. Many girls have either church, family obligations or domestic responsibilities to tend to on Saturdays, and nobody (seriously…nobody) does anything besides church on Sundays. That left Saturdays as our best bet—and the bet wasn’t a very good one.

After three months of trying to work with everybody’s schedules, and becoming increasingly frustrated at the continued delay (I’m not patient…like, at all), I decided to just pick a day, tell it to my counterpart, Amada, and see who could show up. Without starting somewhere…anywhere we were never going to have a meeting and this group would end before it started. Because there were some girls in 12th grade constantly asking me when we were going to start, this was a project I didn’t want to give up on.

I chose Saturday, August 6th, because provincial exams just ended the previous week and the next week would be the last week of the trimester…aka no learning happens and kids just hang around at school and chat before going home early (productive, right?). So, students didn’t have homework to worry about this weekend, and tests are already out of the way (assuming they study…which test scores show that they don’t…). After getting the information out to students all last week, I’m excited to report that 21 girls showed up at 8am on that Saturday morning to talk about girl stuff. Actually, 2 girls showed up at 8am and the rest trickled in between 8:30 and 10am. #CantWinEmAll

Amada couldn’t make it because she had to attend the graduation of a family member…although whose I’m still not quite sure. So, this 4 hour session for girls was all mine, all by myself, to make as awesome or as shitty as the universe deemed it to be. Although it felt like a lot, especially since many of the girls joined the group because they had a close relationship with Amada, and didn’t even know me yet, I was still very excited. I knew that I didn’t want this session to feel like school, so it had to have fun, non-lecture activities. I paired the REDES curriculum with my own ideas and came up with a schedule that was equal parts hands-on activities and thought-provoking discussions.

Our schedule was this:

Translated: Introductions; Drawing activity—goals and successes; Gender roles; Snack break and game; Avoiding unwanted sexual advances.

When 8 girls had showed up, around 8:30am, I decided to begin. I gave each girl a worksheet that had two big blank boxes: one to draw something that they’ve done in their lives that they are very proud of, and one to draw a goal for themselves after they finish secondary school. I explained to them what a Vision Board was, and told them these drawings would serve as the foundation of each of their vision boards. They loved this idea, and were excited to add more drawings to their collection at the beginning of our next session.

So, I’m sure you’re wondering, what were the girls’ past successes and future goals? Many successes had something to do with staying in school, never failing a grade, or being the first person in their family to graduate 7th grade. Girls leave school for a plethora of reasons, including but not limited to: pregnancy, premature marriage, domestic responsibilities (their families think that their time is better spend washing clothes and cooking dinner), or financial issues. When a girl finishes 12th grade, it’s a big freaking deal…and my REDES girls know that, and are proud to have made it this far. Most of their future goals had to do with higher education and careers. This made me happy: Marriage and children are not the end all be all for my girls’ futures. They know there is more out there than being a stay-at-home mom and that made me smile. Not only that, when each girl presented her future goal, the rest of the group hooted and hollered and cheered them on. Even the girls from different grades who weren’t friends were proud and supportive of each other.

After the drawing activity, we started a session on Gender Roles. I divided the girls into two groups: a boy group and a girl group. The task was for each group to prepare a teatrinho (short skit) to demonstrate societal expectations of boys and girls. At first the girls didn’t really know what to do, but after I started asking questions about “how are girls and boys treated differently” they got to talking. They spent 30 minutes preparing their skits, and then each group presented it to the other.

The girls team went first, and their skit went something like this: A girl and a guy are dating and all of the girl’s friends are supportive of the relationship. He does not go to school because he is older, so she skips school a lot to spend time with him. Her friends all like the idea of it and giggle about it and do all the things that girlfriends do when their friend is dating someone new (and older and quite literally too cool for school). Then the girl gets pregnant, her friends disown her, she gets kicked out of school and the boyfriend wants nothing to do with her or the baby. The boy continues his life as usual and the girl’s life is drastically different from here on out.

The boys team went second, and their skit went something like this: A teenage son in a family stays out late partying with his friends and comes home drunk in the small hours of the morning. He doesn’t get in trouble and gets excused from going to church the next day because he was out so late. The daughter of the family isn’t allowed out after dark and has to get up really early the next morning to do chores before church. She doesn’t get much time with her friends and she’s not allowed to date. Oh yeah, and her dad beats her when she mentions that her brother never has to do any housework.

I could tell by the way these girls were acting that both of these situations were very real to them. After each group presented, we talked about general expectations for boys and girls. The main theme that kept coming up was that the girls want the same freedom the boys have. The girls know that they are as smart as the boys but don’t get treated that way. They have to work extra hard to earn respect. They are expected to be sexually active but are the only ones who have to deal with the consequences. One girl knew from memory that women make 37% less annual income than men.

Exact quote: “There is discrimination against women in every place in Mozambique. We want that to change”.

I challenged them to think of ways that we as women could slowly start to overcome the current struggles women here face. Some ideas were: Work together to educate people about women’s abilities. Prove to people that girls are just as smart and as capable as boys. Reject propositions for premature marriage. Finish secondary school. Teach girls how to use feminine condoms so that it’s not solely the boy’s choice to have safe sex.

The girls decided that the best way to start this process of spreading information is to give palestras (presentations) to the school and the broader community about important topics that affect women (income generation; premature marriage; STD testing; safe sex, etc). We planned our first palestra to be the second week of the new trimester, and the girls are pumped!

Next we ate cake. I made three chocolate-cinnamon cakes with cinnamon-vanilla icing (to die for, if I do say so myself) and the girls loved it. Cake is rare, and chocolate cake is basically unheard of here. It was good stuff. While they were eating I asked them to fill out a questionnaire ranking topics that they want to cover in future meetings. I explained that these sessions are for them, not for me, so they should be the ones to decide what we learn about.

The ten topic choices were:

Communicating with Others
Making Good Decisions
Healthy Friendships
Communicating with Adults
My Body is Changing—Is it Normal?
Pregnancy: How Does it Happen?
How to Communicate with a Partner
Avoiding Unwanted Pregnancy
STDs/HIV
Money and Sales

I asked the girls to rank the topics in order of importance, 1 being the most important and 10 being the least important. The three most important topics were:

Avoiding Unwanted Pregnancy

STDs/HIV

My Body is Changing—Is it Normal?

So, it looks like we have a plan moving forward. While these topic choices were not surprising to me, maybe they are to you. These are topics that our parents talk to us about when we are in our early teens, and it’s what 7th grade health class is for. However, these girls don’t have this information built into their educational plan. Without a concrete opportunity to learn about this stuff, most girls are left with many unanswered questions about their bodies and their health, with nobody to talk to about it except for their friends—who most likely have the same questions and confusion.

I told the girls that it’s good to have somebody they can go to with questions about their health and well-being. I told them that I understand that sometimes you don’t want to tell your mom about your personal business—especially when you’re 16 years old. I offered to be a person that they can come to and talk about things—all the things— and that I would not judge and I would keep their secrets so long as keeping these secrets didn’t threatened their safety. The girls smiled. They thanked me. They sighed of relief. This whole growing up thing is hard and confusing, and nobody should have to do it alone.

The last thing we talked about was avoiding unwanted sexual advances. In Mozambican culture, men aren’t very good at taking no for an answer. Additionally, many families see older, financially stable men as the only potential source for their daughters to have a less-poverty-stricken future. Girls get pressured into being with men they likely don’t love because they feel like they don’t have other options. During this session, we read a couple hypothetical stories about girls in situations where they were experiencing unwanted sexual advances. We discussed what the girls could do to better their situations and what the community could do to help lessen these instances.

The main takeaway from this lesson was “don’t be afraid to say no”. The girls repeated multiple times: you have to say no, mean it and stick to it. Don’t let men boss you around and make you do things that you don’t want to do. We as women have the right to decide when to enter into a relationship, when to be sexually active and who to marry. They agreed that men will continue to make choices for women so long as women allow men to make choices for them. The girls set a goal for themselves: Not only will they say no—and say it strongly—when they need to, but they will encourage their friends to do so as well.

Our session ended with a poem about self-esteem:

A nossa auto-estima já foi deitada abaixo antes

Mas Nós somos sobreviventes e não vamos permitir que isso volte acontecer

Nós lutamos para chegar até aqui

E, ás vezes, na nossa luta, nós caímos

Mas no fim nós sempre nos erguemos bem alto

Our self-esteem was put down before

But we are survivors and we won’t let this happen again

We fought to arrive where we are now

And at times, in our fight, we fall

But in the end, we rise high

When the poem was finished being read, by one of the younger girls in a tiny and high-pitched voice, there was a brief silence and then a loud applause. It was a really powerful moment. The girls let feeling hopeful, empowered, and excited to give our first palestra at school in a couple of weeks.

I left feeling proud that the meeting ran well, that the girls had fun, and they seemed to learn. I left feeling impressed by the girls’ commitment to themselves, each other, and their futures. I left feeling in awe of their strength and their enthusiasm to fight for improved treatment of women and girls.

I left feeling grateful to be a part of their lives in this way.