Lunch fed everyone today! And after lunch it was time for the Workshops. Margaret and I ran a workshop for 24 girls who were young mums aging from 16-25, although they all looked younger.
Doris who co-ordinates life @ the compound was going to interpret for us. She's in the picture - another beautiful lady!
This was the hardest thing I’d done whilst here. How do you build an instant relationship to be able to go deeper when you can’t speak the language and are not sure what culture taboos you’re going to be stepping on. My remit was to cover a vast range of subjects from Breastfeeding, to parenting, to sex and relationships! But I had no idea about these girls or their culture. Were they single parents? Were they part of the sleeping around culture? Had they had their babies just to get the grant money from the government (something many girls do out there so that they can eat!)?
We went round the group getting the girls to introduce themselves and tell us about their circumstances, and trying to persuade Doris NOT to answer all the questions for them! They all said they were not married and didn’t have boyfriends so how could I teach relationship stuff?
In the end I settled on parenting! We looked at some aspects of parenting and then widened it out to the Love Languages – the concept that each of us feels loved in a different way. It maybe when someone spends time with us, or if someone says nice things about us. It may be if we’re bought a gift or it could be someone doing something for us ie going to fetch our water. Or it could be through physical touch. This is a great concept because it applies to children AND adults! So having talked about it in terms of their kids, we could talk about how they liked to receive love. They mostly said if a boy bought them a mobile phone!!! HELP!
I felt such a failure at the end. I mean wasn’t it my job to instruct these girls about the pitfalls of easy relationships and the importance of sticking long term to relationships? And I hadn’t even come close to that. But I guess I’m a relational person and was never going to be able to just plunge at the deep end and say through an interpreter on my 2nd day in the community – right let’s talk about sex!
On the plus side, this was the first time these girls had been gathered together in this kind of group and if they can keep that group going that’s going to be such a powerful way to build relationship and then be able to talk about more important stuff than I was able to get on. So there was hope at the end of my feelings of failure.
There was other groups going on, Cat, Sophie and Krystal were taking a group of 13-18 year olds and trying to get them to talk about relationships. At the end of the day, this is preventative stuff. If we can get to these kids early enough we can change the way things are.
And the men were leading a group of 13-18 year old boys with the help of the boys from Love Life. This group went down a storm. I think the fact that Love Life knew the culture and were able to facilitate discussions just made all the difference. They were really able to have an impact and the boys were keen to know more and make a difference in their community. It was so good to hear.
The girls group was trickier; once again, like mine getting the girls to chat and open up about relationships was really hard. Perhaps they are not allowed to talk about it in their culture.
As we sat with Doris after the groups and talked about how hard the groups had been, she wept and we saw how passionately she feels the plight of the community.
We went round the group getting the girls to introduce themselves and tell us about their circumstances, and trying to persuade Doris NOT to answer all the questions for them! They all said they were not married and didn’t have boyfriends so how could I teach relationship stuff?
In the end I settled on parenting! We looked at some aspects of parenting and then widened it out to the Love Languages – the concept that each of us feels loved in a different way. It maybe when someone spends time with us, or if someone says nice things about us. It may be if we’re bought a gift or it could be someone doing something for us ie going to fetch our water. Or it could be through physical touch. This is a great concept because it applies to children AND adults! So having talked about it in terms of their kids, we could talk about how they liked to receive love. They mostly said if a boy bought them a mobile phone!!! HELP!
I felt such a failure at the end. I mean wasn’t it my job to instruct these girls about the pitfalls of easy relationships and the importance of sticking long term to relationships? And I hadn’t even come close to that. But I guess I’m a relational person and was never going to be able to just plunge at the deep end and say through an interpreter on my 2nd day in the community – right let’s talk about sex!
On the plus side, this was the first time these girls had been gathered together in this kind of group and if they can keep that group going that’s going to be such a powerful way to build relationship and then be able to talk about more important stuff than I was able to get on. So there was hope at the end of my feelings of failure.
There was other groups going on, Cat, Sophie and Krystal were taking a group of 13-18 year olds and trying to get them to talk about relationships. At the end of the day, this is preventative stuff. If we can get to these kids early enough we can change the way things are.
And the men were leading a group of 13-18 year old boys with the help of the boys from Love Life. This group went down a storm. I think the fact that Love Life knew the culture and were able to facilitate discussions just made all the difference. They were really able to have an impact and the boys were keen to know more and make a difference in their community. It was so good to hear.
The girls group was trickier; once again, like mine getting the girls to chat and open up about relationships was really hard. Perhaps they are not allowed to talk about it in their culture.
As we sat with Doris after the groups and talked about how hard the groups had been, she wept and we saw how passionately she feels the plight of the community.
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