Girls Conference

Every year, volunteers in Guinea try to organize regional Girls Conferences. This year, ours was a four day event held in our town for girls aged 14 to 18. All of the volunteers in our region invited one or two girls from their villages to come spend 4 days learning about various girl-specific topics. We covered topics like the role of women and women's rights, scholarship and education, public speaking, family planning, AIDS, excision (aka female genital mutilation, read this wikipedia article if you want to learn something about it), environmental protection, etc. A little bit of everything. It was a bit of a headache trying to organize and carry out, but it was a great experience for the girls to get out of their villages, meet other girls, learn, and have an opportunity to have a little fun.

Gender roles here in Guinea are very much ingrained in society. According to custom, it's the women's role to cook, clean, raise the children, and follow orders. Many women are breaking that mold today, but the process is slow and difficult. The one thing we can try to do is educate the younger generations and hope for their future.

We were only able to have 21 girls attend the conference, but one of our messages to them was to go home and share what they learned in their communities. We want them to be confident role models for their friends. Already one of the girls Dan and I invited enthusiastically told me about how she talked to her family and even a random woman at the water pump about the problems with excision. One of her young cousins is supposed to get excised this summer. In talking with her family about it, she convinced one of her uncles to help her talk to the other aunt about not going through with it. I'm not expecting a miracle, but I'm proud of her enthusiasm and her courage in wanting to share what she now knows. Trying to stop such a long ingrained ritual isn't going to happen over night (or anytime in the near future), but the fact that we helped her stop and think and want to share makes me encouraged for the future.

The girl with the green head scarf is the one I was talking about. She is one of our neighbors and the oldest daughter of Dr. Bah, our close friend who recently died in a motorcycle accident.

Dan had the chance to video tape some during the conference. The last day of the conference, while the girls were visiting professional women at work, he put together a short summery film to show them. That evening, we rented out a "video club" (aka Guinean-style movie theater) and watched it. Everyone loved it. We'll try to get it up on youtube or something. We also showed them the HIV/AIDS video that Dan helped produce earlier this year.

I just wanted to post this picture so you could see what a Guinean movie theater is like. Normally it'd be packed (and very smelly). You come to a video club to watch the news, the latest soccer match, or an awesome Chuck Norris/Jackie Chan action film. Personally owned television sets are few and far between, so this is what you get.