Camp! Please Read!

So! Camp G2LOW! There's some really exciting stuff going on in my neck of the woods and I want you guys to be able to get involved! Please take a few minutes to read a letter I've crafted explaining some aspects of the camp I will be co-directing this July. (We're halfway to our goal!!)

            I write to you from the future site of Camp G²LOW Banfora, here in Burkina Faso. If you are having difficulties placing us on the map, Burkina Faso is located between Mali and Ghana in Western Africa. It is a small country, only the size of Colorado, with a population of around sixteen million. The country is not well known in the United States and that is why, among countless other reasons, I am proud to live here as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

                

             However, what is Camp G²LOW? It stands for Guys and Girls Leading Our World. In this developing nation, it is vital that the youth take an active role in its future success and direction. Thus, we feel that boys and girls should learn how to foster self-confidence and knowledge of their own abilities and worth. Despite efforts of the government to redress gender inequality, there remains a great divide between the opportunities for boys and girls. We believe whole-heartedly that the girls deserve a chance to shine and to be encouraged. Of course, to change this, we need to teach both guys and girls to work together.

Our camp will be filled with activities and lessons designed to promoting knowledge, confidence, and cooperation.  Whether they are racing to spell health vocab words, experiencing a day in the other gender’s shoes, testing a condom’s strength, or forming an action plan for a life goal, we trust that the sixty 13-15 year-old students at our camp will learn valuable lessons about themselves and the world around them. Some sessions we will be hosting cover topics such as:

Avoiding Malaria                                                                  The Work of Men and Women
Family Planning                                                                    Friendship Between Boys and Girls
The Ability to Listen                                                            Decision-Making Strategies
The Reproductive System and Puberty                               HIV and STI Awareness
Making a Goal a Reality                                                       Violence and How to Stop It

However, this camp cannot function without your help! We need to find the funds to feed all students and counselors, pay for materials, hire cooks and a guard, and purchase educational materials. Currently, we are planning on having the villages and communities involved provide 54% of the total budget.

Thus, we have $2,690 left to raise! We ask that if you are sympathetic to our goals with this camp that you consider a small donation to give these students a chance to learn, but also to really just be kids at the same time. Each dollar provides dinner to a student. Of course 100% of all donations go directly to financing the camp activities and, better yet in time for tax season, each donation is tax-deductible! Simply go to our website www.donate.peacecorps.gov , search Camp G2LOW, and choose the option under our director’s name, Jess Aceves, or go directly here: https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-686-011.

Myself, the students, and the counselors involved cannot fully express our appreciation.

Sincerely,

Matt Sakow
Financial Director
Camp G²LOW Banfora, Peace Corps Burkina Faso
matt.sakow@gmail.com

So, yeah! Please consider donating even five dollars to this potentially life-changing opportunity for these students! There is more information available via the link. Trust me, I will be posting photos to show just how awesome this camp is!      .

Babytalk

It has been some time since I've last written… Well, there’s no excuse really, other than I've been busy during the day and tired at night.

For example, on Mondays, I teach for three hours in the morning, do some lesson planning afterwards, go home to eat, do some errands, go back to school for my tutoring group for two hours, come back home to shower, and then I have my Jula lessons for 2 hours! If I don’t have anything interesting to do after that I’m often completely beat by 9:00 at night. But, man, I guess that’s a bit normal now. I’m getting old…

Right! Jula lessons! Jula is the commercial language most widely spoken in my region of the country. It has a ton of variants in many different West African countries (think American versus Britannic English). Thus, even though more people in Burkina Faso as a whole speak Mooré, Jula’s a bit more practical. Not that I’ll be busting it out back in the states…

It’s… tough.  I’m learning Jula in French. Fortunately, I’m adequately comfortable with French by now that I get by, but the nuances of language-learning can be lost on me at times. I’m also lucky that my Jula teacher speaks a bit of English. But that means we get sidetracked by him trying to speak in English occasionally. Hey, I can’t complain. So far, I’m able to go to my marché, ask people how they are doing, inquire about their families, and chiefly, buy my veggies. The ladies selling the tomatoes, carrots, onions, etc. get quite a kick out of me talking with them, no matter how briefly. So, I chat, I flash that charming, roguish smile of mine, and I often get gifted an extra pepper or tomato or so at checkout. And by checkout I mean the lady putting the vegetables in a sachet for me.

I’d like to mention briefly how grateful I am that there are carrots and cabbages here now. I had found some rice paper that the previous volunteer had left behind but, being the novice chef that I am, I had no idea how to use it! After shattering a circle or so, I deduced through absolutely brilliant intuition that I could soften it with water. It has completely changed my life. Fry up some rice with make-shift chicken broth and spices, add soy sauce and vegetables, boil some cabbage leaves, throw it all on top of a prepared sheet of rice paper, and VOILA! Spring rolls! My former life as Wrap Master at the grill of my college campus prepared me well for this. Next up to make: homemade bagels and chicken pot pie.

Look at me go, talking about languages and food (I'VE MADE APPLE PIE HERE), when I’ve been neglecting what’s really important: football. Yeah, yeah, I heard the results of our Super Bowl back home. (Good job Flacc-attack. I always believed in you, especially since I saw you in that Dave and Buster’s in Philly that one time…) The real event, seeing as the Jets hadn’t made the playoffs, was the Coupe d’Afrique, the African soccer tournament. Burkina Faso finally made its mark on the international football stage when it made the finals for the first time ever this past Sunday versus Nigeria. I told my fellow teachers that when one examines the evidence, the national team only made the finals after I arrived in country… Coincidence? Probably. In any case, we lost 1-0… I’m not stupid enough to take credit for that…

Also, of note, our first string goalie had gotten a red card during one match only to find out afterwards that his father had died in a car crash not far from where I am. It must have been a HORRIBLE day for him. Today, as I entered Banfora, my taxi brousse had to pull over to allow the funeral party to pass. They had waited for the goalie to return from South Africa to have the burial. Maybe a thousand people (a ton of kids) were running down the road, riding bikes, motos, or cars, while wearing tons of Burkina Faso colors and fancy hats, glasses, etc. I got to see Souleyman, the goalie as he passed, standing in the back of a car. It was a pretty surreal moment.

Anyways, I’m still plugging along, getting ready for the impending hot season. I’m pretty busy each weekend for the next month from meetings in Bobo, committee meetings in Ouaga, and plans to canoe with some hippopotami. Safely, of course. In the meantime, I’m hosting some visitors down my way, administering some tests to my classes, grading said tests, and planning for my camps in July and September. I’ll be writing a post shortly to tell you all about Camp G²LOW Banfora! The best camp ever that needs your support! But that will be in another post shortly. Seriously, stay tuned. It’s pretty cool.

Uhmmm…. So yeah…. Until the next time?