G.L.O.W. (Girls Leading Our World)

G.L.O.W. (Girls Leading Our World)

(I spent 4 days at a girls empowerment camp at the end of June, where sessions on leadership, HIV/AIDS, gender equality, freedom of expression and healthy relationships were led by various organizations here in partnership with Peace Corps volunteers.)

Here is part of a journal entry that I wrote on the last morning there, while sitting on the grass in the sun, watching the girls pack up to go. I think it captures the essence of that experience better than hindsight memory can.

Almost as soon as the music started to blast from the speakers, 60 girls began to dance. As the night wore on, the dancehall and house beats began to seep through their veins and nerves, causing more people to sit down as spectators than to dance, but re-energizing a small group of them. Completely spur of the moment, a group of maybe 10 or 12 girls began to walk in pairs across the room, one cat-walking and playing the female role, the other clearly playing their male counterpart. They got into their roles, playfully teasing each other, gesturing, making flirty eyes, sneaking glances back and forth as if flirting with each other across a room, and then strutting their way off to the other side and then to the back of the line, making space for the next pair to do their thing across the space. These girls were feeling their power, and it was mesmerizing and beautiful to watch. By the end of the night, they alone were keeping me awake.

Of course I danced with them at first, and I felt completely free and alive and happy, high off life and sugar from the s’mores I had just eaten. I felt so incredibly impressed with these girls, and also sort of in disbelief that all of this was real: That I turned 24 at a girls empowerment camp in Lesotho. That I got to eat s’mores, of all things. The confidence and knowledge and leadership capabilities that these girls already possessed, and that I got to spend time in their beautiful presence. That I got to be a person who would reinforce to them the power of their own self-worth was such a gift.

There is something so raw about being a teenager. I wouldn’t want to repeat those years, but being around these girls brought home the memory of that rawness to me. That feeling that nothing is certain or safe, that your boyfriend may be cheating on your and your friends may be gossiping about you, all of it coupled with the anxiety associated with appearing cool and like none of it really matters even though it’s everything. But with all that comes this, yes dramatic, but absolutely unabashed commitment to the present, whether they realize it or not.

A mean look has the power to ruin a girls entire day, and events feel much more earth shattering than they actually are. Larger than life, even. This rawness can be painful, and it can also be incredibly powerful.

It was really neat to witness these girls being creative, demonstrating their knowledge and wits and smarts, 

and doing it with other girls who were there for the same reason, all of them feeling a little more free and a little less self-conscious than they do in the real world. I’m so proud.

The goddesses in my group

Khotso.