Living in Lesotho: They graduated!

Last Friday my kiddos graduated from this round of Grassroot Soccer! So my second to last intervention before I scoot on out of here is over (in order to reach all grade 6 and 7 students, we split them up into two teams. We'll do the program with team 2 beginning in August, after we return from winter break).

It was really different this time around, and in some ways much more challenging, which mostly came from doing it with boys and girls together. Boys and girls are so divided here in daily life, and putting them together, having them work with each other, and creating a unified team and a safe space was much more difficult than when we did the camp with girls only.

For example, one of the last practices is called "gender stadium", in which, after having a team discussion about the difference between sex and gender, if they think gender roles can change and such, the boys sit in a circle and talk about being boys while the girls listen and vice versa for girls. At the end, they come back together for a group discussion. One of the discussion questions is, "if you could tell the opposite gender one thing, what would it be?" And when the girls responded, the boys automatically took everything personally and started yelling at them.

Part of that is maturity, and part of that is it takes time and practice to learn how to talk about these issues without getting defensive. Boys and girls pretty much only talk to each other in biting language, so this was a first step.

It's a challenge worth struggling over. This separation is the reason why it's important to put them together.

All this being said, facilitating this stuff is still the highlight of my work here, and GRS is still my pie in the sky.