Last week, I attended my first Youth
Day (or Jour de Jeunesse). It is a day to celebrate youth (duh)
where they march in a parade and perform dances and skits. Children
are given money by their parents and can also earn money if they
choose to participate in the performances. However, this processes
includes grown ups sticking dollar bills to children while they
dance. Let's just say for us westerners this can feel rather
uncomfortable. Because I am “the white of Danfili”, I was of
course given a seat in the front row to watch the festivities. It
started with both the elementary school and high school marching.
School clubs and town organizations followed. Afterwards, several
students performed dances. (There are two nights leading up to the
celebration where many more students perform dances and skits, as
well.) Lastly, and this was the most exciting part for me, was a
sketch by the “Hommes Dynamiques”.
The Hommes Dynamiques (a.k.a. Dynamic
Men) is a group that the previous volunteer worked with. She
identified 10 respected and progressive men in the community and led
an educational training for them. They were educated on three
topics: family planning, prenatal consultations, and vaccinations.
Because these three things are very underutilized in Danfili, their
job after the training was to share the new information with the
community. Many people don't understand the importance of these
three topics or have misunderstandings about them. At the end of the
week of training, the men led an educational meeting to share what
they had learned. The understanding was that they would continue
work in the community, but they found that they did not have
direction once the volunteer left. After meeting with them in
January, they confirmed to me that they wanted to continue work and
suggested that Youth Day would be a good way to start. Because it
can be challenging to identify motivated individuals in the
community, I was thrilled that they already had ideas. I explained
that because I had never seen a Youth Day, that they would have to
take the lead with the planning. They decided to march with the
other community organizations and have a sign made for this and
future events. They also felt that a sketch in Fulfulde would be the
best way to share information. Although I attended several planning
meetings with them, they did most of the creative work. The day of
the festival, everything went great! They were introduced to the
community as a new group and marched with their new sign. After the
kids' dances, three of the men performed the sketch, two as
“villagers” and the other an “Hommes Dynamiques”. He
explained the importance of family planning and did a demonstration
of how a bigger family means dividing food among more people. I
turned around during the sketch and the men sitting around me (who
were the more important in the community, because they had assigned
chairs as well) were watching intently. The cherry on top? Later
that day, one boutique owner who I know asked me about the different
methods of family planning available at the hospital! This was a
huge success not just because it was the first real work I feel like
I've done. It was great that it was a continuation of work that the
previous volunteer did. It was also really wonderful that the group
themselves organized the presentation because these two things
contribute to the magic word: Sustainability!
In other news, I had my first real
health issue this past week as well, while preparations for Youth Day
were going on. I felt nauseous on and off for about 4 days before
finally going to the hospital and finding out I had microbes in my
stomach! Quite frankly, compared to some of my fellow volunteers
maladies, microbes isn't anything to complain about. No worries Mom
and Dad, with the help of 3 days of meds I am already 100% again.
This week I'm headed to Bamenda for IST
and it feels good to go with one success under my belt and microbe
free!
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| Some of the adorable primary school kids marching |
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| Our high school marching (these girls are the minority in Danfili; at our high school there are 50 girls and 136 boys) |
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| Some of the girls at the high school performing |
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| Hommes Dynamiques marching |
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| The Grio (town crier) |
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| Some really talented girls dancing |
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| Some of the Hommes Dynamiques during their sketch |
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| More of the Hommes Dynamiques sketch |
Liz, I am so impressed with you (and your microbes! yuk!)!!! You are such an amazing young woman and I could not be more proud of you! I love you so much. ~Jolisa
ReplyDeleteGood morning, how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are very small countries with very few population, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this, I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Cameroon? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Cameroon in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Calle Valencia, 39
28903 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally, I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez