March 8, 2009: International Women's Day.....Campo style!

For about a month and a half now a volunteer who lives a half hour from me and I have been planning an event for International Women's Day. Our original idea stemmed from the fact that the Gender and Development Peace Corps Committee here in the DR was offering small grants to volunteers who wanted to host events in their sites. My friend and I decided to hold an event together that would bring mothers and daughters to celebrate the day together, since often we have seen that mothers and daughters don't have much interaction apart from household chores and daily life. Our idea was to bring mothers and daughters from 3 different sites together (about 30 total) and do team building activities and a health presentation with them. My friend lives in a site where there is a very strong, active youth group and she proposed the idea to them. The group loved the idea and wanted to expand it to 100 people and include a march. In early February we found out we had received the grant from Peace Corps and I took a group of my youth to her site to have a meeting about the event. We then planned on inviting about 80 people from 4 communities, doing a presentation at the beginning, then a presentation on women's health and an art activity, closing with a small ceremony and lunch. The grant we got from Peace Corps was not going to cover all the costs of such a large event, so we decided to do a raffle as well to raise funds.
During February we sold raffle tickets and did some preliminary planning, and the first week of March we had to do lots of shopping and running around to get the event ready. On my side, I had to make sure my youth sold their raffle tickets, that we invited the right number of mothers and daughters, and that we had transportation to the event. Many girls here in Las Pajas don't live with their mothers; they live with grandmothers or aunts or other relatives that take them in while their parents are elsewhere working, so I told the girls to simply invite older women who they respected and wanted to spend the morning with.
At the end of February we had a scare because we found out that a softball tournament that was being organized by the government of our province was going to start on the same day as our event, and many girls in my community were going to be involved in it. We decided to continue with the same date because we had already arranged for that day, and even though a lot of girls did go to the softball game to play, in the end there were plenty of people who wanted to come with us—partially because I had told them that we would stay that afternoon to watch the softball game.
On the 8th we were supposed to go in a bus from my friend's town who would come and pick us up in the morning. My friend paid the driver half of what he said he would charge us the day before he was to pick us up, and we planned to pay him the other half at the end of the day. Knowing that in this country things can be a little unreliable, both my friend and I were a little worried about the transportation, and indeed the morning of the 8th, after I had told all the participants to be ready to go at 730 am, my friend called and told me that the driver didn't want to take us and had returned the money to her. That threw me into a frenzy, so both she and I tried to think of solutions. Finally one of the girls that was going to go with me went and woke up one of the few men in our community that has a truck, and told him (not asked or begged, which I would have done, but no, she TOLD him) to take us to my friend's community, which amazingly he did. So instead of riding in a bus, all of us girls, dressed up for the event, climbed into the back of a truck that usually carries cows or large pieces of iron, and happily rode the half hour through sugar cane and cacao fields to my friend's community.
When we arrived at 9 o'clock (the event was supposed to start at 8) we were the first ones there, and we had come from the farthest away. We waited until about 930 when some people trickled in, and then just decided to start the event with the 30 or so people that were there. We did introductions, several important people from the community talked, we did some fun ice breakers and my girls presented a poem they had written. We finished with a team building activity where groups of two had to carry one another like babies, on their backs, or had to lie down one on top of the other; the ones who did it the slowest were out. The women enjoyed the games a lot, and it was fun to see everybody having so much fun, laughing and practically crying while watching grown women try to carry each other!
After a break for some coffee and crackers we came back to do an art activity. We had each pair of “mothers” and their “daughters” set goals for their daughters' future and then make a collage of those goals. At first we were a little worried because some of the mothers don't write and we thought they might get discouraged with the activity, since the first part they are supposed to write the goals. But the teams worked together and in the end everybody was coming up to us to show us their collages and their goals.
We then took a short break and came back for a presentation on birth control that another health volunteer gave. She talked about all different kinds of birth control that people could use, had the girls race to see who could put a condom on a banana the right way, and then had them play a musical chairs type game to remember all the different kinds of birth control she talked about. They enjoyed that a lot, and definitely learned something as well.
We finished by giving out certificates to all the women and eating a good hearty meal. At times the event was incredibly hectic and I will admit I was afraid it might be a flop, but it turned out to be a lot of fun, and I know that everyone enjoyed it.
After the event all the women who had come with me went to cheer on the Las Pajas softball team who had just began to play at the field in the town we were in. My volunteer friends and I cleaned up and then headed over to the field as well. For about 3 hours we were all there cheering on the team—even though the sun was bright, it was incredibly windy and everybody had been up since 7 am when our team won everybody went and ran a victory lap around the field, chanting and cheering. We stayed a while longer to watch the other teams play and then all the women who had come with me piled into our truck and we went back home, chanting and cheering as we left the town and chanting and cheering as we entered Las Pajas. When the girls got out of the truck they continued dancing and chanting about the win, even though the softball team hadn't arrived home yet. When the team did arrive, they all went directly to the local “disco” to dance “ga-ga,” a kind of dancing and music with Haitian roots. My volunteer friends returned to Las Pajas with me so we watched some of the festivities, but we were too tired to continue with the girls, who were up half the night celebrating. All in all it was a great day for the women of Las Pajas!