We went back to Kamwama school for day two today. The main topic was “empowerment”, so the girls were split up from the boys. The goal of the discussion was to make the girls feel like they have a choice in whether they have sex with a boy or not, and to learn about their bodies and ask any questions they wanted.

We finished up on environmental education in the morning and then had lunch. Apparently after the school kids had gone back inside the classrooms, World Camp fed the ‘rugrats’, which are the village kids who are too young to be participating in the sessions. I’m really glad I missed that part, because apparently the rugrats starting stealing each others food and fighting each other for it!

Our kids were OK.. they LOVED practicing saying ‘No’ to me as I walked around the circle, but when we asked who’s decision it was to have sex they said it was the boy’s decision. We worked hard to change that idea by getting them to open up with some more activities, and the rest of empowerment went pretty well.

At one point during the empowerment session the girls had been trying to say things to me in Chichewa (which I didn’t understand) and then giggling when I made a face about it. Then a 12-year-old girl turned to me, and in plain English (they had not used one word since we got there) said, “give me your money”. I was like, “what?” and she repeated it. It kind of broke my spirits a little bit because she looked me dead in the eye and said it, where we’re sitting there trying to teach them to work for their goals and be better people. It kind of made me question whether we really have an impact on them or not.

Last night we had a reflection session to talk about how the day had gone and it seemed to have been harder today than yesterday for everyone. We got several questions from the kids that just broke our hearts. We have to be up and out at 7:30am tomorrow for the last day at Kamwama, so hopefully we’ll end on a good note!