Estrellas del Futuro, Día Internacional de la Mujer, Totonicapán 2011

Nimapá Segundo Girls: Miriam, Sandra, Yoselin, Evelyn, & Sandra

On Tuesday, March 8^th Christina and I hosted the most incredible International Women’s Day event.  It was a full-day event for 31 of our female students, and we also had the participation of 6 Guatemalan working women, and Claudia Canastuj, our boss’s boss who collaborated with us in co-hosting the event and inviting participants.  There was quite a lot of planning and work involved and the day ran seamlessly.  It was really wonderful for things to go according to plan (for once) and was definitely my most successful and favorite activity I have done in Totonicapán thus far. The way the day began was a good indication of how things would pan out: ALL of my students (with the exception of the two I knew had to work and would arrive much later) arrived at 7:59 AM (we were scheduled to start at 8).  I can’t even begin to express how I proud I am of them for being on time.  That could easily be considered one of the day’s greatest successes.

Super pilas girls from Chuclujuyup

5 of our 7 Female HCN Participants

Me & my Xantún girls - Flory, Paola, Maritza, & Rosario

Me, Christina, and the Chuculjuyup girls

Me & the Nimapá girls

Christina and I decorated more than 40 shirts with gold and blue puff paint to say “Estrellas del Futuro” (the name of our event), followed by “Totonicapán” and several gold stars.  After an opening ice-breaker, we handed out shirts, and with permanent markers all the girls wrote their names across the back and then were told to decorate their shirts to represent why they’re proud and happy to be a woman.  The girls were really creative with their shirts and each one presented to the group what they drew or wrote and why.  This is when their personalities really came out.  Hands down, this was my favorite part of the day.  Many came up with great little motivational statements:  “Soy libre para tomar mis decisiones” (I’m free to make my own decisions), “Quiero disfrutar cada momento de mi vida” (I want to enjoy every moment of my life), “Soy una reina le guste o no!” (I’m a queen, you like it or not!), “Quiero recibir amor y dar amor, merezco ser feliz que todos me respeten como mujer. Feliz Día de la Mujer” (I want to receive love and give love, I deserve to be happy and be respected by all. Happy Women’s Day), “Orgullosa de ser mujer” (Proud to be a woman), and my favorite, “Soy el futuro de Guatemala. Soy mujer” (I’m the future of Guatemala. I’m a woman).  I invited all my Segundo-level girls from Nimapá, all my girls from Xantún (Xantún’s my tiny school – only 6 girls in all), and then one from each section of Chuculjuyup.  I let the teachers from Chucul pick which girls to invite and they picked the leaders from each class (one from each section of Primero, Segundo, and Tercero).  Those girls were among the most intelligent and outspoken girls there.  I was so impressed by their comments and participation.

After decorating and presenting shirts, the women we invited talked about their life experiences in relation to family, careers, decision-making, and education while we all refaccionared (snacked) on bread and juice.  This was an important part of the day; there were secretaries, teachers, Ministry of Education administrators; they had varied experiences – some came from families who supported their career choices, others who did not. Single moms, married women; they talked about discrimination from machisto bosses, changing their mind about what they wanted to do with their lives, and more.

This was a good lead into our next, brief section on metas (goals).  We told the girls to draw a picture of what they wanted their lives to look like in ten years and to draw or list things they will have accomplished, and then we spoke on short- and long-term goals.

Minefield

Crab Walk

Relay Race

Michael Jackson baile

After this came the most fun and active part of our day – various team competitions and physical challenges.  We broke the girls into 5 teams – not by schools, so they were forced to meet and work with new people – and went outside where it was unusually hot.  The first challenge was called minefield in which one girl from each team was blindfolded in front of a field of chairs and her teammates had to guide her with verbal clues through the maze.  If she touched a chair she had to restart.  Each girl from the team had to be blindfolded and the maze was changed.  Each team was led by one of our adult female participants, and Christina and I rotated to help guide and give instructions.  After successfully completing each challenge, each team earned a few letters of a word that at the end had to be unscrambled to spell a word that is important to teamwork and life skills in general.  The words were perseverancia (perseverance), ganas (willingness/drive), liderazgo (leadership), autoestima (self-esteem), and comunicación (communication).  For the second challenge the girls had to come up with a list of ten elements that are important to a healthy relationship, whether with friends, family, boyfriends, peers, co-workers, etc.  For the third challenge, they had to get into pairs within their teams; one was blindfolded, the other was not, and they had to go from walking to a full-out run, as a trust challenge.  Next was the Carrera de Relevos (relay race).  This was the most fun to watch.  The five teams came together and the first girl had to spin 5 times and run – they had to do each challenge to a wall, and then back to the next person; the second crab-walked; the third ran with an egg in a spoon (at least one broke); the fourth had 2 pieces of newspaper and had to walk across the concrete only on the newspaper, never touching the ground; the fifth had to run backwards with an orange wedged between her chin and neck; and the sixth had to chug a whole bottle of water and then run.  To finish, all the girls as a team had to do 5 star jumps – something I learned from many field hockey and rugby practices where you start from a squat to a high jump, legs and arms straight out like star and you scream “I’m a star!” for each one – in this case they yelled, “Soy una estrella!” which fit in nicely with our theme.

Nutrition Workshop

Then we divided into 3 groups and the girls had half an hour to choreograph a two- minute dance to a Michael Jackson song.  We had “Man in the Mirror, “Bad,” and “Beat It.”  For the most part uninspired, but fun nonetheless.

After lunch, Anne Sprinkel, our friend and Peace Corps Healthy Schools volunteer came and gave a great interactive workshop on nutrition.

Our last activity of the day was a presentation on international women – we featured women who’ve done great things to help their communities around the world, hitting just about every continent.  It was complete with a map, as most of these girls’ knowledge of life outside of their own department, let alone country, is quite limited.  Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala) was also included, along with an inspirational women’s rights and women’s history youtube video we found featuring women from the U.S. and Latin America.

We gave out prizes to all the girls – they were able to come up in order of how they placed in the competitions.  We had various fun little gifts we picked up at the Xela equivalent of a dollar store – face glitter, glow in the dark nail polish, cell phone charms, toothbrushes, M&M’s, and other snacks.  For all the women who attended we handed out flowers and told them we would be delivering them framed group pictures from the day.  We were able to fund the event through GLOW Peace Corps funds we applied for to pay for t-shirts and art materials, as well as donations from Christina’s friends back in Spokane, Washington, and my parents in Alexandria, Virginia.  Thank you.

Christina Meredith, Claudia Canastuj, & Me

Claudia from the Ministry of Ed said that potentially they could schedule it into the Ministry of Ed calendar for next year, which could make it an official Ministry event, meaning funding and potentially more girls.  We used an event space called Creps, located in central Toto, which rents out large salons for birthdays, weddings, conferences, etc.  The owner was really generous – I think he is a little enamored with me – and gave us quite a discount.  He reduced the price of food, and normally has a Q3000 minimum to use the space; we spent a total of Q800 (food for 40 people) there.

As I said, the day was a great success, and the best part is that all the girls had fun and were excited to participate in something unlike they had ever done before.  It also definitely built a lot of confianza not just between the girls, but between me and my students who were picked to go.  Yesterday I went to Xantún to teach and we sat outside the institute chatting and having them teach me how to play Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on the recorder for over half an hour before I realized how late it was and that the teacher who comes to unlock the school hadn’t arrived yet.  I called him and fijese que (common Guatemalan expression that means “don’t you know,” but usually is an opening to say that something that was supposed to happen isn’t going to happen), he was not going to be able to arrive with the keys so no class today.  My alumnas asked if I wanted to see a waterfall.  They took me down a little path surrounded by crop fields to a meandering stream.  We followed the stream, jumping across from grass to muddy bank, up to a little waterfall.  They have such a lovely spot, it’s only minutes from the school, and yet I’d never been there before.  We returned following the stream to a place where there’s a larger bend in the river, one side of which is like a mini peninsula, bordered on three sides by water and on the other by vegetable land.  On the opposite side of the water are trees that the boys were climbing.  They were climbing up twenty, twenty-five feet high, then interlacing their legs in limbs and dangling upside down, arms free.  I know I’m getting old because watching kids climb high in trees makes me nervous.  One tree had a large broken limb that had not come entirely off, but instead dangled over the water.  The girls would cling to the limb, as if to a rope swing, swing out over the muddy, dirty water and back to the shore.  It did not seem like the most secure swing, but they did convince me to try it at least one.  It’s hard to put into words how beautiful the day was.  It rained earlier in the day, but by the late afternoon the sun had burned through and was shining hard in the bluest sky.  It shone down through the leaves of the tree giving everything a golden, speckled glow.  The air was very cool, but not cold, and the stream was like something drawn for a storybook, wandering serpent-like down from the waterfall by fields of corn, goats, grassy banks with the same little purple flowers that grow in my garden back home, and trees perfect for children to climb.  After a while we all played tag, and then just sat down in the grass in the sun until it started to get cold.  It was one of those moments you just want to absorb as best as you can and know you’ll remember it for the rest of your life.  It just may have been my favorite afternoon in Guatemala.