I'm Proud to Be A Girl

Today we went to Lugazi High School, and did the "Proud to Be a Girl" campaign. We met with Wilson & Allen first at the Youth Outreach Program Center, and then walked together to the school. At first it was a little discouraging, going into the Principal's office, and telling him about the program, because he seemed very unoptimistic. Almost like a, "Well... good Luck with that" attitude. But then we went into the classroom. There were probably about 50 students total (this was the entire school), and we just started talking to them all together. I didn't understand a bunch about what was said, because Wilson (founder of Youth Outreach Program) and Allen (Financial director of Youth Outreach Program) have a bit of an accent. One of the things that they did was this object lesson with a glass cup. Wilson and Allen said, "this cup is like your life." And they went around to some students and said to them, "if this cup is your life, what do you do with it?" And some of the answers were "protect it" or "love it" or "keep it safe" And then they started to toss the glass cup between themselves saying different things that they might be doing with their life like having sex, doing drugs, dropping out of school, getting pregnant, etc. And during one of the tosses, allen just simply didnt catch it. and it shattered on the ground. And then they said, "what can we do to put this cup back together? What can we do after these things have happened to put our lives back together?" And they picked up all the pieces, and started "trying" to tape the pieces back together and all the kids were laughing, because obviously... none of the pieces were going to go back together. The point was... Your life is never going to be the same after you get pregnant, or you get HIV/AIDS... And we have to protect the lives that we have from having them fall apart.

The really cool part was when we actually started talking to the girls. And when I say we... I really mean the three girls (Abby, Kellie, and Mikaylee), because I'm still sick and since English is their second language, clarity is important. And I haven't been here to prepare lessons with them the whole time.

So they started talking to these girls about sex, and menstration, and relationships and all these different things. It was really cool! Because the kids were actually like... interested in these things. They had so many questions about menstration, like how long it lasted, and how often they came, and all these different things that are like common knowledge to the rest of us. The insane thing, is that these girls have literally never gotten the birds & bee's talk from their parents. Their parents have never prepared them for relationships, never explained what a period is... etc We opened it up for questions about menstration, and it just kept going on and on and on. Like even common sense things, (you'd think) like "how long are they supposed to last?" "What if i haven't started yet?" "What if i have two in one month?" These poor girls are just being deprived necessary life information! It's ridiculous! Anyway, the coolest moment that I had at Lugazi High School was at the end, when 2 girls came up to us and told us, "We are proud to be girls... Before we weren't... But now we are." It was incredible, the impact that 2 hours had on their lives.

There was a conference that they had with the "head girls" of all of the local high schools with the HELP team. They asked them what kind of questions they had about personal hygiene, woman issues, etc. When the head girl from Lugazi high school went back to school, she told all the girls about the campaign that was going to come to the school, called "Proud to be a Girl", and they responded to her... That they were not proud to be girls. In fact, they listed all the reasons that they were not proud to be girls. The head girl showed it to us when we visited, and I copied it down. It was one of the most heartbreaking things that I have ever read. (Some of the spelling is a little weird, but it must be cultural). It's entitled "Why I am not proud to be a girl"

1. Suffering

2. Broked by the boys from succeeding

3. Sex objects

4. Pain while producing (giving birth)

5. Menstration periods

6. Body parts- big breasts

7. Pulling by the Buganda (A cultural practice that involves... genital disfigurement)

8. Minimized in the society, mostly by nales.

9 Being cornered by the boys & men

10. Isolated by boys

11. Under men & boys control

12. Teasing by boys, ie calling girls figure-less

13. Girls are never comfortable, ie she can't spend two days minus bathing & body changes like breasts

14. Eve was a woman and she is the one who tempted Adam to sin (We are claimed to have been the cause of sin in the world

15. Being corrupted (raped)

16. Being taken as slaves, eg house girls

Most of the girls we talked to were not virgins. And most of the girls were pressured or forced into it or raped by boyfriends/male relatives. These girls were ages 14-18. And these girls didn't know that they were allowed to say "No".