G.L.O.W.

While last year I was able to attend GLOW with my faithful counterpart, Zandi, this year we were entrusted with four young women from Mpaka and a second counterpart, Xoliswa.  So much preparation and planning was put into this years Camp GLOW and now I am finally basking in the glow of its success. The Mpaka team taught me so much about patience, persistence and how to overcome adversity as a young woman here in Swaziland, and I taught them how to make Smores, so, I think we are even. This year we had 50 girls, 20 counselors and 17 Peace Corps Volunteers participate, and even made it into the Swazi Observer!  My favorite day was Art Day, where Yebo Art from Mbabane came in with local artists and gave the girls the very rare opportunity to express themselves in forms of writing, portraits and screen printing.  While American youth come together frequently to learn and have fun at camp functions, Swazi youth rarely have the time to get together and learn outside of school, and it was endearing how much they prized the opportunity to come.  Not one girl called home crying asking to go home – which I have done to my poor mother more than once while attending girls camp. (Sorry, Mom!)

Now our job is to recruit more young women to form a Mpaka GLOW Club, but first, I am off to Mozambique to swim in the ocean and eat clams!!

Here are some great pictures from GLOW 2013. We also performed a dance that will be posted as a video on Facebook shortly, however, I refuse to watch it because I feel like it will bring me down to the reality that it wasn’t that cool, but it felt really cool at the time! I hope you enjoy.  

GLOWING!!



Emma and her 2 campers living on the edge!






Self portraits created by the campers.



Bring Your Fire!