Camps and Other Extracurricular Activities

Seeing as how it’s rainy season, there isn’t a whole lot to do at site. Most days, most people are in the fields working hard and don’t have time to listen to me prattle on about health topics. Also, it’s summer vacation so kids aren’t really in school. This is the optimum time to do kid oriented projects such as camps (which is something we are mandated to do as part of Peace Corps: Burkina Faso).

Here in Burkina Faso, we have lots of camps: coaching for hope (playing soccer and learning about HIV/AIDS), G2LOW (Guys and girls leading our world), ALC (American Language Center), Science camp (this is in September), and I’m sure there are a lot more.

Camps are a nice change of pace and a way to interact with other volunteers and pick up their styles of doing things- basically a group learning process, and a much coveted opportunity to speak in English. Also, they’re a great change of pace and activity style. For example, education volunteers can help with health projects, and see how health volunteers give a health sensibilization. Health volunteers can teach students about astronomy or English and see what it is like to manage 40 kids at once while trying to stick to an agenda. And, everybody can enjoy playing the role of camp counselor. So, camps are awesome, right? 

Well, the answer is both yes and no.

Here’s the catch-22: doing a camp is a great way to share skills and help out the country. But you’re not in your village- and the village is the entire reason that you’re here. This means that there is an incredibly fine line between doing camps and such to enrich your service, while still being at site enough to be productive in your village. A lot of the weight of finding this balance is placed on the individual volunteer.

My problem is this: I love my site, and I would actually prefer not to leave. Now that’s not in the I’m-a-shut-in-and-just-want-to-sit-in-my-house way but more of a I-feel-most-effective-at-my-site-and-I-have-a-good-working-relationship-with-everybody way. I’ve been at site for 8 months now, so it’s a very interesting thought to think that I’m going to go an entire month without being in Poa (my village). Hopefully, my absence will inspire people to want to act because I have been there helping out with things for a while and now I’m gone- meaning that they can have a clearer idea of what I’m there to do, what I can help with, and other things like that.

Now, the opposite problem is this: there are some people who absolutely hate their sites. This can be due to any number of factors: people, bad workplace relationships, bad living situation- you name it, I’m going to guess it’s happened. This means that the chance to do camps offers an escape from site. While this isn’t exactly bad- but, it is hard to get stuff going in your village, if you’re gone for two weeks, come back for three days, gone for a week, back for a week, gone for two weeks, etc.

I guess what I have to say about camps and other extracurricular activities boils down to this: they’re awesome. Learn as much as you can, and enjoy it as much as possible. But don’t forget the reason why you’re here- take everything you learn, see, and accomplish…and bring it back to your village and share it with everyone else.