Artisan Camp

Confession: several months ago, when fellow PCV Sarah asked me to help her with a camp this August, I was hesitant. And yet, despite our tough experiences with spring camp, she managed to convince me to participate.  "It's all girls!" she explained. "And it's art camp!"  I'm glad she did.  After ten-days in a room with 50 or so campers eager to learn and play and color, I'm pleased to admit that this was my best camp experience yet.

PCVs on kitchen duty.

My friend has a great blog with a great post about this camp that she organized, so I'll just share a few stories from my perspective.  She works with a group of artisans in her site, and it was the local artisans who initially came up with the idea of a camp for girls in the community.  For months, they worked together to put together a summer camp that would, from 9am-5pm, teach girls traditional Moroccan artisan skills: Fesi embroidery, 3la 7sab embroidery, crochet, and basket embellishment.  She also arranged for guest speakers from the community to come lead workshops with the girls about all sorts of things.

In traditional camp fashion, the days events didn't always follow the written schedule.  Speakers dropped out, but the girls kept crafting.  Lunch was hours late, but the girls kept crafting.  It was impressive to see 10-year olds occupy themselves for hours with a needle and thread.  They barely stopped to drink their tea and eat sweets during breaks, and that is saying something.

Heather, former PCV and founder of Mushmina, came to visit and chat with the girls.

These baskets will be made into handbags.

In the Peace Corps, I find that I'm frequently considered an "expert" on things that I have little experience with.  Case in point: each morning at camp, we had about an hour of exercise class with the campers, and all of us volunteers took turns teaching what we know.  For the first time in my life, I assumed the role of ballet teacher.  This meant a good 20 minutes of stretching to Taylor Swift followed by a basic introduction to ballet barre exercises (without the barre).  After, I showed the campers clips from Swan Lake.  I was sore for days after that first ballet class, but it was super fun to see them try and plie.  It was even more fun to see them watch in wonder the Danse des Petits Cygnes.

Ballet with Britt

While the camp definitely benefited the campers, it was also (selfishly) a huge win for me.  It was a gift to hang out with five other female PCVs for a week and to learn from their experiences.  I had another round of msemen lessons from the ladies in the kitchen.  The artisans gave all of us PCVs lovely necklaces.  I slept on the roof and woke up to a chicken walking across my body (this goes in the win! another cool Peace Corps story! category).  I also picked up Fesi Embroidery, mostly from my 11-year-old teacher-friend.  I now have something productive to do when watching episodes of The West Wing while hiding from the sun during a long summer afternoon.  You are all getting embroidered presents from me for the rest of your life.  Okay? Okay.

This is how I looked when I started to learn how to embroider: frustrated.

Then I got myself a teacher who communicated more on my level: an 11-year-old.

Success!

Super staff!