in the life of a teenage girl

I figure since I have been here a year I should start in on some cultural aspects of this culture. First up what it is like to be a teenage girl in this society. First off this is a male dominated society and some women are subjected to harassment on a daily basis. The women do all the house work from cooking to cleaning, doing laundry, taking care of the kids, pulling water, and other miscellaneous tasks. As you can imagine this is hard work. Cooking dinner alone is over a four hour process. With all this work it leaves no time to study for school and no free time to yourself. Add on top of that some men will be very insensitive, to making bad jokes, catcalling you, making you fetch them a glass of water when all they are doing is sitting under a tree drinking attya. Plus add the fact that once you are married then school is over and you are to work in the house and have babies while your husband works for money. It is no wonder that most of the girls in the villages over here never get passed a middle school education. Yet life is life so what are you going to do but put on a smile and keep trucking. As the human race is a diverse population this is not the case across the board. For example my village is very progressive. My brothers will do their laundry if they need it the next day or if their soccer gear is dirty they will wash it. They clean their room and are respectful by telling my younger brothers to get them stuff instead of my sisters. My village doses wait to marry their daughters off until they are 17-18 years unlike some more remote parts that practice 12 year old marriages. To offset this problem we do a lot of women’s education, for example we in the Kaolack region are putting together a girls camp. This is weeklong leadership camps were we teach the girls about gardening, the environment, women’s health, business, and have motivational speakers throughout the week. All in a camp like setting at a hotel in the delta outside of Sokone. As you can imagine we could always use donations use the link below to navigate to the web page. Yet that is not all that we do. In my village I do my own laundry, talk to the young men in my village on what they can do to help their future wife. In my opinion this is the only way you can change things you have to get people thinking about what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes only then can you slowly get things to change.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-198