If you read that last entry, thanks for bearing with me. I just finished my second girls' camp on Santo, which went A LOT smoother than the first. There were fewer girls and most of them had very little interest in attracting prowlers (see previous entry).

I'm now headed off to the island of Malekula for a week to work with some other volunteers who have just started up a youth center. Jennie Harris, PCV Tongoa, and I will be running an adolescent reproductive health workshop while we're there and hopefully train a couple interested youth to continue running them at the center. I'm looking forward to it because I LOVE reproductive health workshops. I think it's a combination of my interest in the topic and most participants' newness to the topics we discuss that makes it so enjoyable. Most topics either affect their daily lives, or will very soon, so most of the youth find the workshop helpful. And enjoyable, since for the most part NOBODY talks about sexual health here until after you're pregnant or caught a disease and even then it's limited. Even married women hardly ever talk to each other about child birth and other important reproductive health issues. Quite strange. In fact I definitely expected a lot more of a support network among women here. I always read or heard about women in 3rd world countries (yes, I lumped them all together) supporting one another and thus in some sense easing any maltreatment they might endured due to their gender. But I've been looking for this "underground" support network for two years now and haven't found a trace. Even asked other volunteers, had extensive conversations/interviews with my close female village friends- no gat. I can't find a thing. So, although a support network may exist, it isn't in the form that I can identify.

That's it for now.