Healthy Women's Artisan Seminar

One of the first things I was able to participate in after moving to the west side of the country was the National Healthy Women's Artisan Seminar put on by the Gender and Development program within Peace Corps Panama. A little over a year ago I wrote a blog about the dramatic saga that took place in my community while trying to get 2 women from Playona to travel across the country to attend this seminar. Claudia made it, Eugenia did not. (Here's the link to the full story: http://amnaylor.blogspot.com/2013/08/winning-losing-and-living-somewhere-in.html )

This year, I did not have women to send to the seminar, but I was invited to be a facilitator for the week. No Embera ladies made it, but there were 25 rural latino and indigenous Ngabe-Bugle women. The Ngabe Bugle are a large indigenous group on the west side of Panama that culturally are the opposite of Embera. They are quiet, reserved, and shy. They are incredibly conservative and have strict gender roles. They are also very, very poor. While the Embera have little money, the jungle they live in provides them with an abundance of food. You don't go hungry in Embera land. In Ngabe land, missing meals is normal. They have a phrase that directly translates as "There is July in our household." It means that the house is empty of food, since July is in-between-crops month.

An example: I was on a crowded bus the other day. A Ngabe woman about my age got on with her 3 kids, 2 preschoolers and a 6ish month old in her arms. They stood in the aisle between the seat next to me and the other bench of seats. There was a couple on the other bench eating a piece of fried chicken. It was 4:30 in the afternoon and it smelled GOOD. It was making me hungry. The little boy looked up at his Mom and said, "I'm hungry, I want some." Mom hurriedly and quietly shushed him and told him, "We already ate today. You'll get oats tomorrow at school." Sad day.

So that's a little context into the home life of these indigenous women. For a lot of them, the prospect of coming to a seminar is exciting just because it is 3 guaranteed free meals a day.

So Monday afternoon the ladies start arriving. We sat down at tables to get to know them and paint their nails. We had to reassure them that this week was a girls week only: there would be no men present, so it was a safe place where we could be ourselves and talk about anything. Some women were still hesitant to let their nails get painted, so we told them that we had nail polish remover so that we could remove the polish at the end of the week so that they couldn't get in trouble with their fathers, husbands, or other family members for it.

It was exciting to talk to them and paint their nails for them because I could see that they felt so rebellious and glamorous. I was sitting with 5 women, a 16 year old pregnant girl, two women in their thirties, and 2 older women that don't remember their age. (50s? 70s? It's impossible to tell.) All were Ngabe. We talked about how many kids each one had, and one of the older ladies told me the life story of all NINE of her children. After painting one woman's nails, she just sat there sheepishly grinning and looked at them for quite awhile. I don't think she's ever worn nail polish before.

Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with sessions on artisan crafts- teaching them how to make wire jewelry, how to make jewelry out of recycled trash, how to make sombreros from weaving leaf fibers, and how to make purses out of plastic bags. We also included sessions on self-esteem and values, on money management, good business practices, and customer service. The women were very engaged and active during the training sessions, but really just wanted to spend more time being crafty.

We continued working on crafts in the evenings, many women working and chatting right up until curfew. It was awesome watching leaders arise from within the group. We had a Ngabe woman that had attended the seminar last year return this year to teach the women how to crochet hankies and help out with a nutrition seminar.

Thursday we talked two big topics: domestic violence and sexual health.

We spent the morning talking about DV and presented the cycle of violence to them and talked about the characteristics of emotional & physical abuse. We had them draw a picture of what DV means to them and I was skeptical. These were really quiet, reserved women. Getting them to fill out their workbooks throughout the week was an uphill battle- and that was easy stuff. I thought that there was no way they would draw anything. I was wrong.

Every woman had a picture, and every picture had a real life story. I mean, I know domestic violence is everywhere, I have seen it in my own community, but the fact that every single woman there was either a victim or personally knew a victim was shocking. As PCVs, we tread lightly around some of these topics because we have neither the training nor the resources to really tackle them head on. So the purpose of the session was to raise awareness of what it is and how the cycle of abuse works, and to show them that this is a global problem that tons of women face, that they are not alone.

That evening a Ngabe lawyer- yes, an indigenous woman who went to law school- came to talk to the women. She was dressed in the traditional Ngabe nagua (a long dress with triangle patterns) and she explained the legal system in Panama and what a woman's options are if she wanted to report abuse. She has an office nearby and works specifically with domestic violence cases. The women were very engaged and asked tons of great questions. When she asked for questions, there were a couple of women who raised their hands not to ask a question or get feedback, but simply to tell their story. The lawyer ended up spending the night at the seminar with us in order to give women more chances to talk to her and ask questions.

Between those sessions, we spent the afternoon talking about sexual health. I was co-facilitating that session with another Volunteer and a doctor from the Department of Health. The doctor called with a conflict the day before, so we had to scramble to replace her. We found the HIV/AIDS education specialist from the nearby clinic and asked him to put together a presentation on the different kinds of contraception. He came and talked to the women for a little over an hour about the different kinds of contraception available in Panama, especially for the rural and indigenous regions. Again, I expected the women to stonewall us, here we were asking them to not just talk about sex, a highly taboo topic, but we were asking them to talk about it with a man. Again, I was surprised. We gave them all little slips of paper so they could ask their questions anonymously, but most didn't have a problem just asking directly.

After a break, we met up again and I did a game with them that simulates how STI's spread using glitter. We then practiced putting on condoms and that was weird- here I was, a twenty-something teaching women my mom's age how to use condoms. While a lot of these women were passed the child-bearing stage of their life, our goal was to get them to teach their children and grandchildren. Although, those poor kids who had to be taught by grandma how to use a condom! It's better than getting HIV though...

It was a really fun week and I learned a lot working with those women. It was also a great cultural introduction for me since I have worked very little outside the Embera culture thus far in my service. One of the best parts of the week was seeing the change that would come over women when they would work on or show off their crafts. Art really is empowerment!

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