The next day was HIV and healthy relationships. The coolest moment of the day for me was having a participant stand up and do a condom demo with me. She’s been through a peer educator training and is waiting for placement, but to stand up in front of a room of your peers and talk about condoms is hard for anyone, for her to do it and do a bang up job of it was just awesome to see. All I did was hold a banana.

The GAD committee has been developing a few new sessions to try to make them interactive and more relevant. My favorite of the new sessions was Jenga. It works like this: Build half a tower. Read a statement about family relationships. Decide if it builds up or breaks down the relationship. For every build up, add a block; for every break down, take a block away. It allows the participants to discuss if they should be building or breaking with each statement. It has to be a communal decision because they don’t want the tower to fall. Eventually it does, and it is always a bad thing that sends it tumbling down, much like in life. The participants really got it and enjoyed the game as well.

The last day of the camp the participants run their own mini-camp with local youth. Usually, we try to get kids between 8-13 to come be the guinnea pigs. This time, the participants told the PCVs to leave them alone to plan and execute the camp. Talk about leadership development! They ran a great camp and seemed to have a blast doing it.

Friday night was the talent show. A lot of times, these things are a bit drawn out, but I found myself more than entertained. They were a talented bunch of women and men. Some of them had more balls than me. Two women did solo musical shows, one young man was in about three different acts, and I think every participant did something. I helped my morning martial arts group put together a short bit, which went over well.

Friday was a late night, but totally worth it. It is a wonderful feeling to see the transformation in the youth from shy and unsure of themselves to the talent show. It is the same delight I get from coaching or volunteering during Mayday, the sense that this other mind just needs a spark to light amazing potential within them. It is weeks like this that I know why I am in Vanuatu.