Len Mutacn (Women’s Day) Celebration

Picture of the setup of the celebration
One of my favorite things about Peace Corps is the cultural exchange that occurs. A lot of time when you visit a new place it is hard to get involved in the culture and customs of the place. However, on March 11th this was not the case, as I was able to celebrate International Women’s Day with the women in my community.


Groups of women from each part of Tafunsak (Yatta, Muntente, Tafunsak Srisrik, and Walung came together to celebrate the women in our community. The day started out with an opening prayer and speakers. Between the speakers groups from each part of Tafunsak sang a song. I performed the song with the women in my area of Tafunsak.

     
Basket weaving competition

After the songs and the thanking of Donors were finished the Keynote Speaker talked (in Kosraean) about the women in their community and how they need to work together and support each other. She talked about the importance of graduating high school and how there were women in the community who were lawyers, teachers, doctors, government officials, business owners, and mothers. Even though I could not understand the whole speech because it was in Kosraean, I felt that it was a very inspiring message.


 
Coconut Grating Relay
When she was finished talking there were competitions that were designed to keep local crafts and way of living alive. These included coconut plate weaving and coconut basket weaving where one woman from each area raced against the others to complete their basket or plate before the other women. There was also a coconut-grating relay where 15 women from each community had to grate 15 coconuts. My community decided that I would be one of the coconut-graters. When it came my turn to grate a coconut a lot of my students came to see me. After 30 seconds it became apparent to my host mom that I needed to be substituted, as I still had not grated one half of a coconut. Fortunately she saved the day and my area of Tafunsak won the coconut-grating contest.

             
One of the groups performing
their dance
Following the competitions was the dancing part of the day. The women from each of the four areas had been practicing their dancing routines. We each danced to 3 different songs before it was the next groups turn. I have a video of me dancing with my area of Yatta but the Internet is not strong enough to upload it.I had a great time getting to know the women of my community and participating in the celebration of Len Mutacn.




Comments

  1. SOS Booster9 February 2022 at 00:26

    Are you planning for a women's day celebration in office? In this blog post, we share 10 excellent Fun activities for women's day celebration in office that you, your team and your community can celebrate International Women’s Day this year and do your part to advocate for gender equality.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Team Building12 February 2022 at 18:24

    wonderfull blog thanks for sharing!Bring the whole office into the conversation and spend some time to make this international women's day more memorable with Virtual women's day celebration ideas in office

    ReplyDelete

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