I'm teaching at the GMC these days. Girls Mentoring Center, GMC for short. It's one of the few fully-funded things that the Peace Corps does. Volunteers open and manage the centers, and find community volunteers to keep the program running, to make the centers sustainable. And usually volunteers who work in different sectors throw in and help out with classes. Being a health educator, I do a weekly health class. Right now, I'm in the middle of a 6-week series on women's and children's health.

The first session in the series was on women's health. Health subjects relating directly to women. This is not a common subject around here. Generally, women's health as it is taught here ties directly to childbearing and child rearing. Or to general community health. But there's more to a woman's body than producing children, and there are certain things that are very specific to maintaining a healthy lifestyle for a woman that just aren't covered by those other topics. So I added to the curriculum.

As I did my research, I was shocked to find information that had never occurred to me. The effects of exercise on a woman's cycle, maintaining a proper diet. Things I just didn't realize. I showed my planned lesson to Amanda, the GMC coordinator, and even she said she didn't know much of the material. I really wanted to give the young women a lesson worth learning. If they weren't going to hear about their health as women very often, I wanted them to at least get a lesson that they could take home.

But I still wasn't sure how it would go over. As I mentioned, it isn't a subject that's often focused on. If a health lesson isn't on malaria, or on breast feeding, then it's probably not even presented. Amanda had made some nice visuals for me to use, something to keep the audience focused, but it's always a gamble, trying out new material. Especially when the ground is nearly unbroken.

I started with Vitamin D. You’d think that this wouldn’t be an issue in the Sahara. After all, how could you develop a deficiency for the vitamin found in sunlight? But in countries where women cover up so thoroughly as Mauritania, or Saudi Arabia, it can be difficult for a woman to get enough Vitamin D. How could they in a place where the sun never touches their skin?

But halfway through my lesson, I found myself drifting into familiar territory. I think we all do things like this when we're unsure; we search out the familiar. So I discussed a bit more of how certain vitamins improve women’s health, while simultaneously improving fetal and reproductive health. Folic acids, I said, are good for preventing defects. You'll need iron for your blood production relating to pregnancy. Bring it back to what the women care about.

But then, one of the girls asked a question that I'd hoped for, but never really expected. "What about my health? I want to know how this relates to me."

Most of the young women at that lesson asked about their future children. But one brave young woman wanted to know how to guard her own health. She wanted me to help her, to give her the knowledge she needed, to maintain a healthy lifestyle and to keep her body in good shape.

I should thank that girl for her question. If she hadn't asked, I might never have taught the same lesson to a receptive audience of mothers at the health center that same week.