Princesses

Last week I went to the camp to have a meeting with all of the goat ladies and 8 of 10 showed up which was a pleasant surprise. When we all get together it's a little hard to get them to talk out loud in front of the group. I think it comes from the fact that none of them are educated and they don't have the confidence it takes to express an opinion in front of other people.

That's fine, no problem. We just play little kindergarden games to get them comfortable and to talk about different topics and they love these games. It's so much fun to see all these women 25-70 years old playing these games and just giggling away!! This week we played telephone, it was especially fun in Arabic. Then I brought out a ball and we did one where when you got the ball you had to say the first thing that came to your mind and then pass it on.

So I started with the example 'I am really sweaty, today the weather is really hot.' When I threw the ball to the next lady she said 'it is hot today but yesterday was hotter.' She tossed it to the next lady who said 'it is really hot in the day and just a little hot at night'.

So I stopped the game and said 'it doesn't just have to be about the weather. It can be about anything, your kids, your house, any thing at all. For example, I wore this shirt today because it was the only clean one.'

The next lady says 'I wore this tobe today because I like the color.' The next lady 'I wore this tobe today because it was clean'. Ughhhh, can we not do this? It's not their fault that they have trouble forming an original thought and expressing it in front of a group but still, it's also so hard for me to understand how this simple game can be difficult.

OK, so Sandy gets the ball next. She doesn't want to say anything about clothes because I've now reiterated the fact that I would like it to be an original thought but she also doesn't know what to say so she sits there thinking and looking at the ball. And then she gets this look of horror on her face and it's in that moment that I realize that we've brought a 'pornographic' ball.

The family downstairs has little girls and they have these balls that they play with at the pool that have Disney princesses on them. I guess I just never noticed that little mermaid is really wearing nothing but a bra, or that princess Jasmine is actually kind of scantily clad. Really every Disney princess on this ball is scandalous in some way when you're living in an Islamic country.

Another of the ladies tells Sandy 'just say anything, any thought you have' and Sandy, looking at the ball, says 'well I have a lot of thoughts but I don't think I should say them out loud.' I'm not sure if she was referring to the porn ball or not but she ended up passing it on without saying anything.

Later on another lady was holding the ball and I saw the look on her face when she actually looked at it and realized what all those princesses were wearing. It was hilarious. I couldn't help but laugh and they had no idea what I was laughing about but I didn't want to explain and draw attention to the fact that this is what we give our kids to play with. That just about every little girl in America can name every single Disney princess because they have seen all the movies.

Afterwards neither woman asked me about it so I didn't bring it up. But they were probably thinking 'no wonder America is such a sinful place full of infidels and all the women there dress like Britany Spears. They teach their little girls to dress like prostitutes.'

Who knew that Disney princesses could be so scandalous!!!