C.A.M.P. CAMP!!

I know I mentioned ages ago that I was working camp. I didn't only work one camp, I worked at 2 different camps that spanned a total of three weeks. I was in camp counselor mode for the month of September. The first camp was a USAID sponsored summer camp and the second was a US Embassy sponsored English camp. It was a whirlwind adventure to say the least...

USAID summer camp was held in various locations throughout Senegal. There were two in the region in Kolda- I accidentally signed on to be the point person for the one in Sare Bidji, a village located 6 kilometers west of Kolda. SO...what did it mean to be point person? I went to camp everyday for two weeks (actually, i didn't go one day, story to come) and pretended to know what I was doing. To summarize camp, I biked across an airport runway twice a day for two weeks, I fell off my bike twice in two days, I came home and cried once, I taught 75 kids how to make a paper crane, taught 150 kids about various health topics, and washed a lot of hands. I will elaborate....

Prior to camp, I had my partner in crime, Alex (who's fluent in french), touch base with the school director to find out our role in camp, All we got from that conversation was that he wanted at least one volunteer present and that camp started at 9, Obviously from that, I knew exactly what to expect from camp....HA! The first day of camp, we (Jonno, Lisa, and I) biked out to Sare Bidji bright and early, hoping that we wouldn't get lost. That morning, we ran into a herd of cows on the road (which terrifies me and is a blog post itself), and biked blindly to the village, periodically confirming with people that we were on the right path. Just as we get into the village, I hit a patch of deep sand (my biking nemesis) and/or a bump and fell off my bike. I had some very pretty bruises on my right side for about a month. We follow the music to the school and discover chaos. OK....it wasn't chaos, but it was children milling around and the teachers waiting for instruction. Apparently, the curriculum wasn't delivered til the night before and no one really knew what was going on. OY. So we sit around for an hour, then we went over rules and regulations with the students and camp commenced.


We still didn't know what our role would be at this point. The camp director (different from the school director) asked us what our role was.... ummm.... "Support? We're here to help with what you need." It came out that Jonno and I were health volunteers, so we were then given the health section to teach. We were to do an hour long session in 30 minutes without any prep other than several carte fiches (curriculum sheets) that didn't help. Thank goodness for Jonno (he came all the way from the North aka very far away just to help with camp) or I might have walked out of camp. He kept me sane and we came up with a lesson plan. We taught the kids about the importance of hand washing and we talked about malaria. We then assisted 75 children in washing their hands prior to lunch. After camp, we had a debriefing session among the teachers and other members of the camp team. This in theory is a great idea, a forum for the teachers to share ideas and to enlist the help of other staff. Instead, we spent 20 minutes discussing the oil to rice ration of Cheeb (oily rice). We left the meeting early stating that we had to bike back to Kolda. I came back to the house and was literally in tears because I was so frustrated with the day. I didn't expect it to run perfectly, but I didn't expect it to go so poorly. Lastly, a fellow volunteer's puppy chewed through my sandal strap- icing on the cake.

Jonno assists in Hand washing!

Camp did get better, although thanks to cows, I fell off my bike again on the second day. Given time to prepare lessons, Jonno and I were able to maximize our time. We still had to improvise a good part of it, but we brought in props, like pictures of food to place on the food pyramid. It was actually a lot of fun to teach kids. I usually work with women's groups and other adults, so it was a refreshing change to talk to kids! We taught them about microbes with the aid of glitter, how to prevent malaria, how to prepare ORS (oral re hydration solution), the importance of a diverse diet, the wonders of moringa, and how to make neem lotion. I also taught them how to make paper cranes. I DO NOT suggest teaching 75 children how to make paper cranes in Pulaar. Although one of my favorite moments from camp occurred during this activity. A quick side note... the educational system in Senegal is not perfect and there is a practice known as "rebirth", where a student's birth certificate is slightly altered to ensure that he or she is within the age limit. As a result, in the Senegalese equivalent of 3rd or 4th grade, you have an age range of 9-15. Story time... While teaching the kids how to make paper cranes, I noticed that the group of older boys were particularly engaged in the activity. They were excited to show me that they completed each step and when a friend didn't understand a step, they would jump in and explain. This surprised me....I expected this group of boys to be too cool for this activity, for camp in general. They were obviously older than most of the kids and heads taller than the younger ones. At the final step of crane making....where you pull on the wings to complete the bird, the smiles, on their faces were so precious. They were excited and proud that they had created this 3- dimensional object from a square of paper. This still brings a smile to my face. That was week one. Whew...

Kids Love Cranes

Volunteers Do too!!

Week two was more or less the same health topics, with the addition of sex-ed (they were older kids). Sadly, Jonno returned to the North, but thankfully Katie and Sharon jumped in to help. We weren't on the curriculum for week two of camp, but the school director liked us so much that he rearranged the schedule to fit us in. The one day that we didn't go to camp occurred during week two. The reason that we didn't go was that we had a column of fire shoot up from our stove one morning. We had a faulty burner which was slowly leaking gas. We thankfully turned off the gas line the night before or it could've been a lot worse. So, a fellow volunteer was boiling water on a separate burner when the gas caught and sent a column of fire shooting up (well, we think that's what happened). Quick thinking led Sharon to grab the fire extinguisher to put out the fire. And our two wonderful guards came running in with an additional fire extinguisher. So that really didn't prevent us from going to camp, but I needed a break, I was burnt out. Other than that, week two went well, and the school director tried to get me to come back for week three, but for my sanity, I needed to get back to village. Oh, I also got a certificate at the end =).

Katie & Sharon having fun at camp!

I went to village for a week before I had to leave to work English Camp in Thies. I had so much fun last year that I had to go back this year. It was SO MUCH FUN!! I worked with a fantastic group of counselors and we had a great time. We let the kids choose their own "English" names and had some gems including Malcom X, MLK, Hillary Clinton, and a personal favorite, Abby Bieber. We thought that it would be fun to give ourselves new identities also, so Cara and I became Salt & Pepa, while the other counselors were Marc Antony & Cleo, Sebastian, and Bradley. It was funny though, kids from last year remembered Mika and I, and would call us by our real names. The highlight of camp was the talent show and we decided that the counselors should also perform. We spent hours attempting to learn N*Sync's Bye Bye Bye dance, and eventually compromised-learning a part and improvising the rest. We had fun doing it, but it was so amazing seeing out kids take initiative and come up with their own performance. And done with my three weeks of camp.

Yay Camp!

Oh camp. So tiring, but so rewarding.

Peace & Creativity