Stone Dragon

This week I spent most of my time at a camp run by Stone Dragon, an organization committed to educating and inspiring youth. One branch of the organization runs camps for school classes, somewhat like our Outdoor School program in Portland. These camps aren't always based in science education, though. In fact, the camp I went on this week was titled "Camp Candy" after the song "Candyman" by some pop star that I can't remember (pathetic? Maybe.). It was supposed to be themed as a 1940s-1950s camp...why, I have no idea. Apart from our group names, which were borrowed from bombers and anti-aircraft artillery, there wasn't much evidence of the theme at all.

The real objective of the camp was to take the group of students, who came from an incredibly privileged background, and give them an opportunity to step outside of their everyday mediocrity and discover something about themselves. The rift between the rich and the poor in Cape Town is so wide that these students were quite thoroughly unaware of the opportunities they scorned on a daily basis. Not that we changed that over a three-day camp, but perhaps we at least let them appreciate what they posses. The Foo Fighters song "Best of You" was the real theme of the camp, and we spent three days trying to get each student to recognize the bonds and pressures that hold them back and keep them from presenting the best of themselves. Very deep for 16 year-olds!

The campsite was absolutely gorgeous, it was the Rocklands Centre witch is just a bit farther than Simon's Town. It was a beautiful setting and also very well-suited to the activities we had planned, or maybe our activities were planned well for the site. I don't know which! Check out the view from my cabin:

If not for the powerlines you could have taken postcard photos from this site!

I had a funny experience my first night there, which was technically volunteer training but actually ended up being chill time. We were moving in our equipment and getting set up, but someone forgot to close the door to one of the buildings and a baboon came in! Luckily we weren't in the building at the time because the baboons here are quite dangerous and not afraid of humans. In fact, they are quite the pest because they have opposable thumbs and are clever about opening doors and things. We had to keep everything not only closed but also locked to keep them out! This one proceeded to unzip my backpack and eat my dinner (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) and then smear peanut butter all over everything while pulling all the other objects out of my bag. It was quite thorough... but luckily baboons have no use for wallets or cameras, so the only casualties were my dinner and a few stains on my other things.

Once the students arrived in the morning I had the privilege of working with the smallest (and most classically "popular") group of girls. They were actually lovely people, once you got them to start acting like people, but the rest of the time it was all about their clothes and cellphones (which were forbidden but used sporadically anyway). In fact, my girls may have changed their outfits more than 6 or 7 times each day. Does that seem ridiculous to anyone but me? But they would, in the same breath, say something like "I don't need to wear makeup at camp." It's a funny form of blindness, but one that I hope some of my girls were able to see through by the end of the three days.

The rules at this camp were also ridiculously loose. Or, rather, the rules were normal but the enforcement was nonexistent. I seemed like a dictator, I'm afraid, because I was always trying to enforce rules that other leaders were ignoring. In the end nothing bad happened, although we did apprehend a few students trying to sneak out for a smoke, so overall I think it was a success.
How else was it different to a camp you might attend in the States? Well, for one thing, nobody was worried about lawsuits, etc. to the same degree that you have to back home. The level of physical contact between leaders and students surprised me... not that it was inappropriate or harassment or anything, it's just something you don't do at home! And the level of concern over injury was very low. Many of the games that we played had the potential for serious injury... and, in fact, there was a broken collarbone, a sprained ankle, and a few other minor bumps... but it was almost expected. The "no-holds-barred" attitude made for an interesting experience!

There were also activities that seemed brutal compared to what we enforce on our campers at home. As a team-building exercise each cabin group was instructed to carry a 2-meter telegraph pole (which is very heavy!) on a 7 km hike straight uphill and back. Normally this would be a 14 km hike, but there wasn't a convenient route off the main highway to walk the kids on. As a catch, the groups were never allowed to set down the pole. So the six of my girls (whining as loud as any of the larger groups) fought each other and bickered about the pole and about each other and suffered their way through the hike. Now, they pretty much had a horrible time and I think that is mainly due to their attitude, but I just didn't have the energy to spend smoothing over every conflict when they had already taxed me to the breaking point. So I hope that in the long run they will take a lesson away from the activity. I know some of the other groups had a much better time of it, but they also had more people. The sadistic side of me wishes they'd had to carry it for the other seven kms. I think they would have learned more that way because they would have actually reached the exhaustion point instead of just the ornery stage :).

Another surprising moment occurred the evening before the "Leviathan Long March" as it was called. My girls had been on activities rotation with a particularly naughty group of boys, who had splattered paint all over some very beautiful and irreplaceable rocks at the campsite while "painting" their telegraph pole. Since the campsite was not ours to ruin, many of the leaders spent hours scrubbing the rocks with turpentine to remove the paint. My girls, although not the primary instigators of this mischief, were punished for their complicity by washing dishes. Now, there weren't many dishes to start with, it was a job that should have taken about ten minutes if they had simply gotten down to business. Unfortunately, though, they felt the need to whine and complain about how it hadn't been their fault, etc. and then react as if very disgusted by the dishes. Now, some of the dishes weren't exactly pretty, but not really bad at all. And in the course of enforcing this punishment on them I discovered that not a single one of them had ever washed dishes before. Can you believe it? Never! And a pot that had been used to cook oatmeal was the "most disgusting thing" they had ever seen. I almost couldn't contain my amusement when they bickered about who had to touch it. Luckily, one girl in the group was a bit more practical than the rest and finally just did the job.

But don't get me wrong, I really liked a lot of my girls. They were a bit too cool for their surroundings, but many of them were quite lovely once you broke through their popular exteriors. And I wish that I had been able to do more to help them enjoy their camp experience, but I have been a camp leader enough to understand that some groups just aren't open to change, and especially aren't open to it when surrounded by their peers. So I am hoping that each of them at least learned something and I'm not stressing too much.

Since then? Well, I've been sleeping! You may or may not have ever done something like this before, but leading camps really takes it out of you. Even if it weren't for the long hours (6am-1am or so) the energy expended to keep everything running smoothly is enough to make sure you sleep well at night! And luckily I actually get a day off this weekend to rest :).