Camp camp camp camp

In America, camp consists of cabins, dining halls, a lake (fully equipped with a Blob of course), sloppy joes, campfire songs, hiking, ropes courses, swimming, and food fights. But in Africa, camp is a completely different story.
It took us four hours to go 81 miles to the remote village of Safu which sits on the boarder of Tanzania and Zambia. We were officially in the “bush.” We arrived at dusk and as we poured out of the packed truck we found ourselves surrounded by about 65 children. As we walked through the village the children followed us laughing and screaming. I now know what the Pied Piper must have felt like! We stayed in a very nice home that consisted of three small rooms surrounding a courtyard and attached was the choo (the entire household uses the same one, as well as the guests) and shower room. The room we stayed in actually had a concrete floor as did the choo and the shower room, that’s how nice of a village house it was. We packed 15 ladies plus five babies into a 10X15 foot room all on reed mats and under mosquito nets. It takes serious skills to sleep sandwiched between 15 people with 5 of them snoring, 6 of them moving, and all the babies crying. Praise the Lord for Army made and issued ear plugs. A bomb could go off and I wouldn’t have heard anything!
Our days began at 5:30 am due to the little baby girl who decided to be wide awake, happy, and vocal at that hour. I would snuggle farther into my sleeping bag and sleep for another two hours while all the Tanzanian women would get annoyed at the mom of the little girl and start verbally showing their annoyance in Swahili. This became tradition every morning. Staff devotions began at 8, we are currently working through the book of Galations, and then the campers came at 9. In order to get all of the campers there we as the staff would circle up outside in the church yard and start singing. When the kids hear the singing, very small village, they knew it was time to start and they would come running. They then had their group devotions, tea time, and then our first teaching sessions. After teaching we would have chapel, skit practice, second teaching sessions, more group devos, games, and then an evening service where all the campers sang and performed their skits (these services lasted about 3 hours each evening). By the end of four straight days of this everyone involved from the campers to the cooks were exhausted.
The last night was so fun to be a part of because everyone was laughing and dancing with the excitement of the week and the ending of camp. I was sad to have to say goodbye to the campers because after four days we had just begun to get to know them and have them become comfortable around us!

I got to carry my first baby on my back as the Tanzanian women do! Let the professional show you how it’s done: hold baby by one arm and swing onto back (piggyback style), bend over so that your body is at a 90 degree angle and baby is balancing on your back, take conga and wrap one side under left arm and the other side over right shoulder, make sure conga fits snuggly under baby’s butt, tie the conga tightly across your chest as you stand up straight. Presto! This is such a smart way to carry kids around because then your hands are free! It was so much fun to walk around with the baby strapped on my back, hoping to get to do it lots more in the weeks to come.

One of the really safi (cool) things I’ve realized and begun to witness while working closely with the Tanzanian camp counselors and campers is that camp isn’t about what us wazungus (white people) can come and teach them. It’s about how they take responsibility for their own. It was soooo awesome to watch the counselors be the ones who were encouraging, uplifting, helping, and playing with the campers. I’m so used to that being my job in a camp situation, but being the one who got to witness and encourage the counselors to be that way was completely new and so cool!

Everything you do in a village is watched. You are followed everywhere you go and stared at. This has been the hardest thing to try to get used to. The people will walk up to you, stand about 2 feet away, and then proceed to just stare. No movement, no signs of conversation, just staring. If you are inside they hang in the windows and stare at you; if you walk from one building to another they follow you; you even have to check around the choo before you go just to make sure no one is looking in (I’ve never wanted to punch somebody more but I thought that would be counter productive to why we were there in the first place)! This gets so draining, especially if you just want a moment of peace. Each of us learned to find some personal space and time by hiding out in the car, in the room, and I found mine in the shower room. I found myself staying in there a little longer just to be able to hear myself think if only for a few moments.

As I mentioned earlier, the village of Safu sits on the boarder of Tanzania and Zambia and connecting the two is a river. I’ve never been to Zambia so I wasn’t letting this opportunity pass me by so I marched right down to the river, kicked off my shoes, and illegally crossed the boarder (shhhhhh, it was only for a little while). But now I can say I’ve been to Zambia!

I am still processing through a lot of this past week, forgive me for not being able to get all the details out in the first posting ha ha, I feel it may even take a couple weeks if not months to continue to process this whole trip! But, all in all, good first week of camp. One down and two to go!