Somehow not like American camp...

Sometimes you teach so hard your pants fall down.  That’s why it’s important to always wear long t-shirts on days when you can’t find your belt.  And make sure you have clean underwear.  Unfortunately, here in Rwanda, clean underwear is something of a luxury, especially at Camp GLOW/BE.  So hitch up your trousers, ladies and gentlemen--it’s time to spend a few weeks at holiday camp.  Are you ready?!  Well, no worries, we sure weren’t…

First, allow me to set the stage.  Imagine a quiet hilltop, almost devoid of human life.  It’s rained recently, and the grass squishes and squelches with every step you take.  A few cows amble by, seemingly impervious to the cold and damp.  On three sides, the hilltop is surrounded by lake Burera, whose blue waters have turned steely grey from the thunderclouds looming overhead.  A handful of red brick buildings lay scattered across the field—the classrooms, dorms, offices, and cafeteria of E.S. Kagogo.  And standing in the middle of the field, awkwardly trying to look like they know what they’re doing, are a group of Peace Corps volunteers.  Welcome to camp.  There are no buses out.

Camps GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) and the wisely abbreviated BE (Boys Excelling) are camps aimed at educating Rwandan secondary school students about leadership, goal-setting, HIV/AIDS, and life skills in general.  We decided to go for the complete set, and held one of each, back to back, for two straight weeks.   And here’s the thing—it was a crazy, disorganized, stressful two weeks…but the students never knew.  They had an awesome time, learned a lot, and went away with new skills and hopefully a desire to start clubs at their schools.

Life was medieval for two weeks.  It started with the flea-infested dorms, and while I never quite got around the instituting my chamberpot policy, the slippery slope down to the latrines made it more and more tempting with each rainstorm.   I somehow managed not to fall down once during the entire camp, and yet I was still covered in mud by the end of every day.  The Rwandans, of course, all looked immaculate.  Even after a year, I still don’t know how they manage to repel dirt from their clothes and shoes.  This is a mystery that deserves further investigation, and perhaps its own Discovery Channel special.

By the end of the first night, everyone was so covered in bug bites that we all looked like the survivors of a nasty chicken pox epidemic.  But we soldiered bravely on!  The Rwandans that we were working with were absolutely amazing.  We invited teachers from our schools and junior facilitators (Rwandan students) who had attended the camps last year.  The junior facilitators especially were an inspiration.  It was so wonderful to watch them step into a leadership role and really blossom as they worked with the students.  Seeing them interact with the kids, and the way that the kids began to look up to them as role models, more than compensated for the bug bites, mud, rain, beans for every meal, and the rats.

Well, maybe not the rats.  Continuing in the medieval theme, our boys camp had a few uninvited guests.  Apparently, after the rats ate all my peanuts, they decided to move on to bigger and better prey.   Peanuts are too easy.  They just sit there, being salty.  People, however……Fortunately, there is a shot for rabies.  Unfortunately, there isn’t a shot for the trauma of watching a rat jump out of your bed one morning. 

So, what else was interesting about camp?  I went a week without washing my hair, and was complimented on my style.  We had numerous dance parties (if and when the power was working), and I realized that even the students from the blind school and the deaf school can dance better than I can.  For the talent show, the deaf girls performed a dance by putting the speakers on the floor and feeling the vibrations.  It was one of my favorite moments from camp, for sure.

Another golden moment was doing condom demonstrations with the boys.  You haven’t really lived until you’ve watched a Rwandan teacher trying to get a student’s attention by poking him with a wooden penis and shouting “Umva, umva!” over and over again.  Teaching the kids how to do paper mache was also a lot of fun; I think over half of the boys made airplanes, which they then painted the colors of the Rwandan flag.  That’s right, Camp BE was the official founding of the Rwandan airforce.

Mk folks, I’m heading off to Tanzania next week for a few weeks of adventures and relaxation at the beach.  Happy holidays!