Supervivencia

Tengo polvos. Tengo hambre. Tengo sueno. Tengo dolor.

(I have dirt. I have hunger. I have dream. I have pain.)

But… it was totally worth it!

This crazy weekend just past, I packed my bags, jumped on a motorcycle and headed off out of Iquitos to a campsite to join 185 kids, 30 parents, 15 youths and 9 staff for the experience of a lifetime.

And here’s how it went…

How to do a children’s camp without Duty-of-Care restrictions?

It was really interesting to experience a camp situation in another culture. The main difference I noticed was the non-existence of Duty Of Care, which we have in Australia. Pretty much, Duty Of Care is basically: ‘…if anything goes wrong, it’s the leaders’ fault’. There is a high emphasis on risk-management and all the responsibility falls on the directors and leaders of the group.

In Peru, I’m pretty sure the legality of Duty Of Care doesn’t exist. This means, responsibility falls on the child to take care in how they act.

For example, in Australian camp, there is a risk that a kid could fall out of a tree he was climbing and injure himself. His parents will ask, how come my child is injured, and why wasn’t anything done to stop this? Then, because the responsibility falls on the leaders, a rule will be put in place that no kids can climb trees, lest they falls and hurt themselves.

In Peru, if a child climbs a tree and fall out, his parents will ask how come my child in injured, and then probably scold the child for making a bad decision to climb such a high tree.

Same situation, different mindset.

That’s not to say that adequate care wasn’t taken at this camp, it’s just to say that there is a lot less pressure to moddy-coddle kids into what they should be doing.

Also, there is a lot less pressure in situations where staff are low in numbers. For example, usually in Australia, if a child needs to go to the toilet, it’s possible that two people need to accompany the kid, so they everyone knows that no abuse has taken place. Here, it’s just like – alright, I’ll take you – and no one thinks twice, or their older sibling will take them (and if they get up to trouble whilst they are gone, the older sibling gets in trouble), or they just go on their own, or they pee outside.

Yeah, that was the funniest part.

The kids were very accustomed to peeing anywhere, even the girls, so for the age group I was working with, whenever they needed to pee, it was like, ‘yep, ok, just go around the corner and be quick.’ So much easier!!

So, in terms of the caring for children, I think Australia could afford to lax it’s rules a bit. We could afford to let some of the responsibility fall on the kids to make better decisions.

Program

The days started at 6am with a small group devotion. Yep, started at 6am. I was a stranger to sleep all weekend. After 30 minutes, shower time, breakfast, waiting for breakfast to be cleaned up, crazy celebration of praise time, general devotional, classes with the different age groups (kinda like a Sunday school-type thing), lunch, rest, afternoon activities – one day it was a massive ‘wide games’ with water, another day it was another class with with a baptism, more showering time, dinner, more celebration, drawing/colouring/speaker for the youths and parents, bed time!

Christmas!

On Monday morning, we had a Christmas breakfast with Paneton and hot chocolate, then a Christmas celebration, then the opening of presents, then a Christmas lunch. It was pretty cool.

Heat

We were 30 minutes out of Iquitos, so not quite in the deep jungle yet, although for sure there were enough palm trees and vines and bugs to go around. It was hot and humid all the time, but luckily not as hot as I remember the deep jungle – there was a breeze once in awhile.

But trying to have a nap in the tent at 1pm in the afternoon with afternoon sun coming and hotness all around?… lets just say not much nap was had.

Translation

The hardest thing I found about the camp was not being able to understand a lot of what the kids were trying to tell me. I knew words like ‘orinar’ and ‘yo quiero dormir!’, but when they rattled off a long fast sentence in a quiet voice, I was stuck. It was really frustating and along with that, I struggled to say what I wanted to. Sometimes the kids needed to go away because other kids were still in class… and while I could tell them that in Spanish, I didn’t have enough Spanish to bust their chops when they decided to see if I really was serious. Now, normally in Australia, I have no problem with this, but here, it was so frustrating! I would say, ‘go play in your dorm’ and they would just smile and grab onto me and continue making noise…

Eventually, I discovered the best thing to do, if I could, was just grab another leader, tell them what I wanted the kids to do. Two words from someone that could bust their chops and the kids were outta there!

If ever there were a zombie invasion…

The kids liked to hug me. And hold me. And grab onto me. And jump in front of me to hug me again…. At times it got a bit hard to go anywhere. There was one time that I just needed some SPACE, so I escaped the kids and ran into the hall, where they weren’t allowed to go. They waited outside for me.

As I leant on the open window (as in, just air, no glass), they would come around the side to grab onto me. Same thing with the other side.

I decided I needed a drink of water – in the dining room – about 10 metres away. So, distracting them by standing by a window so they’d all come to one side, I bolted through the hall and out the door.

But they were fast! Kids were jumping on me from all sides and hanging on as I trudged, almost like walking through mud, kids hanging off me, to get to the Dining Hall, where they also weren’t allowed.

Finally, I got there, told the kids they couldn’t come inside and concluded if ever there were a zombie invasion, I’d be fine.

Bites

I have bites. Yep.

Sleep

Not a lot of sleep took place, we finished our responsibilities at about 11 or after and were up by 5:30am for the devotional in the morning. Did I manage to nap during the day? Not a lot. I slept in a tent on the ground, with a thin thin mattress.

I am sore and I am tired.

Kids

There were, like always, a few kids that really stood out to me. Whether it was their nutty personality or their quiet shyness, by the end of the camp, I was pretty sad to say goodbye to these guys.

There was Liset, who was the sweetest little 5 year old around.

Roger, the kid that bounced everywhere and did everything with 200% energy.

Angel who was part of my zombie-crew and kept saying ‘mira abajo – tu trabajo, mira al frente, presidente!’.

Daniel, the little smiler.

Another little boy, whose name I can’t remember, who was the happiest 2.5 yr old I’ve ever seen. He wanted to play all the time and didn’t mind that I was a gringa, and would wrap his arms around my neck and give me big sloppy kisses on my cheek.

A whole bunch of 6 year old girls who thought hugging me was the best thing possible.

And a whole bunch more.

Crazy kids.

So, more or less, that was my camp experience. Fun, nutty, crazy, hard work, awesome.

Thanks for reading.

Now, I’m going back to bed.

Kez.

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