Summer Camp in December - Day 6

Today was a blur! It was Kayla’s last day with us. Thankfully, I was busy with activities so I didn’t have time to linger on the fact that I’ll be alone for the next couple of weeks. It definitely helps that I still have a few days with the other Youth Leaders in the house so it won’t be all that quiet until Friday.

This was also the first day with a shift in our activities – instead of teaching hymns, I was going to be doing Team Building activities with the groups. I think I was more nervous for this activity than the singing because I wasn’t completely sure if these activities would translate across cultures or not.

Thankfully, they did. J Explaining them in English was still a little tough, but I had other instructors and some of the older campers that were able to explain what they were to be doing in Chichewa so they could figure it out. The language barrier was also not just an issue for me – there were some of the campers (as mentioned in previous posts) that didn’t speak Chichewa or English very well, so their dorm mates had to figure out a way to also communicate the concept to them.

I had started the boys out to work in separate dorms, but with the girls, I had them all work together on the first day. One of the activities I had them do was to put themselves in birthday order, without talking. Oh what a sight that was! The girls especially couldn’t stop laughing; especially when someone would say something and I would give them a look. J It was lots of fun to watch them work together and figure out how to accomplish the task.

This afternoon was also a lot different than the rest of the week – we went for a hike! We took all the campers on a walking tour of Blantyre. For many of them, this was their first time in Blantyre and so the leaders wanted to be sure that they got to see some of the sights in the city. At first, I had wanted to maybe catch a nap while they hiked, but then I figured it would be better for me to walk and I’m glad I did. We had taken photos earlier in the day in our white ‘camp t-shirts’ (I use this term loosely because though they were all the same, they were for an event that happened in 1999), so most of the campers were still wearing them – helping us to stick together and stand out in the crowd. J It was fun to find that I knew where I was the whole time we were walking. Most of the areas we went to were places we have driven past or to during my stay here in Malawi.

It was another late night for the Youth Leaders & this time I stayed up with them. We were finalizing the banquet menu & other items needed (decorations, awards for best campers, etc.). I was on the decorating committee, but I tried to defer to the group as much as possible since they had a better idea of what they were used to at previous camps. We managed to finish the meeting by about 11:30pm, which gave us a good 5 hours of rest.