Summer Camp in December - Days 4 & 5

The hours of camp are already catching up to me… I went and slept for about 30 minutes this afternoon. For some reason, I woke up this morning at 4:30am and I was wide awake. I think I heard a noise or someone outside my window and that is what woke me; thankfully, I was able to fall back to sleep until about 5:25 or so.

I had an opportunity to try and talk with a couple of the campers this afternoon. The girls were playing netball and there were 2 girls sitting by themselves, Sabina & Julienne. They came from the Dzaleka Refugee Camp (near Lilongwe) and only understood a small amount of English and Chichewa. They were most comfortable speaking in French, but unfortunately I took Spanish in high school. We were able to communicate together a little bit – one thing that brought us together was the ability to braid. They were playing with the grass and braiding it together, so I began to do the same thing. Then I told them I could do it to my hair & I showed them. They smiled, laughed and said ‘good job’ when I had finished. I was glad for even a small connection with them and I’m hopeful that they’ll both continue to open up as camp continues.

Day 5: And it quickly becomes a little difficult to keep up with the days. Today was another good day, but a long one. It is now after 10pm and the Youth Leaders are just now figuring out the banquet menu so that they can then figure out the decorations. We gave them an hour while we taught dance class; but it doesn’t seem as if they got much accomplished.

Thankfully, they told Kayla and I that we could head to bed. We felt kind of bad leaving them, but we also didn’t want to intrude on their decisions for the camp because we are here just to help, not run it as they are. Even though we left early, Kayla & I were still up for a while talking together so it didn’t help us all that much.

During the boys volleyball lesson in the morning, we had a short tournament – each dorm played against one another and then the winning team played against the staff. We all had a blast! It was so much fun to laugh with and tease them as we played. The boys crushed us, but they were good sports & said we played well. J