From "Night Watch" At Kamp
Well, Kamp has officially begun! The kids have been here for 2 days now and it has been an incredible experience so far. This kamp translates to, “The Little Milestones in Life” and is for orphans or children without parental care. In total there are 41 kids, ages 12-21, attending this 5 day kamp. So far, it has been both exhilarating and exhausting spending the days with them!
My role within this kamp is to spend as much quality time with the kids as possible. It is important that they have role models to encourage and guide them; and, although my time with them is limited it can still be genuine and meaningful. It has been amazing for me to witness the kids come out of their shells within this short period of time and despite a bit of a language barrier there are many children I’ve formed friendships with.
The first day of kamp consisted mainly of introduction and “get-to-know-you” activities as the kids settled in. As a group, they created their own “code of conduct” that they will be held to for the 5 days they are here. The second day (June 15th) the team leaders held workshops for the kids on different kinds of addictions (alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, gambling, and internet). After the workshops the children put together creative skits to represent what they had learned during the morning. It was an entertaining learning experience for me to watch these sketches in a language I hardly understand, and I was surprised at how much of the context I could guess based of their body language and facial expressions.
Additional roles I’ve had so far include: teaching Zumba for the children at different times throughout the day (the girls especially love to dance, and I love teaching them because I have never worked with such a young age group before), making materials for the activities, helping wash dishes after meal times, and lastly night watch. Night watch is run in two shifts from 12am-4am and again from 4am-8am. Right now I have the 4am-8am shift, but it will go until 9am this morning since the kids stayed up extra late watching the BiH-Argentina World Cup soccer match last night. It was an early wake up call for sure, but it’s helped me catch up on “administrative” tasks I otherwise wouldn’t have had time for until our rest day in between kamps.
I’m excited to see how the rest of this first kamp unfolds and there will be more pictures to come!
Chao!