Laughing by the Laughlands River
First off, my apologies for not putting up a voice post this weekend like I'd hoped to. I got up to the campsite and discovered that my US cellphone doesn't get Digicel reception up in the hills--only in town.
Second, more apologies for waiting so late in the week to post an update. After Gambia, life here seems so tame that, without an "and then I almost died" story, sometimes it's hard to get myself in blog-writing mode. But thanks for checking on me!
Friday morning, Sharon and Lajeane picked me up at dawn and we headed across the island to camp. The winding, narrow, cliff-side roads were as scary as ever (maybe I should take back my comment about not nearly dying), but also as gorgeous. After so many years of traversing Jamaica's jagged roads, I'd gotten to the point where I could play cards in a bus, standing up, facing the back. Unfortunately, it appears that two years living in a country with flat, straight roads and no point above 170 feet have weakened my stomach. It was rough going, but we finally pulled into Happy Hills just when I thought I was going to blow. Lesson learned: time to start taking the dramamine again, until my stomach gets re-accustomed to these roads.
At Happy Hills, I met Lisa, an American who usually counsels at camp in the US, but chose to come camp in Jamaica this year. Lisa is... spunky. She wears purple contacts, puts a star sticker on her face first thing every morning and speaks almost entirely in exclamations. "I love Jamaica! This is awesome! What are we doing next!?!?" (She openly admits that she rarely ends a sentence in a period.) The enthusiasm is a bit overwhelming at first, but the campers are going to love her.
My job for the day was to show Lisa around the camp ground and get her acquainted. There was a corporate group at the camp that day, one of many companies which pays New Generation for the privilege of coming to Happy Hills and being taken on team building activities through the challenge course. So while Nel, Sharon, Lajeane and Monique were working on that, anyone else at camp that day was expected to stay hidden and keep a low profile. (No loud, obnoxious camp songs to ruin the peaceful, professional atmosphere... that kind of thing.) Lisa and I spent most of the day hiding in the room above the kitchen, talking about Jamaica, Gambia and Greece and our experiences doing cross-cultural work.
Friday night and the next morning, the rest of the counselors arrived for staff camp. Those were probably my favorite moments since coming back to Jamaica. It was so cool to see so many old friends from all over Kingston and Portmore. Some were expecting me, others weren't, but the reactions were wonderful. It was nice to start back where we were years ago as though no time had passed.
Shane, one of my favorite former campers and closest Jamaican friends, asked about my brother. When I told gave him the rote reply I've been giving everyone who asks ("He's good. He's married!"), I thought Shane was going to pass out. "He's MARRIED?!?! As in... a wife? As in... *makes the gesture of putting on a ring*? As in... he lives by himself... with a wife?!?" Shane and Stephen are the same age and have been friends since being campers together in 2005, so he cannot fathom the Stephen he last saw in 2006 now being married. He spent the rest of the weekend randomly looking at me and blurting out "MARRIED?!?" (After camp, he immediately went back and looked Stephen and his wife up on Facebook... says Stephen looks old ["like he's 30"] and Chelsea's good-looking.) Eventually, the marriage thing became such a joke around camp that Shane and I made an agreement that if we're both still single by the time he turns 40, we'd get married. (This inspired spontaneous offers around camp, "uh, Beth... so I should pray for your sake that you get married before then, right?") Thought it'd just be a brief joke, but then Lajeane (who goes to the same church as Shane so knows him well) declared that there needed to be a ceremony, complete with rings drawn on with permanent marker. (For future reference, red sharpie takes longer to wash off than you'd think.) Shane and I have a very... bizarre... relationship, which is good, because if it were anyone else, I'd worry the joke had gone too far.
When not hugging long-lost friends or having fake weddings, staff camp was a lot of prep work for the camps we'll be counseling at. We had worship and devotional times (for spiritual prep), as well as meetings, discussions, and lessons (for logistical prep). Nel, Sharon and Judith also led the various camp groups through team-building activities to help unite the staff of each camp. This was a bit of a difficulty for Annie, Shane and I, who are all counseling at both Ultimate and Discovery camp. So since the three camps were simultaneously doing team-building, we'd have to go back and forth between our two camps and only do half the activities with each. (We had to do this during planning sessions too, so I keep getting plans for the two camps I'm doing mixed up in my head.)
We had a camp fire on Saturday night, where we roasted marshmallows and sang the weirdest songs we could come up with. (Julie, you'll be happy to know that I sang the buffalo song not once but twice [um or maybe three times...] in your honor, even though Shane chickened out and wouldn't do it--you'll have to take it up with him.)
Showers at Happy Hills are as cold as I remember them--rain water pumped through an open pipe coming out of the wall. Not such a problem during staff camp, when you can shower at whatever point in the day you wish. But during the actual camps, counselors have to shower at 4 am, due to camp time. (In order to make kids who've never traveled feel like they've really entered a new place, they are told that camp is in a special time zone called "camp time." Everyone is to set their watches two hours fast. The kids feel like they're sleeping in and staying up late, when in reality they're getting up early and going to bed early. It also makes better use of daylight hours. However, counselors have to bathe and have a camp meeting before the campers are woken up at 6 am [8 am camp time]. So we're up REALLLLY early. And river water is COLD at 4 am!)
Staff camp ended Sunday afternoon, and I traveled back to Kingston in Loren's car (her dad's the one who baptized me), along with Arielle, Stacey-Ann and Jason. They're all from Swallowfield Chapel and know each other well, so it was a fun (and thanks to dramamine, uneventful) ride. As we pulled away from camp, we passed a sheep. It continually blows my mind how few Jamaicans are familiar with sheep. When Arielle saw it, she wanted a picture. Then an argument broke out amongst the Jamaicans about whether it was actually a goat or a sheep. I cut in, "THAT is a SHEEP." "But it has wool!" someone protested. "Uh, yeah... like I said... a sheep."
Hmmm.... The internet here is suddenly spazzing out again. I'm going to try to post this now, just in case.
To be continued...
Second, more apologies for waiting so late in the week to post an update. After Gambia, life here seems so tame that, without an "and then I almost died" story, sometimes it's hard to get myself in blog-writing mode. But thanks for checking on me!
Friday morning, Sharon and Lajeane picked me up at dawn and we headed across the island to camp. The winding, narrow, cliff-side roads were as scary as ever (maybe I should take back my comment about not nearly dying), but also as gorgeous. After so many years of traversing Jamaica's jagged roads, I'd gotten to the point where I could play cards in a bus, standing up, facing the back. Unfortunately, it appears that two years living in a country with flat, straight roads and no point above 170 feet have weakened my stomach. It was rough going, but we finally pulled into Happy Hills just when I thought I was going to blow. Lesson learned: time to start taking the dramamine again, until my stomach gets re-accustomed to these roads.
At Happy Hills, I met Lisa, an American who usually counsels at camp in the US, but chose to come camp in Jamaica this year. Lisa is... spunky. She wears purple contacts, puts a star sticker on her face first thing every morning and speaks almost entirely in exclamations. "I love Jamaica! This is awesome! What are we doing next!?!?" (She openly admits that she rarely ends a sentence in a period.) The enthusiasm is a bit overwhelming at first, but the campers are going to love her.
My job for the day was to show Lisa around the camp ground and get her acquainted. There was a corporate group at the camp that day, one of many companies which pays New Generation for the privilege of coming to Happy Hills and being taken on team building activities through the challenge course. So while Nel, Sharon, Lajeane and Monique were working on that, anyone else at camp that day was expected to stay hidden and keep a low profile. (No loud, obnoxious camp songs to ruin the peaceful, professional atmosphere... that kind of thing.) Lisa and I spent most of the day hiding in the room above the kitchen, talking about Jamaica, Gambia and Greece and our experiences doing cross-cultural work.
Friday night and the next morning, the rest of the counselors arrived for staff camp. Those were probably my favorite moments since coming back to Jamaica. It was so cool to see so many old friends from all over Kingston and Portmore. Some were expecting me, others weren't, but the reactions were wonderful. It was nice to start back where we were years ago as though no time had passed.
Shane, one of my favorite former campers and closest Jamaican friends, asked about my brother. When I told gave him the rote reply I've been giving everyone who asks ("He's good. He's married!"), I thought Shane was going to pass out. "He's MARRIED?!?! As in... a wife? As in... *makes the gesture of putting on a ring*? As in... he lives by himself... with a wife?!?" Shane and Stephen are the same age and have been friends since being campers together in 2005, so he cannot fathom the Stephen he last saw in 2006 now being married. He spent the rest of the weekend randomly looking at me and blurting out "MARRIED?!?" (After camp, he immediately went back and looked Stephen and his wife up on Facebook... says Stephen looks old ["like he's 30"] and Chelsea's good-looking.) Eventually, the marriage thing became such a joke around camp that Shane and I made an agreement that if we're both still single by the time he turns 40, we'd get married. (This inspired spontaneous offers around camp, "uh, Beth... so I should pray for your sake that you get married before then, right?") Thought it'd just be a brief joke, but then Lajeane (who goes to the same church as Shane so knows him well) declared that there needed to be a ceremony, complete with rings drawn on with permanent marker. (For future reference, red sharpie takes longer to wash off than you'd think.) Shane and I have a very... bizarre... relationship, which is good, because if it were anyone else, I'd worry the joke had gone too far.
When not hugging long-lost friends or having fake weddings, staff camp was a lot of prep work for the camps we'll be counseling at. We had worship and devotional times (for spiritual prep), as well as meetings, discussions, and lessons (for logistical prep). Nel, Sharon and Judith also led the various camp groups through team-building activities to help unite the staff of each camp. This was a bit of a difficulty for Annie, Shane and I, who are all counseling at both Ultimate and Discovery camp. So since the three camps were simultaneously doing team-building, we'd have to go back and forth between our two camps and only do half the activities with each. (We had to do this during planning sessions too, so I keep getting plans for the two camps I'm doing mixed up in my head.)
We had a camp fire on Saturday night, where we roasted marshmallows and sang the weirdest songs we could come up with. (Julie, you'll be happy to know that I sang the buffalo song not once but twice [um or maybe three times...] in your honor, even though Shane chickened out and wouldn't do it--you'll have to take it up with him.)
Showers at Happy Hills are as cold as I remember them--rain water pumped through an open pipe coming out of the wall. Not such a problem during staff camp, when you can shower at whatever point in the day you wish. But during the actual camps, counselors have to shower at 4 am, due to camp time. (In order to make kids who've never traveled feel like they've really entered a new place, they are told that camp is in a special time zone called "camp time." Everyone is to set their watches two hours fast. The kids feel like they're sleeping in and staying up late, when in reality they're getting up early and going to bed early. It also makes better use of daylight hours. However, counselors have to bathe and have a camp meeting before the campers are woken up at 6 am [8 am camp time]. So we're up REALLLLY early. And river water is COLD at 4 am!)
Staff camp ended Sunday afternoon, and I traveled back to Kingston in Loren's car (her dad's the one who baptized me), along with Arielle, Stacey-Ann and Jason. They're all from Swallowfield Chapel and know each other well, so it was a fun (and thanks to dramamine, uneventful) ride. As we pulled away from camp, we passed a sheep. It continually blows my mind how few Jamaicans are familiar with sheep. When Arielle saw it, she wanted a picture. Then an argument broke out amongst the Jamaicans about whether it was actually a goat or a sheep. I cut in, "THAT is a SHEEP." "But it has wool!" someone protested. "Uh, yeah... like I said... a sheep."
Hmmm.... The internet here is suddenly spazzing out again. I'm going to try to post this now, just in case.
To be continued...