Camp

Across the nation, every public school has the same spring break. During that week off the Moroccan Ministry of Youth and Sports hosts English language immersion camps with the help of the Peace Corps. The Ministry provides the space and the funding and we provide the teaching and actually plan the layout of the camp. We work in conjunction with Moroccan staff for that week. Spring camp is a stressful time for volunteers because each city functions completely differently and how camp runs is mostly left in the hands of the pcv charged with organizing that year. It varies year to year. Spring camps, as there are so many and all the same week, are notoriously understaffed and as such, volunteers from all four sectors are encouraged to participate in spring camps.

Summer camps are a completely different story. Only youth development volunteers participate in their programming and they run over the course of two months in roughly 2-week cycles, of which each yd volunteer is required to do one. This summer I did two.

The most accurate way I can describe summer camp, the first one anyway, is to say I felt like I was at Disney World. It was awesome.

Summer camp is run by the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the U.S. Embassy. The kids who participate are city kids (or kids who can afford it) and more rural youth. Volunteers come with their regions [we vote on the dates we’d like to attend as a region and get paired with regions of similar tastes] and the U.S. Embassy pays for all associated travel and camp fees for four youth from EACH volunteer’s site. It’s amazing.

The city where the camp is held each year is on the beach. During the week there are multiple trips to the beach and for many of the kids that come with volunteers, especially those of us that live out in the desert, it is the first time that these kids (teenagers!) have ever sent the ocean. It’s wonderful.

That said, the flavor of each camp session varies as each has a different co/coordinator but in general pcvs are divided into teachers, club leaders, co/coordinators and a librarian. The teachers and club leaders are paired for mutual support. The clubs depend on the planning of the coordinator. It typically varies between country themed clubs or more standard arts, leadership, etc type activities. Both sessions I attended were arranged by country. First session I taught elementary English and was a part of Team Brazil, second time I taught intermediate-high English and was a member of Team Brazil.

Throughout camp each team is competing for points based on winning activities throughout the week and general behavior (points can be deducted for bad behavior). Some events that happen every camp session are a trip to the Portuguese cistern,

talent show, fashion show (boys love this too. Categories are traditional, modern, “wacky”, “hip hop” and/or whatever else they’d like),

I was supposed to be a cat too. I had a tail. And face paint.

Halloween night (a standard favorite),

and the last night is “Spectacle” where each club, some individuals, and some staff perform and there is a big feast of pastilla, lamb, cake, and soda.

This is patilla. It is sweet. I would like it more if it were savory. It's layers of filo dough stuffed with shredded pigeon [or chicken if people are being cheap]

The unhappy looking girl is a very dear friend… who is unfortunately a vegetarian, and dinner that night, which was served at 11, contained only meat.

First camp session Team Brazil DOMINATED. And we had sooooooo much fun. Our spirit was inescapable. I loved it all. I was even able to show them some of my pictures from my trip to Brazil. We watched youtube clips about the wildlife, Carnival and we also had a Capoeira lesson. As the campsite was on the beach we were also able to go to the beach one day during club time and actually do capoeira on the sand by the ocean. It was lovely. We also learned a bit of samba. During the final night’s presentation the kids performed a samba and capoeira for everyone.

Team Brazil! Capoeira and towards the end some samba. :D

Unfortunately, Team Scotland did not win the competition during second camp but we had the most spirit. My partner had studied abroad there and he did a great job of teaching the kids and really getting everyone involved. We all were given Scottish names (I chose MacAllister) and had a role call every day and a chant. We were the loud kids at lunch :) Team Scotland made appearances in my very own site. How so? One of my girls was in the club and we learned some hand clap coordination things and one day a group of elementary age girls came into my house and showed me the things that the one girl had learned at camp. I was amazed. There was also a girl in the club who absolutely fell in love with the club and our energy and as a by-product “Scotland.” She has sent me emails since camp has ended. Since camp has ended she has also changed her email address to hername.scotland@…. Incredible.

With Brendan, Team Scotland leader

I did learn interesting things about world perspective during summer camp. Things that I have taken for granted, things that I have taken for “common knowledge” were put to the test. During camp the librarian’s job were tasks typically associated with the name but also to create questions of the day and host different sorts of competitions (à la name this state/country). One question of the day that caused much discussion among the volunteers and curiously conflicting sentiments between the educators and those to be educated were two questions: 1-What are the continents? And 2-How many oceans are there? We Americans learned that there are only 5 continents. Or was it only four? At any rate, it was all kinds of confused because Europe and Asia were still designated as two continents (I would be willing to accept that as one) and North and South America are one. I forget which other continent was omitted, I’m assuming either Antarctica or Australia. Unfortunately I can’t even hazard at guess at which is more likely at this juncture. As for the oceans… I guess those are naturally a more fluid sort of concept (ha.ha), but if memory serves me correctly the Indian Ocean was missing from our standard count.

These variations of things I had taken for granted really made me question the idea of common knowledge. I thought of it as primarily education based, but not so much tied to culture/educational climate. What makes a thing a fact? Because you learn it in school or read it in a book deemed credible? Deemed credible by whom? These kids learned these things from credible sources. I’m not even sure that they’re “wrong” so much as differently interpreted. No one doubts the fact of the landmasses’ existence or the presence of water, just a difference of opinion on what should be grouped together and what is considered to be part of the classification at all.

Just this week I brought a world map into the dar chebab and had a perusal with a high school student who knew a lot about geography. He, however, was not thrilled to see Israel and it’s flag on the map alongside all the other nations. He insisted that “Israel” is “Palestine” and faced with this uncomfortable conflict I truly understood for the first time why maps with country delineations are termed ‘political maps.’ In America, a world map isn’t presented in the schools as a “political” thing… it is presented as a fact. But apparently here, some things, or at least Israel, are up for debate and the word ‘political’ in describing a map had never been made more clear to me. I feel like in America we take a lot of things for granted.

We volunteers, being the generally well-educated people coming from some kind of liberal upbringing, tend to cringe at the lack of creative thinking that we encounter here. It is true that schools are a place of rules and order and innate abilities that stray from book learning don’t typically have a place to be nurtured (out in the bled (“country”) anyway) but I am always surprised by how much my interactions with people here teach me about the limitations of Americans’ own perceptions of the world. It is easy to criticize from a place outside of a community but to be able to critique self, while within the system, is a difficult task indeed. I guess that’s why we all have to keep traveling. We have to bring ideas home so that we stay fresh ourselves.