Well Camp was incredible! It was a lot like the promotional video portrays it to be: massive, full of children and crazy. Having been used to Habonim Dror camps with no more than 200 campers, it was very exciting and slightly daunting to have a camp of over 1200 people! The whole organization of it obviously differs completely. For instance I had Shomrim which are kids going into grade 12. At Camp Miriam, the Habo camp I used to go to on Gabriola Island, that age group would be Madatz, who are already counselors in training. At Habonim Dror South Africa (HDSA) they are considered the oldest campers and have a camp formatted to ease them into the transition of campers to ‘Boger’ meaning graduate. The highlight of this is ‘Projects Week’ where they get involved in the planning and running of a variety of activities broken into 1, 2 or 3-day projects. These range from planning and executing the Talent Show to taking over the kitchen and organizing food for the whole camp for a day. Our kids got their first taste of being a Madrich (counselor) or ‘Maddie’ by taking care of the Shtillim kids as their madrichim had a day off camp for their Rocks day. Another group handled the grade 4, ‘Garinim’ campers as they joined us for a 3-day mini-machaneh. Yet another group of Shomrim had kids from Zwelihle, the local township come over for 3 days of fun at our camp. These kids even got to perform a dance at our Talent Show and had the time of their lives. That is until one kid stole someone’s digital camera. There are definitely still massive problems in this country stemming from the huge in division of wealth. That’s why at Habo SA one of their pillars is ‘Service to humanity’, and therefore one of our most important projects is TAC, the Treatment Action Campaign where youth activists from Kyalitsha, the large township in Cape Town come stay with us on camp for a few days to discuss and actualize on the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I worked on this project and it was fascinating to see our somewhat sheltered South African Jewish teens relate to black kids their own age, some of whom are HIV positive. It was also wonderful to hand out 5000 condoms in the fairly small-minded town of Hermanus and talk to people and see their reactions.
Camp was also incredible to me for many personal reasons. Toted by my father as a ‘one shot deal’, it was a chance to see the camp my parents went to and made some of their best friendships and memories at. It was also an insight into what life is like as a South African youth, a life that could have been mine if my parents hadn’t decided to immigrate to Canada a year before I was born. And it was certainly quite an experience living in the middle of the bush in Africa, as Habo SA prides themselves on a true camping experience with tents instead of cabins. One of my highlights was building the Shomrim Hannalah site, the sleeping and chill site for the Shomrim maddies. We had to make a new site this year as the Bonim group was so big that they had to annex our previous one. So we literally went into the bush with a chainsaw team and got to create our space. In the end it was beautiful. As the smallest staff group of 11 it was an intimate space with winding, rock lined path on the way in and out. It was comprised of 3 tents, Hammock Land, a tapestry enclosed chill area with ingeniously crafted couches made out of mattresses, milk crates and string, as well as a covered area for our materials and excess stuff. My tent included myself, Casper, Yair and Alon and was dubbed ‘Caucus Raucous’ it was great-fun and well-loved up until I made myself a self-appointed alternate member of a certain tent in the Amelim Hannalah site.
Overall my Habonim Dror South African camp experience was amazing! Everyday at suppertime I would reflect on just how quickly another day had passed. And if you’ve ever been to a summer camp then you’ll understand just how much happens in a day! The time flew and even less than halfway through I found it weird to think that I had once not known any of the incredible people that I was now surrounded by.
As par the tradition, Shomrim was responsible for setting up Mifkad Eish, the final night of the beach where we light on fire the names of all the age groups as well as the Habo semel (symbol). It was so breathtaking to see all the words alight and the purposely emotion-evoking music really combined for a moving last night. It couldn’t have ended any better.
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