As Georgians say, we all love the beautiful nature. The goal of Eco Camp and its subsidiary clubs is to get kids to back up that claim by refraining from throwing empty bottles out marshrutka windows and into the nature. The children are taken to a week of roughin' it, location depending on which region they're from. I got to go to Ratcha, a region that's somewhat restricted due to its proximity to a conflict zone (but that's half the lure...), to a village called Shovi, about 30 kilometers south of Russia. Check out the picture-- if you'll look around Aaron (who was-- along with Ian, Joe, Peter, David, Pierre, Nicholas and I-- a camp counselor), you'll see the kind of beautiful nature I'm talking about.
We took the kids up in a bus that Ian generously referred to as a jalopy (is that how you spell jalopy?). One could argue that this was an example of American arrogance and that it's unfair to apply American expectations of bus quality to a developing nation... but that "one" would not be me, because that thing was a piece of crap. We got to make many unscheduled stops in the beautiful nature, at which point any and all moving parts would be torn from the Model T-era engine and replaced with one of the many extra parts hidden in the glove box. As Tom, the eco coordinator in Kutaisi, said: before you agree to board an aging bus that's headed uphill into an uncharted abyss, it might be a good idea to check the amount of spare parts it's sporting. Many = bad sign.
Final statistics for journey to Ratcha:
- 4 hours estimated travel, pre-departure
- 9 hours actual travel
- 100 kilometers traveled
- 10 km/hr (6 mph) average speed
Finally, we got to our campground at Shovi. It was everything I imagined camping in the mountain woods would be... tents, sleeping bags, campfires, washing from a spring in the ground (though not from the river, which rushed along at a good 10,000 mph through rocks and such), a toilet in the woods made of tarp and a hole in the ground, picnic tables, etc. We had 35 kids with us, who were duly split into "patrols" by the Georgian Scouts-- the Scouts being the late-teens/early 20s Georgians who pretty much ran the camp, allocated the money, made my presence redundant, things like that.
What would camp be without icebreakers? Despite the fact that the word "icebreaker" used to strike fear into my social anxiety-ridden heart when I was that age, these kids all loved it. The pictured game involves a sheet placed between two teams, and when the sheet drops, the two players race to shout the name of the person opposite them.
Each of the patrols got to make their own flags and chants to go along with their-- yay!-- chores. The sole reason I mention this is to show this picture, wherein you will see a Georgian boy assisting the girls with the dishes. Don't blink or you'll miss it! This feat was accomplished with some forced substitutions from the cadre of boys lounging in the shade while the women did the women's work, but I was duly impressed nonetheless.
Other than forced labor, the kids also learned about nature or something. Pictured here, we have Nature Journal, where they're thrown into the woods to write or draw their impressions about their surroundings.
... and here's Nature Smell, where each kid is given a red plastic cup to collect things that smell strongly. Note that the criterium is "strongly" and not "good." I got to be on the judges' panel, so I'm thankful that none of the kids found the pile of nearby poo.
... here we have a leadership activity, wherein groups of 9 kids are tied together, and only one remains un-blindfolded. The kid with sight becomes the leader, who guides his or her team to a series of trees to pick up number cards and carry them back to the start line. It went pretty well, though there were isolated incidents of children being pulled backward down the hill, shouting "NELA!!!" ("slow down").
... and what would a Peace Corps event be without hippie handholding and singing in a circle?
... One of the big events was a mega-long hike. It didn't actually end up being mega-long, due to the guide never arriving and us waiting for him until 1 PM, the children bodily requesting breaks every ten minutes, and the arrival of an untimely thunderstorm while we were nearing the top. The rumbles echoed through the mountains, necessitating a speedy descent, though the crumbly rock path was somewhat an obstacle to that. We ended up making a big chain of people holding hands, sidestepping down the trail.
... Once we made our way down to the bottom, though, we could partake in the minimalist supra we'd brought with us, namely bread, eggs, and boiled potatoes. It was better than it sounds, especially when you do what David does and smush a hard-boiled egg into the bread.
Actually, eggs were our best friends. The chef was really into carbohydrates, and also into talking about the time in 1979 that he cooked for 500 children in the town of Kobuleti. Our average dinner consisted of no less than three types of carbohydrates, some combination of porridge, bread, potatoes, or noodles. There was a cameo appearance by beans on the last day, but other than that, our saving grace was the eggs. As a side note, I'd like to express my displeasure with the assistant cook's comment in Georgian that I was a pretty, good girl because I couldn't talk back in Georgian. Up yours, buddy.
The evening fires were a delight, not only because the temperature plunged down to an unseasonal 15 or so degrees every night (Celsius, of course), but because we got to bond with the chilluns while the Scouts taught them ultra-nationalist songs and chants ("We love you, our flag..."). The fires would have been nice decrescendoes from a long day into a night of refreshing sleep, were it not for the fact that the Scouts would usually start an activity at 10:30 PM or thereabout, thus creating the inevitability of yet another 18-hour day for campers and counselors alike. I promised myself that I wouldn't mention that this may have had something to do with the fact that certain parties had the luxury of midday sleep and were therefore energized for late-night Capture the Flag sessions, since that would be petty of me.
It would be a travesty if I failed to mention Kutsura, the Eco Dog. At the last Eco Camp in Lagodekhi, she was found in a cardboard box in the rain, probably left there by an owner who meant to drown her but who lost heart at the last minute. She was so bloated that she couldn't walk more than a few steps, most likely from being weaned from her mother too soon. Three weeks later, and voila-- she's been unofficially adopted by Eco Camp, traveling from campsite to campsite with the Scouts and Peace Corps volunteers, free to roam the woods, chew on pinecones, eat leftovers, chew on tents, be adored by campers, chew on campers' ankles, etc.
So the end of camp comes and goes, and we pile into the (better) bus to ride back down to Kutaisi. Unfortunately, being a better bus doesn't guard against cutting a switchback curve too closely and getting stuck in a ditch. The children panicked and tried to flee the bus, while the jaded Americans moseyed along behind, perhaps not stopping to notice that the rear window displayed a 30-degree lean. We disembarked and then belatedly noticed that the undercarriage of the right side of the bus was resting on the road, the right tires were smushed into the wheel wells, and the whole vehicle was leaning into a crevice, supported by the lucky presence of a concrete drain pipe. Even if we'd fallen, the crevice was only about two meters deep, but it was still precarious enough to warrant a slew of rubberneckers as we sat there waiting for the next two hours. A kindly KAMAZ truck driver towed us out, and after the bus driver & co. fixed whatever was wrong with the hydraulics, they kindly started up the bus and drove it 2 kilometers down the road to wait for us. This provoked much grumbling from the campers and was not appreciated. My one regret is that my camera was in the luggage compartment of the bus, so I couldn't get any cool pictures; I had the feeling that if I'd taken the initiative to retrieve my camera, it would have been the last straw that tipped the bus into the ditch. That would have made a better anecdote, I think.
As we stood at the side of the road, keeping children from merrily skipping into oncoming traffic, Ian pointed out the unfairness of having to be the adult of a situation. Were this an official Peace Corps event, we could have scurried over to watch the bus drivers struggling with air hoses all we liked, but in this case, that would have set a bad example for the children, whom we wanted to keep on the non-traffic side of the road. It's situations like these that make me forget that 23 is still young; when everyone around you is 15, you feel old anyway. This is the mindset that led to my absolute surprise when Twisted Misters (see previous posts for out-of-place explanation) were repeatedly described as being ridiculously young. Woohoo! That means I'm still young, too!
I'll conclude with the American counselors' reenactment of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. We really did make the Georgian Scouts take the flag back out of the ground so we could get this picture (much like the original WWII photographer did?), so you'd best appreciate the artistry of the bleached-out lighting and poorly-framed shadows that mark my work.
1 comment:
Bloated puppy = worms. did ya kiss it? :p 19 DAYS TIL NY!
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