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Our dining companions each night at camp.
I always tried to get a seat at the table with my
back to our little animal friends.
With a little more imagination, I could write
one excellent Goosebumps book! |
It is hard to believe that March is almost over! As I pulled up my blog this
afternoon to update it I saw my last post was two months ago. I’ve got some
catching up to do.
After our family (Jon,
Jody, Jonathan) trip to Mauritius for Christmas, we all returned to our jobs and school, a little more tanned and a lot more relaxed. You
may remember last year's post about my middle school's trip to the bush for a
3-night team building adventure. We went again this year to the same camp,
which the kids really enjoyed last year.
However, last year we went in March with just 27 students and 3 teachers.
This year we went in February with 42 students and 6 teachers.
I mention the months because last year we
were entering the fall season – very warm days but cool nights.
This year we went a month earlier and it was
unbearably hot.
The bush is dotted with acacia trees which, while not
big, offer the only shade on the veld. We would take turns huddling together
under their small canopy waiting for instructions for the next activity, hoping
to get just a moment to cool off. The photo at the top is exactly the landscape, not only at the camp but all over northern South Africa. This led to time spent with the first aid
kit, cleaning scratches and punctures, as acacia trees are also covered in
giant thorns.
Also because of the heat,
we spent more time at the dammed pond using the zip-line and the rope swing,
which the students absolutely loved.
But
this resulted in slipping and falling, leech removal, an injured shoulder and
on our last full day there, a trip into the closest town (45 minutes away) for a
student who received seven stitches in the bottom of a foot.
One of the workers at the camp loaded my student in the back seat of his car
and drove us to, literally, the town doctor.
The doctor was a gray-haired Afrikaner who was so wonderful with
Francesco.
When Francesco asked the
doctor if he had done stitches before, he chuckled and reminded us that he was
a country doctor in a farming community and had sewn up lots of people over the
years.
Francesco was worried he would
have to go home that day. He didn’t want to leave early because that night, our
last night at camp, we were actually sleeping out in the bush.
Earlier in our trip our instructor Dirk had
told us all to be very careful walking off the paths because of snakes and animals
lurking in the bush.
He especially
warned all of us to watch out for the Black Mamba, the most venomous snake in
Africa.
Dirk’s advice if any of us got
bit out there? “Drag yourself under the closest acacia tree, settle in the
shade, light a cigarette, and enjoy the last ten minutes of your life.” One of
my students actually asked Dirk, “what if you don’t smoke?” Dirk rolled his
eyes and muttered something in Afrikans. Your guess is as good as mine as to
what he said. But I bet we could all figure it out.
After my return from the doctor, Dirk found me to tell me that a black mamba
had been sighted by another instructor earlier that day, right in the area
where we had planned to camp out. He felt we should not camp outside that night
just to be safe.
The kids whined a bit. The
adults were just fine with it. Instead, we did a night walk. The students were
divided into small groups and set off on a very dark trail, no torches
(flashlights) allowed. The teachers are bigger kids than the kids much of the
time so you can probably guess that we hid just off the trail, scaring the kids
as they each passed by us.
Each student
fell into a category: the runner, the screamer, the statue, the
disbeliever.
We made it home the next day where Francesco debuted his badge of courage in
the form of seven stitches, to all the younger students. And I went home and took a nap.
