KIDZ KAMP

Wow! I cant believe I’m already in Grade 7 and writing about my last prep school camp! Well, this camp sure made up its mind to be the best camp we’d seen so far.

It really didn’t seem like much when we got there after our boring 90-minute drive (we had to be at school at 6AM. 6, I tell you!!) to our camp- rocks and cow poo everywhere, some not-very-appealing looking buildings, a lapa and a pool. Before we went to cabins and got settled in, though, all the counsellors (CK, Spanner, Scar, Spoon,  the head counsellor Spud and Mufasa) introduced themselves to us. Mr Oosthuizen, our Natural Sciences teacher, told us how the camp was going to work. We were all grumpy and sure this was going to be a repeat of our (shudder) Grade 4 camp experience buuuttt... there is always more to a camp than what meets the eye!

We got to our cabins and got ready for being divided into one of the five groups, putting on sunblock and doing some minor grumbling/complaining and grabbing bunks. I shared a bunk with Dana, one of my BFFs. Once we got back to the lapa, we got divided into groups that no one was happy about. So, when the counsellors and teachers weren’t looking, me and another of my BFFs, Leora scooted over to Dana’s group! We were lucky we didn’t get caught but we knew the counsellors knew. They held their silence, though, and for that all us ‘swappers’ are eternally grateful. Straight after we were sorted into groups, the groups headed off to the different activities. Our group, Group 3, walked slowly in the hot sun to the ladder-building activity. Our group chatted away, happy to be with friends again. The activity was a small jungle gym, of sorts, with two wooden poles in the ground stuck firmly into the ground and secured to the structure. We had to use 6-7 planks of wood, noting the number of holes on each side and the number of holes in the two poles in the ground and push screws into the holes. Once it was sucure, we all had to climb up the ladder, walk over the platform and down the pre-made ladder on the other side.

Once we were done with that, we head down to the obstacle course our group chatted away, happy to be with friends again. Reade, one of my classmates from last year, was happy to be the guinea pig and ‘show us how it’s supposed to be done’ he did it quickly, then we followed, all 19 of our group members finishing it. I myself was dared to climb a net challenge by a boy in my group and I finished it faster than him, (Girls Rule!) after which he pretended he didn’t see (imagine three wooden poles forming a frame, then a blue net stretched over both sides so that it creates a small slope on each side. Then imagine it being about 2.5 meters tall.)We finished the course with no problem whatsoever, after which we headed to the mud bath;)

We had been instructed to have our swimming costumes on underneath our clothes, so when we got to the muddy bank of the Vaal River, we took off our outer clothing and started attacking each other with stinky mud from the banks of the river. Well, the girls did so for a bit while the boys in our group struggled to build a raft from two oil barrels, two ropes and two planks. While they toiled, we got our Afrikaans teacher, Juffrou Tolmay, to get into the mud and gave her a mud bath, then we posed for a picture with her. Then we took over from the boys, and our raft actually floated for like a minute before it sunk, dunking our tiny test subjects (and my ex-best friends) Misty and Marianna into the river. After that we had a mud fight then headed to the pool.

We were tired, muddy yet happy when we headed back to our cabins to get ready for lunch. Lunch was just a boerewors roll with potato salad and oh-so-sweet juice with no flavour except.... sugar.... After lunch, we went to our cabins for a short respite from our activities and the boiling heat. We then headed to the pool for two quick games before walking down to the riverbank for canoeing. We had absolutely NO clue that we would get wet again for the first activity! We had to pass a cup of water around the circle our group sat in without dropping ANY of the water. We soon found out what would happen when we dropped water when some boys got water sloshed all over them for ‘not passing the cup fast enough!’ We all got wet eventually and enjoyed it.

For the second activity, we played ‘murderer in the dark’ (I have no intention to bore myself in writing the entire explanation and you in having to read the whole thing, so I must politely request you to Google the game- if, of course, you want to) we only had time to play two rounds before we trotted cheerfully to the river for canoeing.

While only half our group actually took the canoe ride, the rest of us swam in the river and repeated some of the mud fight we had earlier. Mr Metzer, our technology teacher, brought to our attention the fact that we were swimming in the Vaal River, the very river that divides Gauteng from the Free State and if we swam or canoed halfway across the river we would pass over into the Free State. Worried by the obviously impending thunderstorm, our teachers instructed us to get back to our cabins. When we got there, most of us (myself included) headed straight for the showers. I had to get mud out of my hair because someone thought it was funny to dump mud in my hair (well, it was rather funny.... BUT STILL)

At night, after a dinner of mince, rice and the ever-present oh-so-sweet juice, we had about an hour of freetime in which me and my friends took over the foosball table (we are GOOD at it, believe it or not!), talked, sung a little and hung out in the lapa before the night activities. The night activity consisted of us in our respective groups coming up with a play on a topic of their choice (ours was ‘How the Ostrich Got Its Long Neck) and presenting it the next night in an occasion called ‘River Theatre’. We managed to come up with an idea for and improbable play in which four Australian scientists come to SA to study the wildlife and find the short-necked Ostrich. They then experiment on it, causing its miniscule neck to grow and grow and grow.

That’s all we did that night and we soon got back to our cabins to sleep. Needles to say, we actually slept well that night, only because we were so tired, muscles aching and stomachs growling from the.... food.

Next morning, I was woken up by the gals in my dorm ‘quietly’ chattering away.  It was already 7AM, so CK came to wake us up and saw that we were already awake. Then, she told us to get ready and put on a lot of sunblock and bring a hat to the lapa. When we got there, we were sorted into our groups and Mr Oosthuizen and the counsellors told us how breakfast would work. To our blatant surprise, they announced that we would cook our own breakfast on a fire built out of sticks we found around camp (one of my friends joked that this was their way of cleaning up the camp)

When we got to the clearing in which we would cook our breakfast, we dumped our sticks on our group’s large pile and then waited for our counsellor, Scar to come and build and light the fire. Many groups already had a fire, and we were the last, our counsellor only managing to make the fire after 15 minutes and only after Reade and Misty had tried their hand at it. 

Once we finally got the fire up and running, did we finally get to try cooking our food- first the veggie sausages, then the chicken sausages and finally, the scrambled eggs on the HUGE pan they provided us with. The sausages were cooked with no problem- the little mishap where the fire was so strong that the sausages in the pan caught on fire and were burned thoroughly within half a minute was funny and, instead of trying to put out the fire, we started laughing! The real problem was the eggs. We cracked them without problem, but then Marianna and Michael decided to start arguing about who got to cook the frickin’ eggs! They decided to do it half-half, but then the REAL trouble started! The eggs obviously didn’t want to be cooked, so we waited there for about 20 minutes, not allowed to eat any of the sausages or bread because our counsellor Scar said- ‘you can’t eat anything until the eggs are cooked’ We went on like that for a while before someone (me) realized that the fire had gone out like 5 minutes ago. So while we tried to get the fire going again, Dana decided to completely disregard the unreasonable demands of our counsellor and....... EAT A SAUSAGE! We were annoyed at her, of course, but she didn’t seem to care,At all.

In the end, we did get them cooked, but only after the other groups were halfway through eating their food and only after we had to use another group’s fire! CK mercifully pitied us and allowed us to eat our sausages and another group’s spare scrambled eggs while she cooked our eggs. Needless to say, our eggs were terrible in the end because our counsellor didn’t wash the pan after he cooked the sausages, therefore all the veggie sausage’s soya oil and the burnt butter got into our eggs.

After our “breakfast”, we went back to the lapa and were divided into our classes- 7C, 7R, 7A, 7W and 7F. My class, 7A, went to the ‘dam’ exercise. There was a small concrete dam in camp, filled with unsanitary-looking green water, with tree tyres in it. The tyres were somehow permanently fixed to the bottom, so we could not move them. It was quite complicated. So complicated, in fact, that we could not understand it even when we were there! I’m going to skip this part, then, and only tell you that it was wet, smelly, involved planks and ‘sacrifices’!

Our group, already wet, then went over to rope swing. There was a structure on the bank of the river, with a rope that would, if you held on right, swing you into the dam, making a huge splash, leaving you in the cold water to swim back to shore for yourself. Nearly all of us went to swing into the dam like Tarzan! Me and a few of my fellow of my ‘tall people’ tried and got dumped right near the bank, causing much hilarity between our short buddies. We persuaded our Afrikaans and Natural Science teachers, Juffrou Tolmay and Mr Oosthuizen to do the swing as well! It was hilarious to watch our usually serious teachers scream as they splashed into the lake! We were all wet after the swing, so our counsellor gave us some time to dry off before heading to the zipline. It was about 5 meters long. Me and a couple of other kids in my class managed to do the zipline before we were called to the lapa so that the counsellors could tell us the good news: we had about an hour of freetime before the next activity, which we would be doing as a grade!

Me and my friends stayed in the lapa for a while before going to our cabin to chill. When we were in the cabin, we chatted for a while before deciding to play a game similar to the ‘Riff Off’ in Pitch Perfect (if you don’t know what I’m talking about its not really important) where someone says a topic or a word and someone in one of the two groups has to come up with a song with that word in it or a song about that topic (it has to be a real song though) we played ‘the song game’ as we called it, until the counsellors summoned us to the lapa.

We found out that we would be going inside a ‘game farm’ in camp for what, we didn’t know yet. When we got to our destination, CK told us that the muddy watering hole before us would be the very ‘pond’ she told us we would be swimming in! We were all shocked at first, and between ourselves, we all questioned the sanity of the people who organized these activities! Gradually, nearly all of us got into the watering hole, splashing each other with mud and generally having fun! We then all sat down in a huge circle and played ‘Duck Duck Goose’, then had another mudfight, then we trudged our way to a ‘clean’ lake far away from our current lake. Muddy, very muddy, but cheerful and jolly, we trudged through the bush, cracking jokes as we went.

When we finally got there, we were happy to see clean-looking water and our muddy classmates washing themselves down, and literally ran to the lake, jumping in and rinsing the bulk of the mud off of us! After we washed down, we put our arms around each other in a giant circle and we and our Tech teacher, Mr Metzer, shared what we had learned from this camp and praised the whole group for being able to do all these things since we were, after all, ‘city slickers’ (Shamir- a guy in my grade’s words, not mine)! After a while, we trudged back to camp, all of us singing praise of the camp and all the experiences it had given us.

When we got back to base camp, I RAN, RAN I tell you, to the showers so that I could wash off the remaining dregs of mud!

We then changed into our warmer clothes for the ‘River Theatre’ and the highlight of our 2 ½ days spent at camp, THE BONFIRE! Long story short, we went to the lapa, divided into our five groups and started to practice our plays since we would be presenting that night. I really didn’t know that temporary school camp groups could have a hive mind, because apparently, we did! One unnamed person in our group was mildly injured and wasn’t able to come and practice, so our whole group excluding some of my friends and I who apparently weren’t part of the whole hive mind thing they had going on, so we tried to buck them up a little but nooooo! They just HAD to sit around moping! So the people in the group that actually had a brain cell or two only amounted to about six, so we left the lapa and tried to come up with a warcry, which was our second assignment and the least important, and we could have gotten somewhere if the unnamed person hadn’t “come to our rescue” within the first five minutes of the first useful discussion of the night. 

After he/she (I’m keeping that person anon) came, the Frankensteins in our group finally came to life and began.... thinking! We still didn’t get much done, though but our play got the most laughs from our four fantastic impromptu comedians who played the scientists! The other plays were also hilarious, and one especially (‘Save the Rhinos’ or something) had a funny dead rhino that made us laugh until our sides hurt! After that, we headed to the giant bonfire and enjoyed a dazzling campfire (With no marshmallows, unfortunately <-_-> ) and a ‘telepathy’ show that my friend Kika and I figured out the trick for easily!  We all fell asleep at like 11PM that night, exhausted from the days fun.

The next day, I woke up to the ‘pleasant’ sound of our cabin packing our suitcases at 5 in the morning, since it WAS our last day. We packed everything and went to the lapa to say thank you to all the counsellors and say goodbye before we left for........................

GOLD REEF CITYYYYYY!!!! For those of you that know this place, it is one of THE best amusement parks in SA! So, eager to get there, we ate our cereal and munched our toasted cheese sandwiches, said a heartfelt goodbye and thank you to the wonderful counsellors that made our Grade 7 trip so much more special! Then we quickly hopped on the bus and drove off into (not the sunset, more like into the sun) On the bus drive there, we played the song game for a while then we chattered about the different rides and which ones were fun and most importantly, which ones we would go on! evil laugh....

When we finally got to Gold Reef, we were so excited that we jumped around like crazy rabbits, smiling and laughing as we walked from the buses to the entrance of Golda Reefa Citya! (imagine saying that in an Italian accent!) We had to wait for a bit before the teachers got our tickets sorted out. While we sat down outside the gate, Tayla noticed that I had this huge bruise on my leg! I have seriously NO clue where it came from but I couldn’t care less.

We got in, the teachers reminded us that our rendezvous point was the Wimpy’s and we quickly dispersed into the park, laughing and chatting all the way. (I’m not going to describe the rides as that would take waaay too long!) We went on a total of eight rides in about 2 and a half hours, which MUST be some type of record! We would have gone on more, but we stopped for ice cream at Milky Lane  and that took a while. We went on: The Golden Loop, The UFO, The Dream Boat, The Jozi X, The Raging River Rapids (twice!!), The Runaway Train, The Tornado and The Log Ride! It was really fun and I hope we get the chance to go to Gold Reef again with the whole grade.

My whole trip was an absolutely fabulous experience and no one could ask more of the tour. (except maybe comfortable beds. That would have been nice.) I loved this tour a lot and I’m sure my friends did too. We came out of this tour as a team, not a grade. A family, not a school.