Lost Stories: This One Time, at GAD Camp...

Written June 28th, 2013

I use the acronym GAD quite often. It stands for Gender and Development and is the umbrella program for all things youth, gender, and sexual health. Each year GAD has 2 camps for kids from all over the country. This year, there were way to many kids who applied to go to camp than slots, so a few PCVs took it upon themselves to host 2 more. While both my kids from Playona were able to attend camp in the first round, I did not. This time around, I was invited to be a counselor.

The coordinator for this camp wanted it to have a camping feel to it, rather than hosting at a conference facility with dorms. At first I was admittedly not excited about it. I LIVE camping, why do I want to go halfway across the country to continue to not have electricity or water? Because Parque Nacional Omar Torrijos is beautiful. It is up in the mountains where the temperatures get really cold- mid sixties! The views are spectacular, and on a clear day you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans!

DAY ONE. Wake up at Sonia's house in Cocle, pack, and haul supplies up to camp. Andrew and I assembled 7 tents for kids and put name tags on them. Helped check kids in as they arrived, never got lunch so by dinner time was super excited to eat. Had icebreaker games like passing an orange with your neck in a race against other teams, and divided into our teams for the week. YEA VERDE!

DAY TWO. Reluctantly got up at 5.30am and everyone climbed up the peak to the look out for a group picture. Too foggy to see the oceans. Played ninja until breakfast. Spent the morning sessions discussing self esteem and self image, talked about filling buckets. After lunch we talked about our values, strengths, dreams and goals. Team Verde is on the struggle bus when it comes to working together and following directions. Middle schoolers are not my favorite people. Movie night after dinner. Help supervise movie while prepping my session for the next day. We go to bed at 10, a fight breaks out in the girl's tents. A few PCVs go handle it. It was of course girls from Team Verde.

DAY THREE. Drag myself to morning yoga and breakfast. Morning session is team building activity to build the tallest tower out of straws. Verde lacks team skills, we do not win. We do not come in last either though! We do the Baby Game skit and then give each kid an egg and have them decorate it as their baby. We warn them that if they are neglectful parents the PCVs will kidnap their children, and the team with the most babies left on day 4 gets points. Danielle and I do a session on decision making, then lunchtime. Team Verde has already lost 3 babies. 2 professionals from Panama's equivalent of Planned Parenthood spend the afternoon doing a session about sexuality, sexual rights and coercion, STIs, contraceptives, and why it is just so hard for anyone to talk about sex, even though it is something universal to all races and cultures, and how to go about getting advice on it, particularly here in Panama. It was the best sexual health lesson I have ever seen, and the US school system put me through quite a few. That night we had the second half of the movie from the day before and we roasted marshmallows. We only let the kids make 3 s'mores a piece. Each PCV ate 10. I wish I was exaggerating.

DAY FOUR. My turn for morning wake up call at 5am. Went back to bed and skipped morning kickboxing so that I could finally have a chance to shower. (I don't wanna say how long it had been.) After breakfast we had the morning sessions on risks of teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS games, and condom demonstrations and practice, quickly followed by impromptu condom volleyball. After lunch we counted babies. Between the 8 on my team, we had 2 babies left. Each team made a team flag that involved excessive amounts of glitter and then we headed out to the field for LOS JUEGOS OLYMPICOS! Team Verde won nearly every event. We swept the Olympic games with over a 50 point lead. It wasn't enough to boost our overall standing for the week, we still came in last, but winning the Olympics was a team morale booster. VAMOS!

VAMOS! VERDE GREEN! After dinner we showed a slideshow of photos from the week, did a talent show, and gave kids certificates. I went to sleep beyond exhausted.

DAY FIVE. Up bright early to pack, eat breakfast, and send kids truck load by truck home. Got hugs from my kids on team verde and they invited me to come visit. Tossed a football around with kids until my turn came to leave, Danielle and I left for Panama City where I set up camp with her Macbook in a hostel and worked on my Latrine Project video. I uploaded it to the internet about 7pm, showered, and headed to the bus terminal where we bought groceries and waited for the 3am bus to take us the 7 hours back to Meteti.

Back to the jungle.