camp begins

I am delighted to tell you that camp is off to a great start despite the rain, mosquitoes, mud, fleas, and more rain! There are 148 campers in this group plus a small army of counselors, leaders, Canadians, cooks, maintenance guys, and other assorted camp followers.

It was an early start for me as the bread guy showed up in the rain with 350 buns at 8:00am. There was some confusion about this as the order should have been placed for Tuesday morning but somehow wound up being delivered today. It was therefore suggested that the entire Canadian contingent (around 20 strong) should eat around 15 buns each for breakfast. Some of the guys gave it their best shot but were always going to fail!

I then got a phone call from the cooks who had headed into town at 6am to buy the supplies for today. So I drove into the market to pick them up where, after some searching around, I found them enjoying a juice as they did not expect me to arrive so quickly! I told them that I now drive like an Ecuadorian and it doesn’t take long for me to make it into town. We loaded 3 sacks of vegetables into the back of my car along with two large bags of fish (my car will need an air-freshener now) and various other purchases. On the drive home they informed me that I am an excellent taxi driver and promised to give me a little extra come lunchtime! One of the perks of being camp administrator!

I arrived back at the camp and delivered the advance party of cooks with their purchases, then turned around and drove Scott Martin into town to buy some bits and pieces so that he could repair a couple of sinks, install the new screen doors and windows and While I was gone 30 large 20 litre jugs of drinking water arrived. So now we were all set for the invasion.

The first bus arrived at 10:30 followed by the second around 11, followed by a group of 5 local kids from El Arenal, followed by most of the leaders at around 11:30. Organized chaos was the result as kids, suitcases, knapsacks, musical instruments, technical equipment, meat, chickens, cooks, and leaders poured into the dining hall to await their instructions from the program directors. Daniel Lucas assigned everyone to their cabins along with their counselors while a few whose names had been missed for various reasons waited patiently until they were also given directions. By this time it was almost lunchtime so everyone milled around getting to know each other until the meal was served. The cooks had done an excellent job preparing fish, rice and a salad along with a tasty soup.

The afternoon was spent organizing the campers into teams and spending some time on the beach. Kelly, Holly and I ran back into town to buy snacks, drinks and candies for the tuck shop. We got back just in time to get organized and open the tuck shop which we are running through one of the windows in our house to keep the confusion away from the kitchen where it was run last year. They bought almost everything that we had purchased so we will be heading back into town to buy more tomorrow.

Supper was also excellent and shortly after that we had chapel time with Vicente who did a great job at keeping the kids attention. There were a number of hands that went up when he challenged the kids to make decisions for Christ.

I can’t forget the rain. After lunch the rain, which had stopped around 11 started up again just to add to the mud that seems to have enveloped the entire camp. It has rained every night for about a week and it is now 10pm and is still raining and the mud is turning into something like you would see in a movie about the First World War! However as I write, everyone is having fun presenting their team cheers. Kuma is throwing in his two cents worth with his funny bark that anyone who has been here knows so well. So who really cares about mud, fleas, mosquitoes and rain when you are having so much fun at camp!