Summer Camp 2009

When I returned from my visit home, I immediately began preparing for my summer camp, which lasted two weeks in January and was held two hours a day, four days a week. It was my 4th and final camp for the 50-75 kids in my neighborhood. The tradition of the camp was started by a volunteer that I followed-up so some of these kids have participated in this bi-anual camp for 4 years. The kids look forward to it. they get excited about it, and love playing games, doing crafts, singing songs, getting a snack and small prizes every summer and winter. They have learned the routine and each camp I've done has run more smoothly, the teenage youth that help run the activities have been more helpful and I've grown more attached to the kids. This time I told them this was my last camp and 57 little sad faces looked at me with questioning eyes and i almost broke down crying. Instead I sand a song with them and told them we were going to have a lot of fun and hopefully a new volunteer would come after me to play with them. It was a great camp. I had help from my site mate, Rachel who helps me run the camp every time, and several other volunteers helped by giving interactive lessons and helping with the activities. We had lessons on parasite prevention, self esteem, trash management, we did a neighborhood clean up, made play dough, colored, read books, played jump rope, did team challenges and the highlight of the camp was the day we planted trees around the soccer field in the neighborhood. A friend of mine, Francisco who manages the school garden at a nearby school planted around 100 tree seeds and the seedlings were ready to plant. I asked him if he had any plans for planting them and he said he didn't so I asked if i could take about 50 of them for the kids to plant at our camp. He loved the idea, since it helped both of us out and helped out the neighborhood which is considered the poorest neighborhood in the city.

Travis, an Environmental Education volunteer came that day and we hauled the baby trees to my house using a makeshift wheel barrow and my bike. Travis gave the kids a quick lesson on the importance of trees and how to correctly plant and take care of it and then the kids set off in pairs to plant a tree. During the lesson, Francisco's son and another man dug the whole around the perimeter of the soccer field and then the kids planted and water the trees. The kids have been watering them everyday, using empty two liter bottles and my watering can. The local carpenter was impressed by what we were doing and donated a bunch of wood to use as tree protectors. We put in 3 stakes around each tree and then used string to fill in the gaps and make it more sturdy. So far, so good. We've lost a couple of trees, just due to the heat and the shock of transplanting but I have faith the majority will grow to be big, strong trees that will provide much needed shade and beauty to the neighborhood. It would be great to return to Paraguay in 15 years and see the trees that we planted. I told the kids that's my plan so they better keep watering them.

Here are a few pictures from the camp: