First Camp

It was small and in the neighborhood, but the fogata was lit, the tents were up, and the full moon did the job of our lanterns as the night wore on. We were camping.  

I’ve made little effort in describing my work on this blog. Most of the time it’s been wildly varied. The one constant in my time in the barrio has been the Scouts, a project that almost didn’t get off the ground. The idea came to me at our In-Service Training (IST) last August. The national director of Guías y Scouts de Costa Rica gave an info session on the history of the organization, as well as the steps involved to getting a group started.

Between having just finished my CAT (a 45-page community assessment) and frustrations at the school, I was more-than-ready to get something started that gave me a little autonomy. Scouts were a perfect fit. I felt akin to the movement after four wonderful years with the Cub Scouts as a kid, and there just happened to be a community member that had once led a group here in Limón 2000. I jumped at the idea, initiating contacts with the regional and national directors, urging the neighborhood’s former Scout leader to help in the planning, and handing out over three hundred flyers to kids and parents.

What came next can only be explained as a dip on Delia’s roller coaster, a phrase I should first briefly explain. Delia was the PC staff member responsible for our cultural integration and personal well-being during training. One day she unveiled a poster with a cartoon-like roller coaster undulating its way from left to right across the page. Atop the peaks and under the valleys were various labels that identified the two-year  emotional trajectory of a typical PCV. Getting to site we were to experience the thrill of the new environment, of meeting new people and plowing forward with our plans to change the world. After a few weeks comes the first crash. Isolation, initial work frustrations, and lack of control (food, privacy, cleanliness) sends us down into the throes of depression.  In-Service Training was to be the event that sent us back on a climb.

And it did. Refreshed from warm showers and food variety beyond our wildest fantasies (“wait, there are more vegetables than starch? How had I forgotten that?”) we hopped back on our respective buses for the corners of the country. We had rekindled the friendships formed in training. Information sessions and idea sharing had sent us soaring, ready to inspire entire communities as they watched us lassoing clouds from below . I was with them, hurriedly trying to rally the school and the community behind this new project idea.

Reality set in the day of the event. It was to be an hour-long meeting with children from the community, followed by an information session with parents. The kids showed, about fifteen. The national and regional directors showed.  After my convincing him not to cancel and reminding him several times the same day of the meeting, the community counterpart ‘showed’. And not a single parent showed. There I stood,  swallowing the words of the old scout leader, “I told you no one would come; people in this community just don’t care.”  The higher-ups sped off in their pickup as I stood at the entrance to the school, waving apologetically. The highs of IST were already artifacts of a distant past.

So there the project slept smoldering for a month. In late October I miraculously received a phone call from an individual from a nearby community who claimed interest in helping me start a Scout group in Limón 2000. Word of mouth had passed from Sergio, the national director, to Roberto, a former scout. In just a few calls, we were staging the first of what has come to be nearly ten months of Sunday meetings with youth from Limón 2000.   

I wish I could say the path since that first call from Roberto has been a straight one. Many of the problems I faced still remain—parents’ lack of involvement, broken families, lack of resources, broken promises—but they all were lost in the flames last Friday. Roberto’s strengths are seen in his moments in front of the kids, which was never more evident than when he led the songs and dances around the campfire.

The rest of the supporting cast was equally helpful. Roberto’s wife Lupita snapped photos and prepared food, while their daughter Ivony, the night’s honorary guía, provided much of the entertainment (including the most amazing robot dance I've ever seen). The pastor of the Salvation Army, on whose property we were holding the camp, led a half hour animación de la fe, which included a dramatization by members of his youth group, and the regional director Gustavo even showed up to give a session on knots to close out the event.

Perhaps the greatest addition was my former college roommate Mark, who had just arrived for a week’s visit. Taking in stride lost luggage and our lack of repellent, Mark offered a hand in nearly all facets of the camp, setting up tents, sharpening palitos for marshmallow roasting, hacking up bamboo for the knots and ties workshop, etc. We even put him to work leading morning exercises.

Of the event’s ‘lessons learned’, perhaps most palpable was one I had learned years ago watching The Gremlins: don’t feed them after midnight. In a more practical setting, midnight is more like 10:30 p.m., as late-night s’mores and the excitement of their first night under a full moon left the kids in a frenzy and us camp leaders with less than two hours of sleep. 

We went home exhausted. Mark and I crashed for a good chunk of the afternoon, waking up in time to welcome fellow volunteer Matt over for stir fry. The great week continued with ziplining at a place within walking distance of Limón 2000, plenty of rice and beans, chess and frisbee on the edge of the Atlantic, howler monkey sightings, a host family visit, and one of the greatest bike rides I’ve ever taken: 52km from the top of Irazú Volcano down through the picturesque agrarian Cartago province and into Orosi valley.  In between we caught up on two years living, which have passed faster than the light of the space station that crossed the night sky in our last meeting, camping high up in the Sierras.

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