Camp Ministry

Here’s a picture of me playing basketball with some of the kids at Gidan Bege. Note that we don’t have a hoop, so we’re really just passing the ball around and dribbling around people, but it was fun. We’ll write more about Gidan Bege in the future. I’ve been working with Claudia for the past week now on the ECWA Camp Youth Alive (ECYA) ministry. ECYA is a youth camp with a vision somewhat like summer camp back in the States. The camp is designed to be a 6 day camp, although depending on who the camp is for, it may be shorter. The concept of summer camp didn’t really exist in Nigeria a while ago. There simply isn’t the money or leisure time for that sort of thing here. However, people are starting to see it as a really good way to reach the youth of the country, so since the mid 1990’s, Claudia’s been running camps in the summers.

We’re located in Plateau State, which is in north-central Nigeria, and this coming April, the first ECYA camp in the south will take place. It’ll be near Benin City, and with camp only 3 weeks away, we’ve still got a lot of work left to do. As a Christian camp, there are bible studies and morning quiet time booklets that need to be finished and printed before camp. Camp t-shirts need to get made, and there are a host of administrative issues that require organization and cooperation between Claudia and the district council in which the camp will be held. I’ve been working with Claudia on getting the devotional booklets and bible study material typed up and formatted in the computer over the past week, as well as writing some of them myself.

When Americans think of summer camp, they think of something a litte different from what camp is like here in Nigeria. First, the concept of youth is different here. In the US, we mostly think of youth as being under 18 years old. Here, the camper age range is suggested as 12-22, but campers as old as 30 will come, too. It’s very difficult to find a job here, and many folks under 30 are still unemployed and living with their parents, so they’re still considered youths.

On Saturday afternoon, I was to go out at 2 pm to the ECYA grounds just outside of Jos where Claudia had the Urban Frontiers Mission spending a weekend retreat. The First ECWA Church of Jos had sent a group of people to help smooth out the bumpy, dirt access road. Claudia had purchased some laterite, a clay-like material that they use to fix roads. In the rainy season, the road becomes a riverbed and much of it washes away, making it very rough. By filling in the large holes with rocks, and then surrounding with laterite, we were hoping to resolve the problem at least somewhat. Laterite also has the added advantage that instead of washing away, it sticks together when it gets wet, so it doesn’t wash away quite as easily.

Claudia decided that she would like to use the ECWA pickup to help move some of the materials, so we headed back to Jos and picked it up. Unfortunately, the truck didn’t have any petrol in it, so we had to get some fuel. It was about 3pm, and something Claudia told me that I didn’t realize is that it’s very hard to find an open gas station in the middle of the day. They’re open in the morning when it’s cool, and they’re open later in the day, too, but not in the middle of the day. The first two places we tried were both closed, and we found a Texaco station that was open but had a very long line of cars and motorbikes waiting. We drove on, and after checking 4 or 5 more stations, went back to the Texaco.

The Texaco station was organized disorganization. Only one pump was being used. A row of cars stretched out of the station into the street. A row of motorbikes was next to them, and a second row of cars formed a motorbike sandwich. With just the one pump open, the wait was long and slow. They’d fill a car on one side of the pump, then fill one or two motorbikes, then fill a car on the other side of the pump and so on. Occasionally, a car would pull in from the front of the line and back up to the pump, effectively cutting the line. Claudia told me that these folks are typically friends of the station owner, and it was annoying to see happen but there wasn’t really anything we could do about it. After a long 30-40 minutes, we finally got our fuel and were set to head back to camp. Claudia had phoned ahead to have the work on the road begin with the wheelbarrows due to our delay, so hopefully, we’d be there in time to help with the truck.

Then, as we were pulling out of the station, the engine died. Claudia tried restarting it several times, but I eventually had to get out and push it back into the station so we wouldn’t block the exit way. After about 5 or 10 minutes, we were able to get a mechanic to take a look at it. He checked the spark plugs and various cables and hoses and none of those seemed to help. Then the started playing with the carburetor and that seemed to be the problem. He made some adjustments with a screwdriver, cleaned out some dirt and grime with the same screwdriver, checked the pressure with his hand, and did a lot of other simple checks. An hour later, the truck was again running, and a half hour after that, we’d paid and were convinced the truck wasn’t going to stop on us again 10 minutes down the road.

We finally pulled into the camp at around 5:30 pm, on time enough to see the hard working group putting the final touches on their contribution to filling in the road with laterite and stones. It was not encouraging. The amount of work, and the improvement it made seemed like a drop in the bucket compared to what needed to be done. However, that’s how this type of a project needed to be completed. The money and manpower simply isn’t there to get it done all at once. To really fix the road, it needs to be elevated and have grass planted on the sides to prevent it all from washing away in the rains. Considering how hot and dry it’s been since we’ve arrived, that’s hard to imagine without looking at the ruts the rains have already created.