Edo-Delta Camp – The Rest of Camp

Here's a picture of a camper doing his Morning Watch. For many of the campers, it's the first time they've ever had a concept of setting aside time to read the bible on their own each day.

Saturday started where Friday left off, with no running water. The generator that had been too powerful for the dining hall lights proved too weak to pump water in the water tank, and the main generator was still broken. With no water, the cooks couldn’t make breakfast, so we went about our morning schedule and skipped breakfast. I felt like the campers were starting to accept the camp schedule and flow of life at division call and morning watch, and I also felt like they got flag raising more than the day before. During Bible Ex, bread came, so we gave out bread and campers paid 5 Naira for 50 cl water sachets at breakfast. During the success talk, an extra generator was brought and pumped enough water to get it flowing in the pipes again, but it wasn’t enough for cooking lunch and bathing. After the talk, campers immediately went to bathe, and there wasn’t enough water left to make lunch, so lunch was delayed as a result. After lunch, enough water had been pumped to get a shower, and I was quite grateful.

Campers were much more interested in Carnival time, and it went well. Activity two was short and the group really wanted to do Human Knot again, so we just did that. As we headed to sports, the sky got very dark and overcast. In the middle of our game of amoeba tag, the sky opened up and poured rain as I hadn’t seen in all my time in Nigeria. Since it was Easter weekend, the evening program was to be a showing of pieces of the Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson’s), and I was to help set up the meeting hall with some white paper for a screen. As a result, I missed dinner and just had some bread and water, but given the chaos of the previous night, I must say it didn’t bother me all that much.

Easter Sunday we had running water all day and that was really nice. Camp wasn’t really any different except that at Division Call and Flag Raising we talked about Easter and the resurrection of Christ. The success talk encouraged campers to “Make a Difference”, “Be Effective”, and “Be Someone, Somewhere”, and the campers seemed genuinely interested in the message. A big theme of the talk was about making something out of their lives for a positive impact on the people around them. In the afternoon, I taught the bowline and taut line hitch in my knot-tying class, and we also did a human knot that resulted in two smaller circles of 4 people each, much to the delight of the group.

The evening program was a bonfire with time for campers to give testimonies about what God had done in their lives during camp. We started it off with about an hour of singing and dancing around the fire, and I got laughed at as I danced around the fire with the campers. I’m not a very good dancer and my sense of rhythm was severely lacking compared to theirs. On top of that, I still hadn’t been able to learn all of the songs that were sung, but I think the campers enjoyed having me along. I was curious what the campers would say during the testimonies since the camp had been so short and they’d been so slow to warm up to the camp program, but there were some interesting things said. Two in particular stood out to me. One camper mentioned that he had never understood what it was to have a quiet time alone with God before, and he’d learned to do that. Another camper stood up and declared, “My 1000 Naira was not a waste!” This was encouraging in the sense that I really wondered on Friday how many of the campers were really happy that they’d decided to come.

After the evening program, we had time for campers to come and say their memory verses to us, and if they did, they would get a certificate the next morning. I was especially touched by one camper who wanted to say them but hadn’t learned them yet. He couldn’t read, so his hut leader and him stayed up trying to teach him the verses. Although we were there till 2 am, he didn’t have them down by the time we closed up shop for the night. I was really frustrated that he hadn’t been able to do it in that amount of time, but also very impressed by the dedication that both he and his hut leader showed.

Monday morning we again were out of running water and wouldn’t have it again before we left. We had the campers help us move the benches back into the classrooms and after breakfast, had what we called a Goodbye Circle. Claudia and Uncle Victor handed out the memory verse certificates, and she also asked about decisions that people had made during camp. The hands that were raised indicated the camp had a much stronger impact on the campers’ lives than I was expecting, and I felt really good about that. Campers left rather quickly after that, and I spent the afternoon helping clean up and organize so we could travel back to Jos the next day. In the evening I was able to call Barbara in Jos, and it was good to speak to her although she was under the impression I was to be coming home Monday instead of Tuesday.

The ride home on Tuesday was rather uneventful, although we got a later start than we were hoping since we still had many things to attend to before we left. We bought pineapples at a price of about 40 cents each and also stopped to get the truck serviced in Abuja. For dinner, I ate pounded yam and egussi in a tiny shanty restaurant next to the Toyota dealer. Everyone stared at me as I ate with my hand and Akim told me it looked like I’d been doing it for years. Considering there were hotels across the street with nice restaurants, he also said that the patrons there had probably never seen a white man eating in a place like that, and certainly not with his hand. It was really good to get back to Jos, even though I got home after 10 pm. The shower was one of the most pleasant I’ve had.

In all, the camp turned out to be quite a success, with many of the campers going home happy that they had come. Considering my frustrations of Friday night, I really felt good about how the camp had gone. I was very glad to have had the opportunity to go and be a part of it, and getting to know many of the campers was really a blessing.