The trip from my site to the beautiful mountain site of Los Bueyes was long. Really long. Eight hours on 4 buses long. That might be tolerable to you or I, but to my two 11 year-olds who have rarely been outside of the barrio, we may as well have been traveling to Asia. Add to the trip that one of my boys struggles with carsickness and the travel days become even longer.
But we made it and the weekend was full of activities both physical and educational. The boys slept in tents and lived life in the great outdoors. We bathed and spent many hours splashing around in the crystal clear river. We played all sorts of camp games like tug-o-war, had slip-n-slide relays and went wild in alka seltzer tag, a twist on tag where each person is given an alka seltzer tablet to wear around their neck and a bag full of water to splash each person’s tablet. The last ones standing with an intact alka seltzer tablet win. We also put on a science fair, talked about gender and what it means to be ‘men’ and painted Superman plaques. The Dominican boy scouts were on hand to teach wilderness survival tactics and local guides led a nature hike. A Dominican group called Futbol para la Vida came to teach about HIV/AIDS awareness and let the kids and volunteers act out their World Cup aspirations on the soccer field. All in all it was 4 days full of activities for muchachos and volunteers alike.
I was concerned that the boys might get brave and venture out on their own from time to time, especially at night. But fortunately for us, most all of the boys had seen the Dominican horror movie Andrea that takes place in the same region of the country we were camping. Any thoughts the boys had of wandering alone in the wilderness were immediately erased by thoughts of monster lady Andrea lurking around. Any late night noises or bad nights sleep were attributed to Andrea. This fictional character helped keep the boys in check.
Each night we sat around a campfire and made s’mores. I think volunteers missing the simple pleasures of camping and the great outdoors in summertime back home enjoyed these moments even more than the boys.
My two muchachos were a handful to say the least. They were among the, shall we say, least well behaved campers (understatement). But they had a blast and in the end I’m glad it was them that participated. It will be months before their doñas will be able to pry the Campamento Superman t-shirts from their bodies.
