Haiti scours your soul
Two and a half days away from summer break for local schools — time to start packing those trunks, parents, for summer camp! Woohoo!
If, that is, you (and your kids) are lucky enough to be able to include camp in this year’s too brief break, and within the family budget.
Our duo has, over the past decade, attended boutique camps for Scouts, budding artists, nerdy inventors, students of nature, horse lovers. Also, they’ve done time at traditional, industrial-strength grade camps. There have been one- and two-week stints away from home. Plenty of half-day, get-’em-out-the-house-for-dad’s-sanity “camps,” too.
Staunton church's Haiti ministry renews bonds with parish twin on La Gonave
At the foot of our rising-ninth-grader’s bed we’ve planted a plastic bin, tool-grade tough, to begin collecting supplies and attire for Nature Camp. This will be her third stay at that outstanding science education and fun nonprofit at the foot of the Blue Ridge range.
Using a slightly posh tone of voice, I get a kick out of telling people from outside of the Valley that our girl will be spending two weeks in Vesuvius. “What,” more than one has erupted, “you’re sending her to Italy?”
We can afford the half-hour drive south on 81 to Nature Camp. Tuition is relatively easy on the bank balance, especially if the child gets a scholarship, such as those offered by the Augusta Bird Club. (Also, she’s not that keen on seeing the carbonized remains of Romans.)
A little cash-strapped, or know a family that is? Check out the YMCA’s summer camp programs and scholarships. The Staunton Creative Community Foundation, part of city government, offers full scholarships junior high makers ready to build, fly and own radio-controlled airplanes. Cool ways to spend hot days.
Ah, childhood memories of learning to swim at the Y. Of crashing balsa wood gliders tossed from second-story bedroom windows.
When we found a drunken chicken on a tree trunk
“Camp Kober” always served as my childhood summer get-away destination.
A few miles from Catawissa, Missouri, campers (siblings and cousins) at my mom’s fourth-generation family farm passed sweltering afternoons with fly-swatting competitions. We judged for numbers taken out in one smack, and overall total kills during timed hunts. “Rrready…, seeet…smack!”
Weeding the vegetable garden with grandma, and throwing bales onto the tailgate of papa’s F150, built character — and set a clear career path for me away from professional farming and full-time work with machinery. From riding atop a tottering load of hay and bumpy jaunts on the fender of a tractor traveling top speed on county gravel roads, I developed an abiding dread of accidental death by tread.
Last month, I led a group of students — real campers, for the most part — to Haiti. We stayed five nights in a cool mountain lodge, which was built in Cherident by Tinkling Springs Presbyterian. We ate great food, meet interesting people, did cool things (e.g. two Haiti Scouts’ songfests), and learned much about the island’s history and culture.
In my experience, travel’s most lasting lessons tend to be about your own culture’s definitions of how to be a human — the good, bad, all of the stuff in between. You also experience deep learning about yourself, especially your relationship to others and your place on the planet. Places like Haiti scour your soul.
Once back in the states, I find that trips to Haiti (and other developing countries) give me a greater appreciation of the best aspects of American culture, and a broader appreciation of other peoples’ ways of pursuing happiness. We’re are not the greatest nation on earth in all respects of living. Get out more, if you believe otherwise.
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It is not always easy to visit neighbors, in the Caribbean or elsewhere, but the result of challenges are prolonged and profound joy. Happiness, you can get from a good meal, a job well done, a great movie, a new iPhone for the one you left in the seat back pocket. … Joy requires sweat and tears. The “salt and pepper” problems travelers to Haiti add meaning to the countless sweet moments. At least in retrospect I can savor all of the flavors, even the bitter and sour mellow.
This trip, “Pere” (Episcopal Priest) Fred Menelas and his community again taught me much about how to be more human, and to embrace being a little bit Haitian, with everyone, everywhere … “mwen espere” (I hope).
A Mary Baldwin professor, who retires this summer, once told me that no matter where he led study abroad classes — 17 times to numerous destinations — he always felt like kissing the ground once back home. Another older and wiser colleague noted: “It’s like childbirth, going with students abroad. It’s excruciating. Then, with time, you forget the pain, and want to do it again.”
I did, come to think of it, need to repress a desire to hug one of the more attractive pillars and a cute column or two in the Fort Lauderdale Airport while making the connection home.
Email Augusta CountycolumnistBruceDorriesat bdorries@mbc.edu.