camp life

April 30, 2015

It took me about an hour to get home from university, all that time my mind had been finding new and new reasons to prove that the situation was unfair:
If we counted only those people who attended all the meetings there would be at least 12 of them. But they accepted 23 to the staff. Did the rest 11 wangle?
-Among the accepted candidates announced there were at least 4 university entrants, though the year before the leaders had assured that entrants couldn`t work in a camp. Wangle again?
How could Denis, who promised me to keep the situation under control, leave me in front of the coming train, as I guess he was defending his own place.

With this feeling of deception I got home and told all my reasons to my mother, who was sitting in the kitchen. Although I wasn`t going to tell anything at first.
She rather heard my reasons not because they were convincing but because I hardly ever complained, immediately she came to the phone.

Having dialed somebody`s number she reported all my reasons quite angrily and then said that I had to wait.
The director of the camp turned out to be my logic teacher (she attended, by the way, only the first meeting), and next morning I was informed that if I was ready to work as a toilet cleaner I had to take medical examination. No doubt I was ready to do any work in the camp.

It`s worth mentioning here that student`s team of Physics and Mathematics School didn`t include only team leaders. Most positions are taken by students and they, when free from their main duties, think up what to organize in the camp.

Going deeper into traditions, the keepers of which were still alive during the revival seasons, in the 80s there were popular and played, in spite of the ‘iron curtain’ Kiss, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Depeche mode, Scorpions. In some programs even foreign (quite grown up) children took part, what was a nonsense that time because in the camp you can hardly ever adorn or show people`s life in a different way.

So the school tried to raise the topics that a teenager was unlikely to meet in a school of general education (due to the political situation or some school or public morals). In the Physics and Mathematics School children had an opportunity to consider these topics from different points of view while be free to choose. This idea was still dominating in the revived school. So that it was possible to organize such situations, raising topics, the student`s team was necessary, but not a person for 20 children who would take them to the canteen and make go to bed.

Thus people who had nothing to do with the Physics and Mathematics School on the territory of the camp usually were a director of the camp (don`t confuse with a director of the School), a chef, as one of the cushy jobs ( portions are usually smaller that they must be, all the leftovers that are supposed to be thrown out used as animal feed, always there is something that remains as sometimes parent take their children from the camp for a while or children just miss the meal and so on), supply director, the rest of the staff was a collective unit.

When I had my medical examination and took sanitary and epidemiologic course, one classroom cleaners offered me to swap the jobs because his companion was Denis but they didn`t get on well. So in my first season at school I worked as a classroom cleaner.

Student`s life was completely different from pupil`s life. It was impossible to plan a lot beforehand as the situation in the camp was changing constantly. So we prepared material bank and what exactly we were going to do was decided the night before. As all of the staff could get together only after the children went to bed, 11 p. m., we often stayed up until 3 -4 a.m., and some groups went to bed at 5 a.m.

And even this didn`t guarantee that in the morning at least one from the students` team knew what was going to happen. Luckily, one of the traditions keepers, let`s call him Alexey, has plenty of materials in stock from the previous 15 seasons and he could use them for the events.

We had to have little sleep. In spite of the opportunity to take a nap at the classes, we had to get up on time and have breakfast. By the end of the season we were permanently sleepy which caused a 24-hour sleep after the season.

We didn`t manage to have fun at the events because children did. We got a feeling of satisfaction with our ideas being realized and incomparable experience of working in emergency situations. And student`s team. Some people fit it better, some worse, some could be called outsiders.

But it was the team where I found my second family. There were people who shared my ideas. I could thoroughly rely on some of them, and on some I couldn`t because I knew they were sure to let down. But you would reckon that was not because of their ill will: they wanted to do their best and what’s done is done

The next 9 years I went to the camp every summer in different roles. Last time I even formally was a director. Formally because all the decisions were made by a group of people so it couldn`t be different. But on paper there must be one person who represents all these decisions and defends them when discussed with the outside forces. And be responsible.

So the years were passing: in summer – the camp ( to revive it is one of my aims for the nearest 10 years), and in winter we spent time with the same people, celebrating birthdays, playing football, creating some stuff, having adventures and at the same time getting ready for the next season.