After a really hard week B, those organising camp decided I needed a break and so gave me a really pleasant break for week C – “Site Manager”. It was a nice title, but in reality it meant that I had to make sure that the site was kept clean and tidy and upright. This involved emptying lats and bins, tidying up the field, tent and bed maintenance and making sure the tents stayed up in bad weather.

I had never been the site manager before, and so was a little bit nervous about what the role involved and how and when to do some of the jobs. Thankfully Jonny stayed on for a few more days from week B and helped me out which was really useful. Thanks Jonny!

Being site manager was quite different to being a tent leader. You have no direct responsibility for kids, and so don’t need to watch them all the time. The jobs that you do can be done in your own time, and the only fixed things in the day are mealtimes. Emptying the lats forms a fairly major part of the perceived role, but in reality it took around 90 minutes in the morning during the morning meeting and about 60 minutes in the evening during the evening game or the meeting. It was quite strange having so little contact with the campers, as during the games and meetings I was occupied, and the only time I saw the campers was at mealtimes. I had to keep asking them their names, and even then at another mealtime I would come across kids that I had never seen before!

I spent some time loitering and being available for when people needed help with moving stuff around the site and mending beds and tents, and it allowed me to relax somewhat when compared to the previous week.

It was really nice to have my own tent and own personal space, and I would sometimes just sit outside and watch the world go by. My tent was officially the games chief’s and I didn’t take the sign down, so I might even look official sitting there. Last week (B) the site manager’s tent had a name of ‘base camp’ and was the centre of quite a lot of light amusement, including the lilo sandwich. This week my tent had all the games equipment in and so the fun never ended. On changeover day I was let out on terms of my probation with Jon, and bought a bell. After fixing it to my tent, I then had a door bell. It quickly got annoying though (see picture for details), and I unfortunately forgot to take it down at the end of the week and now have no idea where it is.

Because of my unique and amazing singing ability, I was chosen to represent the camp in the morning wake-up call with Ray and Michael. Armed with megaphones and some lyrics that had been hatched up the previous evening, Michael would beam out “For your delight and delectation, a song by Andy Deakin as doh, Ray as ray and me as me” (Geddit? doh,ray,me… Thats about as tuneful as we got!) and then proceed to sing an amusing and custom made adaptation to a musical themed song. Sometimes they would be met by a loud applause, occasionally we would hear heavy snoring even after the tuneful performance.

The weather on week C was quite varied, but it was much damper than the previous week. At one point much of the dining tent was under a small amount of water, and I had the pleasure of collecting hay from a nearby field with the help of Jon, Abby and Barry the barrel. The hay was then deposited on the floor of the dining tent to soak up the moisture, giving it a similar appearance and smell to a stable.

Despite empting the lats and other fairly unpleasant jobs I enjoyed the whole week and was very thankful of the few bits of rest that I got and the friendships I developed over the week. I was given a massive insight into the running of camp, and what goes on in the kitchen and behind the scenes, and think it was a week of my life that I will not quickly forget.

Week B started really well. After getting up early to collect a parcel, its contents were broken. I then tried to burn a DVD on a computer, and after spending three hours burning, the DVD was apparently blank.

I got a lift from Bulstrode in a friends car, who was travelling down at the same time as me. After being on the road for a couple of hours, the engine cut out and the engine wouldn’t restart. After waiting over an hour for a RAC guy, we were told they they were all busy and that a local garage would send a van out. We were eventually recovered to the nearest service station where the car was inspected and the timing belt was found to have gone. In laymans terms that means that the engine is kerput. The car was taken back to where we came from and I had to look after three kids and Bob at the service station.

I knew that there was a minibus scheduled to drive past where we were in a few hours time, and so I tried desperately to contact the driver. After trying many phone numbers I managed to get hold of him (Thanks Lynne for the number!) and arranged for him to pick us up.

The minibus did arrive after a few hours, and after a few more hours travelling (and getting lost a little) we got to the warrior camp field. By this time it was going dark, and my village quiet time was well underway. I chose to stay well away and sat down for a few moments, drank tea and ate food.

I would like to say that it was all uphill from there, but I was village leader and my village was quite a challenging one. I had three nice but pesky boys in my tent, including one French lad (Ben) who tended to have at least one tag-along of his little brother. There was another tent without a leader, and the third tent had Bob as a leader and three troublesome lads in.

Sitting at the breakfast table one day I decided to move a tray of bacon, which was perhaps a bad idea as it was rather warm. I spent the next half hour with my right hand under cold running water, and then found the sympathy of the kitchen team. They applied some much needed burn cream which worked wonders, and also decided that I needed a sling. It was quite amusing, and it certainly got the sympathy vote until people realised that it was a joke.

Each day we played wide games which the kids love, and the leaders like. They are always great fun and pretty much just involve running around madly trying to catch anyone you have some kind of playful vendetta against. Occasionally when there are some team tactics and games are taken seriously there are issues of collecting gold (tent runners) or dynamite (tent runners) or water in cups. During one such game I decided to fall over on a fairly sharp stone and make a deep gash in left hand. It hurt a little.

Throughout the week we had a football tournament, where teams of leaders and campers adopted a country and played football against each other. In my first game I pulled my right thigh muscle quite badly, and so was out of the game. I tried to play again but made it worse, then decided to give it up as a bad job. Later on that day I was limping and playing handball, and sprained my left ankle. I felt like I was going through the ‘Father Abraham had many sons’ song. Right hand (burnt), left hand (gash), right leg (muscle pulled) left leg (sprained ankle). I think the next line in that song is something like ‘Chin up’ so I wondered if I should wear a pre-emptive neck brace but couldn’t find one in the first aid kit!

There were quite a few new leaders there this year, and I tried to make an effort to get to know them all. Many of them were outgoing which made it much easier but I felt I got to know most of the leaders on the camp much better than I have in previous years, and they are all really cool! There are a couple of leaders that are also going to be studying Warwick next year, and that is quite exciting.

The weather was also brilliant most of the week. It was sunny almost all the time and still warm when it was overcast and wet. I don’t think I ever wore my coat all week, although I probably should have. The view from the field was really amazing, as you could see the beach, the surf on the sea and even some more land across the water. Some suggested it was Wales, France, and one boy even thought it was America. I suggest we need to teach kids some basic geography.

Our trip day out was to Woodlands, which was really cool. One of the kids that I went around with from my tent had been there before, and knew the best rides. He was able to give us a whistle-stop tour of all the park while everyone else was busy consulting their maps. After visiting some of the outdoor areas, we ventured into the big blue barn where we stayed for the rest of our time. The big blue barn is amazing! I had so much fun in there, and for almost an hour the leaders played tag which was awesome, but pretty exhausting. Caffeine pills were the answer to exhaustion on this occasion.

We had invasion in the village on one of the days, which both the kids and leaders tend to like. Some of the leaders set off dressed in many amusing costumes, and the campers ventured down into beer to spot the fakes. Armed with the question “How much does a tail of a goat cost?” the campers trailed around the village looking for suspects. We found quite a few, and many of them made us laugh lots.

Throughout the week the leaders had a pool ladder. Through some ’skill’, fluke, mismanagement and careful avoiding of leaders I managed to finish second on the ladder. I did beat the winner (Chris) twice, but he might have beat me three times.

Despite the challenges, I was really encouraged through the week by the strength and patience that God gave me, and was thankful of the other leaders that I know I can depend on and cheered me up when I needed it.

I would like to start by thanking all those that supported me both in prayer and financially while I was out there. From the start it was clear that as a team we were very dependant upon God and it would not have been possible without lots of prayer.

South Africa is a land of extremes: Black and white, rich and poor, hot and cold, occult and Christianity. Where England is very green, South Africa is very brown – at least in winter.

Our time out there was a mix of street evangelism, working with young children in crèches and after-school clubs, running kids camps and practical work on the Rainbows of Hope campsite.

Street evangelism in the shanty towns is very different to in the UK. The people out there are very friendly and would happily chat all day. Despite having very few possessions, they happily invite us westerners into their homes to talk about Christianity and to be prayed for. Even people who have no faith or different beliefs to us seemed to appreciate prayer.

The young children in the crèches were very cute. Some of them were tiny, and they would look at you with their large eyes and curly hair, and despite speaking no English and us speaking no Zulu, they craved love and attention. They were very imaginative in their games, and loved just having time spent with them. For some of these kids we were the only white people they had seen, and so to be able to spend time with and show love to them was an awesome privilege.

In the after school clubs the children were of mixed ages, but when compared to British kids they were much more willing to learn and were certainly not lacking intelligence. They appreciated simple things like balloons and colouring books much more then western kids. We did puppet shows, taught them memory verses and did lots of games and craft activity which they seemed to love.

The kids camps that we ran at the Rainbows of Hope campsite were one of the main reasons we went as a group to South Africa, and so a lot of prayer and a small amount of preparation had gone into them. Our team was split into two, one to deal with the younger children and one to deal with the teenagers. I was assigned to the older ones together with John and Ann, Thomas and Isla. Ours was the first camp, and we felt really unprepared. Thankfully God had everything under control, and over the whole weekend we all learned a lot about leaning on God. Even one of the memory verses was “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding”.

The kids were really brilliant, and despite our best efforts at learning Zulu, their English was pretty good and so in the meeting and when interacting with the kids we just used simple English and they seemed to understand.

Dealing with so many children is very tiring, but we knew it was only for one weekend and so we really put our full efforts into making it a memorable weekend for the kids and running around with them and being very active. After the kids left on Sunday we all just sat there on the grass for about an hour, totally exhausted.

The practical work which we did on the campsite was a great encouragement to the missionaries out there, and I am sure we saved them a lot of work. Our main project was renovating the kitchen area, most specifically sanding down, sealing and painting the old steel roof. It was a fairly large roof area, and it took much of the time we were out there to complete it, but it was great to see a shiny red roof as we left the campsite.

Shortly after arriving the missionaries somehow found out that I had done some electrical work in the past, and so they gave me a big long list of jobs to do, including installing new power points and some lights, rewiring a pump and installing a number of light switches including a two way switch which had been wired up incorrectly. I found it really encouraging to see how blessed the missionaries were by what I could routinely do.

Most evenings after eating food together, we would have a short time of devotion and then prepare for the next day’s activities. Many evenings some of us would stay up and play card games or simply talk into the early hours. The team bonded really well, and having unsoundproofed girls and boys bedrooms next to each other provided us with out of hours entertainment and ensured there were no secrets.

In the last few days we had some time to relax, and went on Safari to Pilanesburg. There we saw giraffes, rhinos, hippos, elephants, wilderbeast, warthogs and lots of zebras. As a team we got loads of photos, and some really brilliant ones. It was an amazing experience as I had never been on safari before. Seeing such large and powerful animals grazing in their natural habitat in acres of land was brilliant.

My time in South Africa was one of great encouragement and growth though the situations I was faced with and lessons I learned. Thanks again to all those that made it possible.