Sunday, March 8, 2009

Camping in Bodequeda Part 2


The following days at camp were full of different things and new experiences. It was definitely awesome to spend Sabbath in nature. The camp site had a natural pool and river with several water falls. The natural pool is just river water in a pool. The water enters the pool from one area of the river and returns to river at another area of the river. The water is constantly being changed. I spent a good portion of the Sabbath just sitting by one of the waterfalls and reading. Sabbath afternoon we had a bible knowledge game. The camp was divided into 3 different teams and were tested on our Bible knowledge. Saturday night was a free night for people to play games and go swimming.


One night we had a children party. Everyone was supposed to dress up as children and there was food that children loved to eat. I got in the acampitos spirit and volunteered to help with the decorations and earned a lot of acampitos that night. The party reminded me of my childhood in Jamaica. They has some of the things I had as a child in Jamaica. The costumes of the persons were something else. Some people went all out. One person was dressed up as a baby. He was wearing an adult size diaper, not a very pretty picture.


The highlight of the camp was the auction. Everyone was excited about the
auction and wondering what things there would be able to buy. Obviously the more acampitos a person has, the more leverage he/she has. At the beginning of the camp the pastor informed us the person who would be doing the auction would be someone from Cape Verde. I was thinking in my head why would someone from Cape Verde come all the way to the middle of nowhere to have camp auction. The days leading up auction helped me to get a better picture of the character of the pastor to realize this auctioneer from Cape Verde was just another one of his schemes.


Okay, this pastor is not like any pastor I have ever met, not in a bad way. He is so down to earth and he is a total joker. He has a name for everyone. These names sometimes have nothing to do with the real name of the person. My name, for example, was teacher because I am here as a teacher in Brazil. I don’t think most people at the camp knew my name because he kept calling me teacher and everyone caught on. This pastor was something else you would walk around the camp joking with people or cracking jokes.

So at the beginning at the auction, the pastor announced that the Cape Verde auctioneer was on his way then he disappeared. Later, the sound system in the meeting hall started playing this African song and the pastor returned wearing a shirt and pants made from a cloth with an African print. Then, he told us how he had a long trip from Cape Verde. After that he dropped the bomb on us about the auction. Everyone was of the opinion that we see the items we were bidding on, but that was not the case. We had to bid on persons and after we had bid on the person, we would see what we actually had bid on. Not even the person we were bidding on knew which item we were bidding on. The pastor said he wanted to teach us to value each other rather than material possessions. I wasn’t too thrilled about this idea about having someone bid on me because even though I knew some of the people, they had other friends and family who they would rather to spend their money on.


I was hoping that my name would be called among the last when people had no money and had gone to bed or not be called at all. I was not so fortunate. After probably the fourth person had been auctioned. The pastor asked for the international camper to face the crowd. That was just my luck, I had to be fifth person out of a population of a 100. Then to begin the bidding he said that since I was an international product, made in Jamaica, the bidding had to start higher. They started the bidding at 500 acampitos. That was high because other people started at 100. I was thinking to myself, no one is going to want to spend their acampitos on me.

I was surprised when the final bid was close to 4000 acampitos. The person who was bidding on me did not get as much satisfaction as I had gotten. It just happened that she was bidding on a doll. She spent all those acampitos a doll. I felt sorry for her and decided to return the favor and bid on her when it was her time and we decided to combine our acampitos for greater bidding power. Towards the end of the auction the value of persons started to drop so I guess it was better to have gone among the first. In the end the girl left me with all the acampitos and I was able to buy a book and a t-shirt.

Another highlight of the camp was the river. Most people spend most of their free time at the river, because it was so hot and the water of the river was cool and nice. The river was ok for me. I was not really feeling the color of the water nor the fact that there were small fishes swimming the water. I liked looking at the waterfalls but I really didn’t want to go into the water. By day 2 it was very hot and I could not put off at least taking a dip. Despite the color of the water, it was pretty nice swimming in the river and it was fun.

Two very unpleasant things about the camp was the frogs and insect situation. I dreaded nights because frogs were everywhere. I was so glad I had brought a flashlight because I did not want to encounter a frog. Also every night I was afraid that I would find a frog in my tent. Fortunately, a frog never entered my tent or at least not to my knowledge. I did wake up one morning to find a dog sleeping at the entrance of my tent. I don’t even know where it came from and I never saw it again. Probably it was my protector from frogs.

There were some other very interesting things the camp. When I was packing I was thinking bare essentials because I would be living in a tent for a few days. The other campers did not think that way. Some people brought big bags equal to the size of suitcases. There were several electric fans, extensions cords, hair dryers and other things that I thought were totally unnecessary for camp. I really thought I had over packed because I had a knapsack and other small bag. I was under packed big time. Another then about the camp that was different and a shock for an Adventist camp was the food. The food was good don’t get me wrong, but when I got lunch and dinner on several occasions I had to as if the food was vegetarian because chicken and red meat was being served. That was a shock and a major disappointment for me, given our health message as a church. It is one thing to eat chicken and meat, I have nothing against it because I used to eat them but when a person is unable to survive five days without them, it is a major problem.

Overall I had fun at the camp and I am glad I went. I made a lot of new friends and many of them happen to also work at the hospital so I will see them around for the duration of my time in Campo Grande. One positive thing about going to this camp was the fact, that Bodequeda was only an hour away from Bonito a must see of Mato Groso do Sul. In my next blog entry I will tell you about my trip because I have already written a lot in this entry. Thanks for reading!

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Camping in Bodequeda Part 1

It is the tradition in SDA churches in Brazil is to go camping over the carnival weekend. So given that I am in Brazil, I have to do as the SDA Brazilians do. A week before carnival I met a lady from the church next to the hospital and she invited me to go camping with her church. So, the following week I made arrangements to go camping. There was however, one problem I had no tent and my sleeping bag just happened to be at IABC. I explained the situation to the organizer of the camp and she told me that between herself and Sonya, the lady who invited me, they would find me a tent and sleeping bag. The following day in class, one of my students mentioned that he would be going the same camp as chaplain and that I could ride with him to camp. Every thing was just falling into place.

The camp started on Friday and my student said he would pick me up at 1/2pm and we would make the 2 hour drive to camp. Two o’clock came, then 3pm. I then decided to call him. He did not answer his phone. I called three more times but with no response. Finally, at 4 pm he called me and told me he would be there in half an hour. When he finally got there, he told me he took a nap because he woke up early that day.

The ride to the camp site was fine and I got to see some of the Mato Groso
do Sul landscape. As we drove I couldn’t help feeling like I was driving on I-75 or the turnpike driving north from Miami. The road basically just a straight road with very few curves and both sides of the highway there is very flat land, with very little vegetation. This is a change from the state in Goias, which is full of mountains and valley and lush landscape. I thought it was strange for a place with the name thick bush of the south to have so little shrubbery and tree. One other thing that Mato Groso do Sul does have through is a lot of water in the form of rivers and swamps. As we got closer to the camp site, I couldn’t help but notice the large amount of swamp area which was very close to the highway, obviously a flood hazard during rainy season.

When we finally got to the camp site it was dark and the temperature had ri
sen a few degrees. Mato Groso do Sul obviously isn’t like Goias where it becomes cooler at night. When we arrived at the campsite my first point of business was to find out where I was going to sleep so I went in search of Sonya. She told me the organizer of the camp found me a tent and that she had brought me a sleeping bag. As she told me I could set up my sleeping bag beside hers, a frog hopped in the same direction. I am terrified of frogs so I screamed. Sonya got rid of the frog and then I began asking myself, “What had I got myself in for the next four days?” Sonya’s husband and another guy then began assembling my tent for me.

After they assembled the tent and I brought my stuff into the tent and got settled. We then had our first camp assembly and ate dinner, we opened the camp and learned about the activities for the following day, Sabbath. At dinner I met some of the people and I learned about acampitos, something that would be mentioned all throughout the camp.



Acampitos was the camp currency. Throughout camp, each camper would try to earn as much acampitos as possible to have a lot of acampitos to buy stuff on the last night of the camp at the camp auction. There were different ways to earn acampitos, from showing up to morning worship on time, volunteering to help in the kitchen, clean the bathroom and just participating in camp activities. The acampitos looked like monopoly money and came in notes of 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100. This was very interesting to me because I had never heard of this at a camp before and the people we all in excited about earning acampitos. I couldn't help but get excited too. To open the camp and to welcome Sabbath, we had a fireworks show which was very beautiful and we prayed together in the dark as a camp, very cool.