Thursday, June 02, 2011
I don't feel like doing anything.. ; 10:04 PM
I'm back from
CCAL camp in
Bintan, and in good shape too. These 4 days have been the most enjoyable in a long time, after all the stresses of the past few months. The scenery there is really stunning - a typical picture one might see on an advertisement for a cruise or the likes, but just in real life.
My group was great, and I was encouraged by everyone's team spirit and care for every other member. The fact that all of us are appointed leaders in some way or another (
CCAs or council) made it all the more interesting, because everyone understands the importance of team spirit, taking the extra step, having initiative, and learning from each others' leadership styles. As for the camp, every activity we did had the purpose of teaching us something about leadership, and could link back to how we could lead our
CCAs etc, so that made the camp more meaningful. Besides all the physical activity and team building, there are so many lessons to sieve out and apply back to leading our own
CCAs.
Monday:- We gathered in school at 7am, got into our groups and sub-groups, boarded the buses to
Tanah Merah jetty, and took a jetty to
Bintan. We
lepak-ed at the sea-side for awhile before taking another hour-long, bumpy, and stuffy bus ride to our campsite (
Agro Resort).
- Lunch, briefings, set up tents, and played some team bonding games. There were quite some casualties in our simple game of dog-and-bone against another group (Rachel
Lau's group).
- Cooked dinner at the breach front. The food we cooked tasted good (maybe because more than half of my group consisted of girls), and the sea breeze and scenery/sunset made the process even better. Once the sun had set and most of us finished eating, my group's kerosene stove became some sort of campfire, and we were singing/playing guitar. Not too long after, other groups came along and joined in, and we started singing and getting all hyped up.
- Cleared up, washed up, briefing, ate a bit, and prepared to sleep. It's the earliest we ever slept/tried to sleep, and I'm glad I made full use of that, because the next few days were really tiring.
(Side note: Throughout the camp, there were tins of biscuits put out in the guys and girls campsites to munch on whenever necessary, and also hot
milo at night and in the morning. Think I've eaten at least a hundred biscuits already..)
Tuesday:- The first activity for my group was Rafting (my third time so far), at a really nice beach not too far away from our campsite. The beach was clean, the waters were clear and not too rocky, the sand texture was good, and with great scenery.
Basically, every group was given different amounts of 'money' to buy their stuff and build a raft that can carry everyone and go out to a certain point in the sea, without capsizing. My group got the second least amount of 'money' (on the premise that life isn't fair, so we have to learn to make do with the given resources we have), but I'm p
roud of the raft we managed to build. It was sturdy and even though the two kayaks at the side flooded at times, it traveled fine. We improved on it after the first attempt by tying in two more barrels, and that worked out well too.
- Lunch+facilitation+
lepak by the beach.
- Our second activity was Reforestation. We took an hour long bus journey to a village. The village once survived mainly on producing charcoal from processing mangrove trees from around the area, and from the islands nearby. But they were given money by the UN to stop harming the environment, and we went there to plant some mangrove saplings into the swamps.
Upon arriving at the village, we saw groups of children playing with a Frisbee that the teachers/facilitators brought, and they looked so contented with just that. The villagers didn't have much, but survived well. (I got the chance to use the toilet, and the houses (on stilts) are not very well equipped, so the toilets are the kind where there's a hole on the floor and everything just drops down and floats out to sea.)
We each took a few saplings in both hands, took sampan-like boats out to sea for around 20min to the mangrove swamps, and then dug holes into the soil to plant our saplings. After planting my 6 mangrove saplings, I felt so accomplished, and in a way, 'involved' in the efforts to save the environment. Granted, all I did was to plant 6 saplings, all won't necessarily survive, and they'll take decades to grow into a tree. But by planting them, feel like I've taken ownership over my little part of environmental conservation. A small action by everyone leads to an even greater end result- aka, the whole is larger than the sum of its parts.
Mangrove planting wasn't as muddy as I expected, but maybe because the tide was quite low, and also because our group was civilized enough not to get into a mud war..
- During the long bus journey back, it was so cold and wet that I couldn't sleep. Took a shower upon reaching our campsite, had dinner, then went out for our night activity.
- We were taken to two dark and abandoned buildings (actually they looked so well built, it's a pity the owners abandoned them) for our night activity. It consisted of 5 stations in total.
Halfway through, it began to rain heavily. (At this point in time, I find it appropriate to mention the usual weather in
Bintan. It rains at the random-est of times (even when it's hot and the sun is out), then stops and continues.
By the time we ended, it stopped raining too, and there were fireworks. The fireworks were really cool. They exploded right above our heads, and were set off quite near us too.
Bintan isn't as strict as Singapore in terms of rules governing the use of pyrotechnics, so it was a cool sight.
- Upon arriving back at camp at surveying the damage done to the tents by the rain, I could hear howls of shock and well.. despair, from all around the campsite (boys and girls). Lots of people were drying their stuff on the fences after the day's activities (3 out of 4 of the main activities were water-based), and even their towels and sleeping bags. Lots didn't even bother closing their tent flaps, and the rain pelted in and flooded the insides. As for the tent I slept in, only our mosquito net was closed, so obviously everything inside was flooded. Some of my tent-mates didn't put their stuff in the rubbish bag, so all their stuff was wet, and their clothes wet too. It think this was quite common everywhere else, because I could hear shouts all around about how their stuff were soaked. I think it was a rather miserable night for many, because we arrived back at camp quite late at night, some had showered, and most tents were flooded. Eventually, most decided to use the towels to dry up their tents then make do with what they had. As for mine, we were kindly lent another (dry) tent to pitch, and then we dismantled our wet one to give back. We were one of the more fortunate groups.
Wednesday:
- After breakfast, we set off trekking. Since we didn't have time to go back to the campsite in between activities for both days, we most of us trekked in our sandy and wet shoes, because we had dragon boating in the afternoon.
- We took turns in pairs to navigate using the GPS, to the nine different checkpoints across the entire route. It was great that as a group, we encouraged a lot, the front people shouted out directions and stuff like trees/roots/paths/rocks to be careful off. Along the way, we managed to spot a Fire Ant nest. Their nests aren't like that of normal ants, which usually form ant hills on the ground. Fire ants form their nests on trees, putting leaves together to form a rounded enclosure, which then hangs from a branch. So it's scary, in that when walking under trees, ants could drop down on you anytime. And when Fire Ants bite, it'd hurt a lot.
- After a few hours, we finished the trek, and headed to the nice beach-y resort that we were at the day before for lunch.
- Facilitation+lunch+
lepak+dragon boat briefing.
We (the 5 subgroups) were in the midst of our flotation tests and about to begin, when a huge storm broke out, and we had to stay indoors. But after around 15min or so, the storm subsided, and we were allowed to continue with the activity.
Dragon boating was by far the best activity we did, in my opinion. It was the activity that required the most teamwork. If we didn't row in sync, the boat wouldn't move properly, and despite rowing as hard as we could, the effort wouldn't have been justified. Another thing that's very important is team spirit, which is about keeping the morale up, and giving encouragement to each other. Encompassing all of that, is mental strength. Everyone has to give their 110% for the team, especially when everyone is most tired. At the end when we had two races, we didn't win the first race. Despite that being so, and despite feeling like our arms were burning and like we could hardly bear to pull back the oars anymore, everyone maxed out their strength and persevered on, and we won the second race. What made the win even sweeter, was that our group had 10 girls and 4 boys - the least number of boys in any of the groups competing, yet it wasn't by strength that we won, but by being together.
This experience taught me a lot not just about being a leader, but to extend that thought, applying it as a member of a team, and to my life.
- Back to campsite to shower. We had a grand dinner, which was quite nice actually. We dined at the beach front, and with good food too! Oh yea, and fireworks.
- Stayed up for awhile at night to talk to people.
Thursday:- Packed up, took group photo,
lepaked around, ate a lot.
- I woke up with quite a number of
sandfly and mosquito bites on my limbs. Which is very unfortunate, because it was the last day, and it's sad to have all the bites before leaving, and not during the activities. My arm was kinda numb the whole morning because of the
sandfly bites on it. At one point in time, it felt worse than a muscle ache.
- Slept throughout most of the bus journey to the jetty. I think I snacked too much after that so I couldn't fall sleep on the subsequent boat ride and bus ride to school.
All in all, the camp was definitely a memorable experience (in a good way), and it felt so good to be out of touch with the world for those few days and not care about anything, except trying to maximize fun and learning out of the activities. Not to mention making lots of new friends in the process.
The first 4 days of the holidays have been well spent, but I'll have to start studying for
CTs soon. And of course, do PW.