Sunday, July 7th

Today was the first day of the high school camp and it came as no surprise to find nobody preparing breakfast or lunch in the kitchen this morning. It's very strange not having the other kids running around, because they were sent home on Sunday. Last night felt eerily quiet.

We arrived at the camp a little after nine to find only 5 or 6 kids inside. I was a little nervous, because we had been expecting more than 35. The rest eventually straggled in one by one and we had the expected number by ten.

The first thing we had them do was write their names in bubble letters on a piece of paper and place it on the wall to make a mural. They seemed to understand but were incredibly shy and didn't seem quite as eager to please as the younger kids.

We quickly realized that many of the kids at the camp were close to my age, if not older. One girl was 26. (The education system is incredibly dysfunctional and underfunded. Orphans are particularly at risk for attending school at a much later age due to the increased home life stress). The girls were incredibly shy and we even noticed that several of them would cover their mouths when they spoke.

Thankfully, they began to open up more as the day progressed and I began to feel more confident about the camp. We did a pre-survey to get an idea of what the kids felt they knew and what they wanted to learn about at camp. We then broke into small groups. My group had three boys (Xolani, Thokozani and Harry) and three girls (Nonkonzo, Sizakele and Bongisiwe). They decided they wanted to be named the Tiger group (although they seem to think Tigers are Leopards). We then created a group handshake that they all loved and would repeat every time they saw me throughout the week. I left the camp feeling very happy and confident about the upcoming week.

Going over the survey responses that night was slightly frustrating. Most of the kids responded with fives and sixes to the question "How much do you know about HIV and AIDS?" (Scale of 1-10 with 10 being "Everything") However, they then answered with nines and tens to the question "How confident are you about protecting yourself from HIV and AIDS?" I couldn't help but wonder how the hell you can protect your self from something you admittedly don't understand. But hopefully, we are going to fix that.