My group was comprised of 15 kids between the ages of 5 and 10. Kids under 8 aren't really supposed to come to VIAȚA, as they're too small to be able to do many of the ropes course activities and too young to keep up with the pace of the schedule, but our group had mainly come from a Montessori school in Bucharest, and they sent the whole class. It quickly became apparent that dealing with the youngest kids was going to present a challenge... but it was also a really fun, adorable, and amusing week.
One of our kids in particular, a 7-year-old named Zeno, was really, really homesick. Every few hours we'd see his lower lip start to quiver, and within a few minutes he was wailing, "I miss my mom! I miss my dad! I miss my baby brother! I miss my cat! I miss my bed!" If we let his cries go on too long (and particularly if it was close to dinnertime when they were all hungry and tired), he'd set off a chain reaction in the other young kids, and soon we'd have a whole choir of wailing children, sniffing and hugging their stuffed animals as my co-counselor and I raced around trying to dispense comfort.
Zeno slogged through the week fluctuating between happy and sad. We hit our low point one day at lunch when, tears in his eyes, he looked up from his untouched plate and said to me, in his hilariously-adult vocabulary, "I am going to walk home to Bucharest. I implored my dad to come get me but he didn't, and I can't resist any longer. I will start walking and sleep with a boulder as a pillow if I have to... but I can't stay here any more!" I tried to reason with him at first: "Zeno, don't you think it would be better to wait until the bus comes to get you on Friday? Then you will be home on Friday night. But if you start walking it will take you at least a month to get to Bucharest, and you won't be home until August!" He shook his head. "I don't care," he said. "At least I will be on my way home to a beautiful place and leaving behind this camp. It's the worst camp in the world." I nodded and said okay, but pointed out that he'd better eat his lunch so he had enough energy for the long walk to Bucharest, since this might be the last meal he'd get in a while. (Yes, a shameless way to convince a kid to eat, I know... but it worked!) Once the food hit his belly he started to feel better and soon enough he was out playing with the other kids, happy for a few more hours.
Our group's week at camp was perhaps less educational than VIAȚA usually is. Yes, we got our kids up to the ropes course, and had a few debriefs about working together and not yelling at each other, but for the most part our goal was just to let them have fun and feel loved. But there were tons of beautiful moments in individual conversations with kids -- about loneliness, about being bullied, about missing people you love, about being brave, about not letting other people's opinions bother you, about being nice to new kids, and on and on. These were great moments.
But for me, the biggest victory came on Friday afternoon, when Zeno stepped onto the bus, grinned at me, and said, "I get to go home and see my family now! And I am going to tell them that this is the coolest camp in the world."
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