Author notes

Learning to like camp

Aridy

on Sept. 8, 2011

So at about this time I started to like camp.  I felt safe there.  Yeah there was the constant threat of malaria, spiders, poisonous snakes, etc., but I am one of those people that feels safest in a static environment.  I had a routine every day.  Get up at 5:30.  Get dressed in mostly not disgusting clothes that I had hung up to dry from yesterday's sweat.  Brush teeth and wash face.  Trek to the…outhouse…(more of a bunch of wood stuck together precariously, making a sort of up high place over a hole in the ground, covered by palm leaves, with a toilet seat) Then choke down some oatmeal, for breakfast, and go to work in the lab, counting and weighing and cataloging and bagging.  The day went on like that with stops for lunch and then when it started to get dark.  Then I would take my sun shower (I would fill up this black bag with water in the morning and leave it would to get warm in the sun all day.  Then I would lug it to where we had some sticks set up with palm leaves blocking off the different sections and I would hang the bag above me and shower.  There was even a little hose on it so that it was kinda like a real shower if you pretended really hard).  After that I would go and write in my journal (one for me and one for the class) on what happened today and then draw a bit, have dinner, and read a bit before going to bed.  It was a safe routine and whenever I stepped out of it, by leaving camp to go somewhere, it seemed like I would just get terrified and agitated.  I'm like that even now.  It's hard to break my habits.