InterCamp was a Ukrainian-led English language camp that took place in Yevpatoria, Crimea. The 30 participants, ages 7-13, are all students at a very specialized after-school language school in Krivyi Rhig (sp?) that teaches English, Spanish and German as a supplement to what students learn during the day. The director organized this 10 day camp at the beach as a sort of English-language immersion experience. There were only 3 PCV’s present, and then 4 Ukrainian teachers. Our schedule was very relaxed, and lessons and events were usually planned about an hour before they happened. In general, we would wake up, do a morning exercise, eat breakfast, go to the beach for 2 hours, have a 1 hour class, have lunch, have an hour rest time, have a class, go to the beach for another 2 hours, have dinner, then wrap-up with an evening activity.
I was most impressed with the level of English of the students. There were 5th graders who could speak English better than some of my best 11 graders. And the 7 year olds were on par with my 9th grade classes. This isn’t to say that my students are inept, but more to show how much potential a child has when he or she is taught a language with regularity from an early age. These children are certainly privileged in comparison to most of the Ukrainian children I have met/worked with. Most parents can’t pay for their children to attend extra English classes on top of what they are already learning at school.
The most memorable part of the camp, for me, was my fever. I arrived a day late due to train schedules, and I was exhausted and had a horrible headache for the first day and a half of camp. I assumed it was my body catching up to the loss of sleep from the train ride, but by the 2nd night things got worse. I began shivering uncontrollably in my bed, and after 30 or so minutes of waiting for my body to warm up, I decided to go outside and request more blankets. But, as I opened my mouth to speak to the camp director, I immediately started crying. That’s when I knew I was sick.
The director took me back to my room and immediately went into Momma-mode. She called in the nurse, and they discussed what actions needed to be taken to relieve my 102 fever. First on this list was a full-body alcohol rub, followed by a tablespoon of pepper, followed by an injection. At the word injection I decided to call the Peace Corps office.
After some haggling and discussion, we were able to agree on no injections, but instead I had to take a cocktail of 5 different pills, one of which I assume was ibuprofen. I have no idea what the others were. That was followed by the alcohol rub. I had to take off my clothes and lay in my bed while the director rubbed a wet rag of “spirits and water” all over my skin. For 20 minutes. It was miserable. This entire time I had been shivering so hard my muscles hurt, and making me take off my clothes and put cold liquid all over my skin actually felt like a mild form of torture. But I was too miserable to really fight anything, and I let the director do what she thought was right.
And, believe it or not, the alcohol rub worked. After 20 minutes my body stopped shivering. Apparently the way it works is that the alcohol takes the heat out of your skin which lowers your fever. Or something like that. I don’t know. All I know is that for 20 minutes I had been trying unsuccessfully to stop myself from shivering so that the torture could end, and then miraculously it just stopped on its own.
Another side effect of this illness was some of the worst stomach cramps I can ever remember experiencing. At times it hurt to even stand up straight. And they would come and go to the point that I wasn’t sure if I was sick or if I wasn’t sick, but cholera did flash through my mind not a few times. After the fever incident though, I stayed in bed sleeping for a full day and waited for the headache, stomach cramps and trips to the bathroom to cease.
I didn’t fully recover until about day 5 of camp, and the experience will go down in my life book as the most sick I’ve been in a while.
