Alternate Reality Hidden Hollow
I spent my summers in high school and college living in Bellville, Ohio, at the peppiest camp around. With 572 acres of luscious greenery and sprawling, rolling hills. Hidden Hollow lives in my heart with so much love even for the girls lodge bathroom. Alas, my summers there ended nearly two years ago, and now I’m living in Morocco, working with kids in a completely different setting, in youth centers and cultural centers, where thoughts of my time at hhc trickle through my mind from time to time.
This blog post is for my camp friends, the ones who will get it.
I was called up by my regional manager last week asking if could help out another volunteer who would be running a camp in Ouargui, a small village in the Marrakech region of Morocco. I was told this was going to be a 9-5 English immersion day camp. To cut straight to the point, it is not a 9-5 English immersion day camp. It is an alternate reality. It is a fever dream. It’s like if I was one of the Spaniards at Hidden Hollow. Things are jarringly similar, yet they could not be more different.
When I arrived in Laattouia on Saturday I was told many different things, yes it’s a day camp, no you won’t be staying there. Then we were told it was a sports camp. Then we were told we would be staying so we’d get our meals covered. A hodge podge of things that led me to standing in front of seven girls the next day, nine and ten years old, their eyes twinkling like stars and their smiles taking up their whole faces. They were also holding all of their suitcases and bedding. I got roped back into the life I lived for six summers.
I’ve equated most of the things we do to Hidden Hollow. The schedule is honestly quite similar (despite dinner being at 9pm) and it makes sense to me. We’re not staying in wooden cabins, nor do we have a pond or pool to go swimming in, but we start off our day early in the morning, eat breakfast and then go do our camp capers. I was given the schedule in Arabic and could not figure out for the life of me what “General Interests” were supposed to be but it was explained to me that they’re tasks that we have to do at the Dar Taliba every morning, and my time of leading girls through a wash house smacked me in the face. My group of girls and I were lucky enough to be stuck with paper detail, but I think that’s just because they’re the youngest. That’s how I assigned paper detail when I was secretary at least.
The meals are interesting. The dining hall is exactly the same especially the volume level. Eighty kids from anywhere will talk as loud as they can in a cafeteria. They sit at round tables in groups of eight, I fill up their teacups instead of water cups, and we stack our trays at the end of the meal just like you would in Ohio. There’s no serving line, we have to cart in the trays already full of food and drop them off instead, but it’s not too bad, gives me something to do rather than standing at a table trying to make casual conversation with eight year olds in a foreign language.
The meals themselves are quite different. I’ve eaten bread for breakfast every day, everyone gets a khobz and there’s dishes of olive oil, confiture, fromaj, and butter. That is breakfast, but honestly, I’ll take it over oatmeal and cinnamon roll day. There’s also always tea and juice in the mornings. Lunches are standard Moroccan lunches, some sort of meat, shlada, dissir, and sometimes yogurt. Also always served with bread. Dinners are the same, they really just vary with different types of tagine rather than actually changing the meal. Which now that I’m thinking about it, is what we did at camp but with casseroles. We had barcock l7m for lunch today, it was djej mahmr yesterday, makes enough sense. One switch is afternoon snack instead of nighttime snack because they eat right before bed anyway. And there’s no trading post (rip princess of pepsi).
Another interesting thing about meals is the water. Compared to filling up a water pitcher about every 5 minutes, the kiddos are left to their own devices after the one small water bottle given to them at each meal. The town we’re in does not have tap water that is safe to drink which is the reason for the excess plastic usage, and yet I haven’t seen a single trash can here for them to throw them away. I’ve seen a fair share scattered on the ground, no one refills them, but other than that I don’t know where they go and it hurts my heart that misses recycling.
There’s no cabin inspection and I don’t know if this is the reason or not, but the girls are so tidy as is there is literally no need for it. Because we don’t need the time for cabin clean up or inspection, we get an extra long rest period. 2 ½ hours of nap time is scheduled for right after lunch starting at 2:30 (dentist time (thanks for this joke miss Emily B)). It is magnificent. Moroccans love to nap and I have integrated wonderfully into this part of the culture. If given the opportunity, I will nap.
I told Aidan about this fever dream I had been living in for a few days and he asked if we did the goodnight handshake circle. I think it would be hilarious to try with them, but they don’t know English. I did let him know there was chanting before bed, so that would have to suffice for now. There was also a joke about battleship which reminded me of activity announcements, yelling to the kids about what we had planned for the day from the highest point in a dining hall, the sacred metal folding chair. I also imagine every time after we eat singing the peppiest kids or banging chairs chanting “ole, ole, ole, ole”.
The activities are fun. Myself and the two other American volunteers run the English class in the morning. And then afternoon and nighttime activities are led by the Moroccans. There are some partial equivalents that should be noted: sports and games is just soccer. Always soccer. Never not playing soccer, actually. Dramatics is “anthem memorization” and the talent show. Maybe tomorrow I’ll pitch mafia. For nature, we’re going it Iminafre and doing a (n XTREME) hike. The sassafras roots and crawdads are unfortunately scarce out here (seven years of drought and what not). But I find the things I know and stick to them. Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, was sung at one point which is technically a camp song. I’ve taught my girls down by the bank which we play religiously during meals at our table. I’ve even bummed one cigarette off of one of the cooks. That reminded me of Whitney. The camel sfr is no where near as refreshing as a camel crush menthol, but it’s the thought that counts.
We also had a wonderful skit night on Tuesday. They take skits more seriously in the sense of not being silly like at Hidden Hollow. There was no slug wars or murder mysteries, mainly skits about important topics like littering and giving their seat on the bus up to a mother who is nursing her baby (? This is conjecture on my part about exact content, they were in darija, I’m not totally sure what they were about). There was also no judging or reward to go to the observatory. The kids got super into it though, still giving their all to the theater. There was a rendition of cotton eye joe from some of the older girls and the macarena almost made it in, but we’re saving that for another day. And despite the lack of observatory, the stars were still stunning that night. The lack of light pollution allowed us to crane our necks towards the sky and follow the faint lines of constellations. Much to be appreciated without a telescope or being forced to sweep.
The kids line up outside of the dining hall before meals, they say something that could be the pledge of alliance or an pledge honoring the country, but I couldn’t tell you specifics. The girls form a line in the bathroom before bed for the three showers hoping they don’t run out of hot water before they get in. There’s that one random kid that everyone just loves and reminds me of Libby Switz. Another kid threw up right after dinner because he ate five bowls of soup and reminded me of Gwen Hatcher and the morning OJ incident. Of course, with all of this reminiscing it makes me a bit sad. I miss the bugle call out through camp to signal transition. All I’ve got now is the Mudir with a whistle that goes relentlessly until we’re out in the courtyard. I miss the trading post like crazy and all of those damn nicknames. And I miss the people that I got so close to while I worked at hidden hollow. It was a dream in our own little corner of the world and it’s nice to see it come back in flashes from time to time. I see faces and memories of my past that remind me of a time in my life that I cherished so dearly, and still do. I’m glad for this camp, because at the very least it’s given me the chance to reminisce a bit on one of the most important times of my life and think about how I’ve grown since then.