Summer Camp Experience
by: Taking Marella
There comes a point when time is suspended. You are emancipated from the hectic city-life, and break free from the constraints of ordinary life. In that frozen point, you let the past catch up to you and you know that you have in your hands the future; so when time resumes, you know that the life you return to is no longer ordinary.
I would characterize the World Youth Alliance Summer Camp as a successful marriage of academic struggle and leisurely escape. It was not just a relaxing getaway because we were educated all throughout. We embraced the past, learned from heroic struggles to topple over hegemonic regimes and we recognized that, although part of the past, history is still relevant today. Through our embrace of history comes the ability for us to make history. The wonderful venue allowed us to enjoy the simple things in life which are most often, if not neglected, not available in the mechanical city; the soft wind’s gentle touch seemed to embrace us with our return to nature. These were simple escapes which allowed us to rest our minds (from critical thinking) and hands (from a marathon of writing) from the (brutal) tasks prescribed to us.
The summer camp set the stage for an even bigger endeavor: the world. The concepts we tackled would be the same ones we will preach to the rest of the Earth; the aching hands and compelling activities merely become an admonition of what is to come once we plunged into the real world through our own career paths, but this time equipped with spectacles that view everyone around us as equal beings with inherent dignity.
That one summer camp may have been one frozen point in time for me, but I forever recognize it as an imprint on my history.
