camp

When I arrived at camp Prolicok (pronounced Pro-lee-soak) very early on a Tuesday morning about three weeks back, I was a little lost. I meandered into the campgrounds from my taxi, and stood around, guitar in hoe, for about five minutes without seeing a soul. I tried my best to not look impatient, or nervous, or like an American. I also tried to look cool. Suffice it to say I went 0 for 4.

FInally a man in a car pulled up. “Alexander Alexandrovich?” I asked, the name given to me by Tamila as the Camp’s Director. Yes, he nodded. But he was heading to the regional center for a bit, why don’t I just sort of hang out on that stoop over there.

This was the beginning of my introduction to a different form of summer camp, one void of such American-Jewish staples as morning activities, clean ups, organizational structure, or hyper-concern that a camper might accidentally die from excessively acting like a child.

Its hard to really detail the hilarity of my past three weeks. At least once a day I would start laughing out loud, often at inopportune times, reveling in the strangeness of the experience for an American like me.

As I began to touch on before, American Jewish summer camps are center around a schedule. 740 wakeup. 815 lineup. 825 breakfast. then cleanup, and morning activities, following by a small break before lunch. Afterwards we have more scheduled activites, more plans, more events written in tattoo ink some of which may have been planned a decade before.

Ukranian summer camp is, for the most part, void of plans. When I first got to my bunk, I asked my co-counselor, Nadya, what I should be doing. She sort of shrugged and said, “play with the kids?” I asked her what we would be doing for the morning, and in a weird de-ja vu she shrugged and said, “play with the kids?”

Play with the kids. This job may seem like a cinch to some of you. But kids get bored really easily. And they get bored even easier when you dont speak the language and, while attempting to explain the intricacies of a game, they look at you dead in the face as if you are an alien speaking in clicks and sounds that barely register in the human ear.

Thats not to say there were NO plans. For instance, we ate like clockwork. Every day at 830 was breakfast. Which was followed at 11 by second breakfast, which was usually yogurt or fruit with cookies. This was followed by lunch at 1, dinner at 4, and supper at 7. Every day. We ate five meals a day every day. If I hadn’t stuck to my vegetarianism and been forced to pick at barley every fourth meal, Ukranian camp Jeremy would have been all too reminiscent of plus-size Camp Tel Noar Jeremy. And that Jeremy had a lot of trouble getting girls to dance with him at the socials.


The new and improved Jeremy, however, was dancing the night away with the Ukranian chicks at camp. And by Ukranian chicks I mean the lovely ladies of bunk 7, who range between the ages of 6-10. They thought I was fiiiiiiinnnnneeeeee. And by dancing the night away, I mean every night. Because there was a two hour discto-tech, or dance club. Every night. And the kids never grew tired of it. There are five or six russian pop songs I now know by heart without having a fucking clue what they mean. Luckily if I ever get strand on a Russian version of American Idol I’ll have a fighting chance.

Every day my bunk 7 groupies would vye for my affection. There was Masha, who one day wore a shirt that said “You say I’m a bitch like its a bad thing,” a slogan I noticed in the middle of dinner one day that almost made me joke on my potato. There was Tanya, who could get surprisingly violent, tell me I was a tree and start hanging on my neck in a fashion that made it hard to breath. There was Vika, the youngest of the bunch, who one day asked me why I don’t speak to her in Ukranian. To which I said, “Ya Rozmovleeyayoo Ukrainskoyoo Movoyoo,” I am speaking Ukranian. To which she said, no you aren’t.

While the bunk 7 girls were fascinated by my foreign allure, they had a little trouble grasping why my language was so shitty, or why my accent sounded like I had a cotton ball in my mouth, or why I couldn’t roll my R’s. Also, one of the most frequent questions I received was whether or not I had seen Big Ben. I then explained that I lived in America, not in England. To which they either responded “Hollywood” or “New York.”

While many things at camp were different, some were oddly familiar. Like pubescent teens and their raging hormones. I became pretty close with one of my co-counselors, Nadya, who was 31 and had an almost 13 year old daughter who was one of our campers. One day I walked in on her daughter, Katya, playing spin the bottle with two boys. I yelled at her to stop, and she yelled at me back, saying that I wasn’t her father and she could do whatever she wanted. When I told Nadya about this later, she was gushing with happiness. Her little girl was growing up!

Camp gave me a great peak into gender roles in Ukraine, and how they differ from those in America. The Camp had a small but usable weight room, a few machines, a few free weights. All boys, according to camp policy, had to go to the weight room three times a week. All girls---in the words of Nadya, “they don’t need to go.”

“Cleaning time” occurred every day after breakfast, although it paled in comparison to my own camp cleaning experience. We were graded on the cleanliness of our bunks, and the bunk with the highest mark was rewarded with a prize. Each of the bunks at camp Prolicok had a cleaning lady, so the whole notion of the kids cleaning up after themselves was somewhat of a misnomer. Additionally, all the work of cleaning up in front of the bunk was left to the girls. I can only imagine my mother’s reaction to reading this right now. I assume she is shaking her head and saying something like, “Bella Abzug is rolling in her grave.”

Once in a while, the camp would plan a special activity to do during the day. About mid-way through they planned a relay race through the forest, complete with different games and challenges and acitvities. The whole thing was actually quite cool and original. The caveat, of course, is that the relay race was called “Indian” and all the kids painted their chests, made fake bow and arrows and yelped whooping noises. I mentioned to the Director of the camp, Alexander Alexandrovich, that this whole thing would be considered racist in America. He sort of shrugged and smiled, a then a few days later dropped the n-word pretty casually in conversation.

That being said, the Director of the camp is actually a pretty great guy. Hes smart, accomplished, and gives back to his community. The camp is a side job for him---he works as a middle man for trading goods in the region. He also goes out of his way to make sure that if a kid wants to come to camp but can’t pay, that he or she can still come.

He also was intent on making me feel very welcome. Like my third day on the job, when he pulled me into his cabin right before the evening activity to take shots of vodka. When I quit after three he accused me of not being a man.

Another evening, I was coaxed into having a beer with two of the other male counselors around my age. After the beer they “found” a bottle of vodka. Two hours later, the bottle was empty and they had sat me down to watch those awful “9/11 truth” videos in Russian. I then had to explain to them in Ukranian that, no, I did not think it was a giant conspiracy.

One of the last nights of camp, we celebrated Halloween. What was funny is that in many ways, this faux pax Ukranian Halloween was more true to the spirit of the original American holiday. Everyone dressed as ghouls or witches or vampires or zombies. And girls didn’t use it as an excuse to dress sluttier than usual, as they did at the University of Michigan. At the same time, Ukranian women usual dress heavy on the cleavage to begin with, so I’m not really sure of the next step.

By the time camp was over, I was dead tired. The kids had worn me out, the counselors had fed me booze, my bed had practically broken my back. Yet as tired as I was, and as much as I yearned for the confines of my home in Boryaka, I realized that scarcely a moment had gone by where I didn’t have a smile. Because while to me camp was crazy, to them camp was just camp. But viewing in the prizm of comparison with my own camp experience, I very much feel that, for the first time in Ukraine, I really got a hands on cross cultural lesson.

Also, I got to spend three weeks basically playing with kids, which isn’t half bad.