I reached camp after two days of driving and plenty of
detours because of construction.
Camp Minne-Wa-Kan, an ex-Lutheran bible camp, sits at the edge of Cass
Lake in northern Minnesota and is only accessible by about five miles of dirt
roads. It feels like stepping back
in time and the setting is idyllic: old wooden bunkhouses, a chapel, a fire pit
with a half moon of plywood benches and nothing to see but woods and water for
miles. It’s the kind of camp that
maybe we’ve read about or, if we’re lucky, experienced in our childhood but is
nowadays becoming more and more difficult to find.
I arrived for MVO (that’s camp-speak for “Multi-Village
Orientation) in the evening and was welcomed by an older Chinese professor who
legitimately could not (or would not) speak English with me. She pointed me to check-in along with a
tray of hot cinnamon scones and milk which was smack in the fray of counselors,
deans, teachers, activity leaders etc. speaking Spanish, Portuguese, Danish,
Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, Chinese, German, French, Arabic, Italian,
Norwegian, Korean and Russian.
Think about the language nerds in your high school Spanish class and
multiply them by fifteen languages and countless different countries and you
have a taste of what the cafeteria felt like. Being an American, I was in the minority and it was one of
the only times where it was obvious that speaking English was decidedly
uncool. It was as if the United
Nations had descended onto Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon. In other words, it was my kind of
paradise.
We spent the first full day of orientation in large group
meetings talking about health and safety, the basics of teaching language, the
mission of the camp (to prepare young people for responsible citizenship in a
global community along with fluency in another language) and logistics. Returning staff never miss a chance to
point out teachable moments and occasionally pretend that we are villagers so
we can see how things are handled.
During our IVOs (Individual Village Orientation) when we meet with the
other Portuguese staff, we played get-to-know-you games and learned a LOT of different
dances. Staff from other villages
only communicate with us in their language, which is both frustrating and
hilarious. It’s a good reminder of
what future students will feel like if they can’t understand and have no idea
what is going on. Other highlights
of the day included getting our staff T-shirts and jackets and making our
name tags.
We ended the day around the campfire with the Chinese village
staff leading us in stories, dance and song. They finished by teaching us a song in Mandarin which we sang in three-part
harmony while the lake glowed pink from the sunset and the breeze made the fire
blaze. With multiple nations
singing in unison in a language foreign to them in such an intimate setting, it felt quite possible that we
had achieved a real Kum-ba-yah moment despite all of our differences. I thought, “I could get used to this” along with “This isn’t
so bad” and “I can definitely handle this for six weeks” until I remembered
with a nagging feeling that, oh yeah, the actual campers hadn’t arrived yet.
That is so cool. What's the maximum age for campers??? 😉
I like your Garrison Keillor/UN/your-kind-of-paradise description!