in thoughts...

It's amazing how we can affect another person's life... one small action, one small decision... was it Changing Lanes? that show by Ben Affleck & Samuel L. Jackson? an amplification of how a small something can change so much...

During camp I experienced this... One camper was very sick, but didn't want to go home... As camp chair I was the only person who could overwrite her decision to stay... I consulted many seniors and my committee before deciding that I should talk to her, understand her situation and then see whether I could convince her to go home...

Before talking to her, someone had given me the idea that she was staying cos she had promised her friend to come for the camp together, so it was a "loyalty" thing... and that I felt, personally, was not reason enough to risk your life...

Walking towards her, my mindset was this:
1. Convince her to go home
2. Convince her to go home
3. Convince her to go home

yes... but it didn't feel fair to ask her to go home without listening to her... so I popped the question, "Can you tell me why you don't want to go home?"

And I'm DAMN glad I asked.

She told me she had fought very hard with her father for the chance to come for the camp... She was not in top form on the first day of camp, so her dad had not wanted her to come... so if she went home now, her dad would scold her like mad...

I could empathize... but I also had to think of the very very very worst... which in this case meant I had to think, WHAT IF something happened to her? If something happened to her and in the end she was all right, she'll still get scolded like mad... If something happened to her and in the end she was not very all right, we would be held responsible...

If I asked her to go now, I could be more sure that she will at least be well... in safer hands at least... cos at the camp, my first aiders also had to be on standby for other campers... But if I asked her to go home, what "aftereffects" will there be for her life? will her father prevent her from joining other camps in future? How will this affect her social development? How will it affect her relationship with her father?

I had no answers. I was stumped for a moment. Ok, make that many moments.

Then SYg stepped in and informed her gently that she had to take responsibility for her decision to stay... and if she stayed we had the right to decide what she could take part in and what she had to stay out of...

so SYg and I walked her back to the huts to rest... She took a bit of food then went to sleep... she joined us later for DISC where I sat beside her and directed her through the test... she joined the sharing sessions after dinner and also played "move the people" game... but for Ic's game, we couldn't let her go... too risky... so she stayed with SYg, we took her to the first station by the car, then for the rest of the game before midnight she was at the Siloso Beach station with the station masters before shifting back up to the huts area with SYg as company... She didn't go off to rest though... when I was back at the huts waiting for groups to come back and collect keys from me, she told us "I miss my group"... she waited for her group to come back so she could bathe with the girls in her group...

I admire her strength... she was fighting her own battle, for something she felt she deserved... Absolut camp just HAPPENED to be her battlefield... In that sense she did go through self-awareness... but not so much through our planning... Her Absolut experience is unique... I wrote her a warm fuzzy on the last day...

She has made me learn too.