We had a boys’ camp from late June to early July, and a girls’ camp from early to mid-July. Each was 10 days. There were 108 boys and 85 girls.

Something very exciting for me was having our first group of former campers and counselors from Winnebago join the Camp Sizanani staff.

The four arrived together, each with an extra duffel filled with books courtesy of Allen Stevenson School in New York at the suggestion of Sara and Jamie Kresberg. Sara is the Head Librarian at the school and arranged for WorldCamps to be the recipient of their extras as they moved to a new library. Our library at camp is now superb and the bedtime stories rival anyone's.

The Winnebago 4 arrived happily, but that meant five of us crammed into a small Toyota with 2 big boxes and 2 big duffels of books, as well as their own duffels and backpacks. It was an interesting stuff-the-car challenge. I could barely shift gears and couldn't see out the passenger side window. They sat four in the back seat surrounded by an avalanche of luggage.

Staff training for this session was under the expert hand of Nancy Frankel, a longtime Girl Scout camp director and trainer. On the last evening we had a campfire that was especially nice. There were the "usual" three-part harmonies of African singing and some dancing and then Nancy gave out candles. As each person around the circle lit one, he or she shared something about the week. Some of the Winnebagans said it was the best week they had ever spent, and one predicted that, great as the week had been, once the campers came it would be ten times better.

At the closing, Nancy read a moving poem about campfires and waiting for the campers to come. A very nice end to five days that saw the staff come together as a closely-knit group. The Americans were moved by the genuine warmth and acceptance they were shown by the South Africans. The South Africans loved the community that formed during the course of the training.

On Monday, the boys arrived....barely. The bus was supposed to have been at the HIVSA Clinic at 8:00 am . At 9:45 we found out that the bus company had no record of our having paid for the bus in advance, as is required, and asked that we please fax them the paid receipt. We did.

The bus arrived at the clinic and then left with the campers around 11:00 . No big deal. It was an easy 90-minute trip, and all we had to do was make a minor adjustment in the lunch schedule. At 1:00 pm they had not arrived. Thankfully we had cell phones. I called the counselors on the bus and they reported that the bus driver had taken a bizarre route that added about 30 miles to the trip and was now lost. By 2:00 pm they were in North Pretoria , a direction you can hardly go in without trying to go the wrong way, and at 3:00 pm , they were finally on the road back toward camp.

They arrived after 5:00 pm and no one had eaten lunch. In fact, to ease our problem of taking food away once they arrived at camp (no food at camp except what is being served), Michelle had the boys leave their food with their parents before the bus left, as lunch would be served when they arrived, "less than two hours from now." Many of them had been on the go since 5:00 am , and several reported that they had been so excited about camp that they hadn't had much to eat for the previous two days.

Despite what must have been frustrating trip, they got off the bus smiling and not complaining. We got them sorted out reasonably well, but instead of 9 cabins of 12, some had 13, some had 11, and some had 10. When we tried to move some of them about 20 minutes later to even them up, neither the campers nor the counselors of the bigger groups wanted to make the change. Early bonding? Who knows? Those uneven numbers offended my sense of proportion, symmetry and table seating, but I was outvoted and was told not to force the change. No problem; I'm getting more flexible.

Dinner was fine, except just as the last people (including me) were going through the line to be served, the lights went out. And they stayed out for about 45 minutes. There was not a sound of complaint from anyone, although it was dark by then (this is their winter). The kitchen staff hustled out and brought a candle for each table.

The campers and counselors went to their bunks after dinner for bunk time. They settled in, made introductions, named their rooms (we had Apes, Cheetahs, Ducks, G-Unit, Hungry Lions, IMX, to name a few), decided on rules for the group, played some games and read some stories.

When I went around to see how they were doing at 7:15 , the 15 year olds were in bed, ready to go to sleep. They younger boys were a bit more active, but by 8:30, all was very quiet.

Their comments that first day were telling. After nothing (it seemed to me) but the misery of a lost bus and a dinner where the lights failed, one boy said, "I don't ever want to leave." Another said he was looking forward to Life Skills (something they usually don't know about until they get to camp).

During a meal with the 14-year-olds, one boy mentioned that at home he often had cereal for breakfast and nothing but water the rest of the day. I asked another boy if that was true for him as well, but he said that he ate three meals a day.

What was interesting was the sense of dignity that each boy showed in describing his circumstances. To them, that's all they were -- circumstances, not a measure of a person's worth.

I also learned that when something new is introduced, especially by Whites, there is a lot of pretty automatic suspicion and distrust. But we had passed the trust test rather quickly and word had gotten around that we delivered on what we promised. The particular program areas of Camp Sizanani were talked about, which is why that boy even knew about Life Skills.

Another positive result was related to me later at the girls’ camp. The Black South African counselor said that the girls were initially confused and then, later, pleasantly surprised by having White counselors who were so nice. They had been brought up to believe that Whites were not to be trusted or believed.

We also received a lovely letter from an organization that sent some orphaned children to both camps this summer, saying that not only did their boys and girls have a wonderful time but they came back closely knit and very supportive of each other.

We also learned that a Soweto elementary school teacher who called HIVSA and spoke to Chadi, the counselor employed by HIVSA, who taught Life Skills at the April camp. The girls from her class who had been to the camp were so transformed by the experience that the teacher wanted Chadi to come to her school to talk to the entire class!

We are only beginning to work on pre and post-testing of the campers, and mostly in the area of AIDS knowledge, but it is unsolicited remarks like these that make this work exciting and rewarding, and that give us our best indicators of the immediate impact and success of the program.

The camp activities were a little different this time. It's winter in the Southern Hemisphere and the nights are quite cold -- often in the 40s. The cold sets in when the sun goes down around 6:00 pm and there is no relief from the cold on most days until about 8:30 am. But once again, not a peep of complaining from the children, many of whom had flip-flops as their only footwear -- and no socks. There was no swimming as the pool is air-heated, so we had adventure programming in an effort to give them a combination of new games and ropes course activities.

Several counselors returned from earlier camps, including former South Africa Peace Corps Volunteer, Brandi Hosso, who paid her way to take part in our first camp and again for these two camps. We are building a cadre of excellent staff who are not only our strongest source of staff recruitment, but who set the tone for new staff. Of the 31 South African counselors with us at the fourth camp, 6 had been with us for all four, 8 for three, and 9 for two. Only 8 were new.

The South Africans are straightforward in letting new staff know how things work and what behavior is expected. We are hoping to develop a specific training program for senior staff to take over as Director, Head Counselor, and Program Director sometime next year. It is very exciting to see how committed the staff is to the program and how quickly the transition to local control might be able to happen.

We had additional sponsorships this time. Major League Baseball donated baseball caps from DeMarini, the parent company of Wilson . Having a friend like Denise Males working there certainly helped. Our friends at WesTex donated sunscreen for the campers. ABC Quilters, under the leadership of Marilyn Lyle of Reston, donated an additional 20 handmade quilts for the infants in Soweto . The Reston Regional Library donated more books.

We have had two good stories in the press. Camping Magazine, the bimonthly magazine published by the American Camping Association for the camping industry, ran a major article on WorldCamps in their July/August issue. The title is "Camp: Something New For HIV/AIDS-Affected Youth in South Africa ." It was written by friend and writer, Bruce Boston, who has written extensively about education and educational experiences and has traveled and camped in several African countries. The link to the article is http://www.acacamps.org/campmag/temp/047southafrica.htm

A news article came out in the Augusta ( Maine ) newspaper, The Kennebec Journal, on Monday, August 2. The link is http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/865022.shtml

There were photos in each story but I don't think they come out in the online versions.

Most exciting, Michael Brandwein, a dynamic trainer who led our first staff training back in December, came out with the third printing of his superb book, "Training Terrific Staff!", and had color photos of Camp Sizanani staff training on the front and back covers and some very kind and generous words to say about our project in his introduction to the third printing.

New Projects : I spent more time away from camp this time than I had dared to in the past. Being able to spend more time doing other things was directly attributable to the confidence I had in the staff.

I went to rural Limpopo Province to look for a site there. The idea is to have a camp for rural children. There are two reasons for the added focus. First, rural children often get overlooked in the assistance programs that come to South Africa . Second, HIVSA has 48 rural health centers in Limpopo and they want to expand their clinics to include a camp.

While there is little English spoken and many more superstitions that persist in the health care area, it would be good to see if we could make the same headway with them that we were able to do with the Soweto children.

One interesting obstacle arose shortly after the trip. I had been referred to a lovely, privately owned place that was a combination of cabins and dorms in a park-like facility. While we wouldn't have had it exclusively to ourselves, one of the two swimming pools would have had a fair amount of traffic from their regular guests.

I saw this as a small price to pay for a very nice place and one that HIVSA has used in training its rural health staff.

Three days later, the marketing people who showed me around wrote to say that the general manager thought it would have been unfair for our children to have to share the pool with the other people using the facility.

I read this as code that they didn't want our Black children mixing with their predominately Afrikaner clientele. What to do? We're looking into whether it's worth pursuing.

Bangkok AIDS Conference: One honor that came our way was to be selected to have a poster exhibited for a day at the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok . The Conference brought together some 17,000 delegates and journalists from around the world for this biennial conference.

Some of the speakers were familiar to me; most were not. I didn't have the benefit of name recognition or speaker effectiveness recognition to go by. Nevertheless, it was educational and I am very glad that I attended. There was a large group (about 20) from HIVSA there, as they had a substantial number of posters for different projects. The heads of their unit, the Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU), James McIntyre and Glenda Gray, are preeminent in the field and appeared on various panels throughout the Conference. A big treat was hearing Nelson Mandela address the plenary session on the last day. Despite his retirement from public life, his passion on the subject of AIDS was evident.

For decision making purposes, there were five tracks into which seminars and posters were divided: basic science; clinical research, treatment and cure; epidemiology and prevention; social and economic issues; and policy and program implementation.

We fell into social and economic issues, and, along with a few hundred other posters on topics that weren't quite ready for the prime time of an oral presentation, we exhibited on Wednesday, July 14.

The poster was quite colorful and had four color photos of campers and counselors engaged in various camp activities. It had sections on counselor training, the camp experience, and the follow-up Saturday Clubs that keep the children in touch with us and with each other. The poster then discussed some issues and lessons learned, along with recommendations. Michelle organized and composed the entire work. I will try to get it posted on the WorldCamps web site in the near future.

We had a good number of visitors, one of whom said it made the conference for him. It spoke to his sense of what was needed in the area and what could be done in a systematic way to get the word out to the youth in a language they would understand. He was a British pediatrician working in Zimbabwe and, of course, I thought the world of him. Others did not have the same "Ahah!" reaction that he did, but I acquired quite a few new business cards from people whom I will be contacting this month. Forming alliances and networking means a lot in this work.

My friend, Rudy VanPuymbroeck, of Reston was there. Rudy is a lawyer for the World Bank and thought the poster to be exceptionally well written and well thought out, answering questions that would logically arise.

I was excited to be back in Bangkok . It was fun to experience the smells of street cooking and the hustle and bustle of the city again. I tried to find the house in which we lived 31 years ago, but I fear it has been overwhelmed by the SkyTrain phenomenon, which goes down the road we lived next to. The entire area is commercial and unrecognizable.

The trip to Bangkok provided an interesting look into the power part of the HIV/AIDS world. No longer was I dealing with my small project in a friendly world of cooperation among a few NGOs. These represented the people at the head of organizations were making the headlines and getting a lot of funding. The little-fish-in-a-big-pond feeling was somewhat discouraging. When I think of a disease of pandemic proportions wiping out thousands and having no cure, I also think (naively I have learned) that there will be cooperation across borders and organizations will work together to do what is needed to get the cure or expedite prevention.

Wrong. Whether it is drug companies, the press, or governments, all are out to make themselves right, or rich, or both, and their competitors wrong, and to get publicity. It is unbelievable that people working in a crisis field will waste their time criticizing, for example, Uganda 's approach to AIDS, which has had great success there, simply because it involves abstinence and being faithful. People from other countries waste their time criticizing that approach as unworkable in their own country instead of noting that it worked incredibly well in Uganda, perhaps for reasons that wouldn't apply in Country A, and then go on to investigate what would work in Country A.

Everything is political.

What Comes Next?: On to the September camp, which I hope will be the last one we have to run without large foundation or government support. It will have 150 boys and will run for 10 days in late September. We have had expressions of interest in our program from several large foundations. We need to have the patience to have Camp Sizanani go through their institutional mills successfully.

We are currently finished with a first draft of our DVD/Video of Camp Sizanani . Thanks to Levelle McKinney, who accompanied me on the October trip and again in January for the first camp, and to Rebekah Wingert, a recent honors graduate from University of Southern California Film School , we are getting this ready to distribute the DVD/Video. This, along with our new brochure, and test results that show that campers leave camp with an encouraging increase in their knowledge about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent it, should make an attractive package for potential funders.

We are also planning on opening a second site in Limpopo Province in 2005. Once we have a site, we will project numbers, but we are hoping on 150 a session.

Conclusion: I treasure the opportunity to introduce camping as a part of HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness, and I am excited when people see the opportunity to use camp as a vehicle of change beyond simply giving children a good time. How distant it seems from that point a year ago, when Michelle, my counterpart at HIVSA said, "If we only gave these [the Soweto children affected by HIV/AIDS] children a good time, it would be enough." I told her that I could guarantee that the children would have a good time, I thought that we could go further.

We have gone much further -- both to Bangkok and to the teacher who wanted Chadi to come to her school to teach the school children what we had taught the children at camp and the manner in which we taught it. It simply could not have been done without your support and I am constantly in awe of the love and generosity that you have provided for the 437 children we have had at camp so far this year. We are hoping for 300 more in September and December.

Please keep your suggestions coming in for funding possibilities. An educational consultant, grant writer, friend and former neighbor, Ted Andrews, has agreed to help write some proposals for us. We want to keep him busy!

All the best,

Phil