Bomba!

4:43 Thursday afternoon, sitting down finally in a eerily quiet, vaguely messy office while the teens who have volunteered to help out with children's' camp are in the main room with Solly uncle, another staffperson at the JCC, playing karrum*.

Camp ended today, and I am a little sad. I really enjoyed myself with this maasti ( marahti for naughty!) group, and am amazed at how everything came together so nicely in the end. My sessions, especially the ones I was stressting out about, worked out well, but most importantly, Camp overall had a really fabulous flow. Everyday we learned something new, added on to what we had done previously, and (in my opinion) had even more fun than the day before. If I wasn't running it, I maybe even would wish we had another day of Camp.... ( and wow, I can't believe I just wrote that!)

Hands down, one of the best parts of camp was Israeli Dance on Wednesday afternoon. The Israeli Consul Generals' wife came in with her stack of CDs and got everyone moving! We did the Macarena, Yesh Lanu Tayish, the chicken dance... you name it. The kids and staff had a blast, yelling "bomba!" and dancing all around the room. And these Indian kids can reallly move!

Monday morning we made some of the best tasting falafel I have ever had outside of Israel... and Miraculously we found some Tehina in the JCC fridge that was still good, and it lasted for hours until each of the three different groups had finished with it- so we had chummus as well.

On Sunday we started working on a play called Crorepati ** Chanukah, and these kids had their lines just about memorized by Camps' end.They earnestly helped me correct the typos and other mistakes in the Crorepati skit and are excited to put this on together.

Also every day we had quite a few educational sessions. My co-worker Edna led the groups in a hands-on "Israel's Geography" lesson, completing the session with the kids making three dimensional maps of Israel. There was sand all over the floor from the Negev Desert, and Tel Aviv somehow had sky scrapers that remarkably resembled the twin towers...

Other volunteers and I taught the 'call and response' version of Adon Olam, which in the sephardic tradition is actually a couple of lines longer than the ashkenazic version, but luckily the tune that I know still works! It felt great hearing the little kids singing "Adon Olam- Adon Olam, Asher Malach- Asher Malach", to themselves on the bus one morning.

My session on "Before there was Israel" ran smoothly. I had wanted to touch on the Shoah Holocaust and the major events leading up to the creation of Israel but didn't want to do it in a way that would be overwhelming for the kids. For my session I had the kids form a timeline of political world and Jewish events and leaders leading up to 1948. I made large cards with different pictures on them with the dates on the back. India's independence, World War First and Second ( which is how they Say WWI and WWII here,) Theodore Herzel, and more were on these cards which the kids had to put in order without looking at the back. In this way I was able to have them compare events and people in the time line, see who had lived when, what they knew and didn't know about different events and history.

afterwards I handed out a few monologues to the older kids in the group and had them read and act out what Herzel, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, and Anne Frank ( some of the persons who were on the timeline cards) would have had to say in they were in our camp today. This way I had a natural segway into reading an illustrated book about the life of Anne Frank, and most everyone sat quietly and paid attention to the story. I was impressed with their ability to concentrate and be mature. Afterwards, I gave them each a folded peice of paper, saying they could be creative and either write a diary entry of their own, like Anne Frank's, or create their own hebrew english dictionary, like Eliezer Ben Yehuda. The results were fascinating- some of the kids began writing about the sad things that are happening in their worlds and in India today: the Bombings in Dehli, the floodings. They were also able to write about their regular lives, Dear Diary, I am at camp, yesterday we went to this park... I am glad that they were able to digest the story and also write their own entries, record their own feelings, and discover what things interest them.

I think (and hope) that all in all, the different parts of camp got the kids excited to be in the JCC and participate in Jewish life here. The sessions got them thinking about their connection to Israel and the games and the fun stuff got them connected to each other. I hope my next camp is as enjoyable and that gets everyone involved in it becomes connected as well. Women's Camp is coming up in the first week of December!








cultural notes :)

*Karrum is sort of like Indian billiards or pool, a game played on a large board or table using 'checkers'-like pieces, where one flicks the checkers into the corner pockets of the board. My 7 year old neighbor, Preety, beats me at it nearly every time we play.

** Crorepati is the Indian equivalent of the American TV show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire. (A crore is 10,000,000) and the play is a spoof on the show, with Amitab Bachan, a Bollywood icon, asking questions about the holiday of Chanukah