Camping in the wild has only been heard in newspapers and watched on television. This was my fourth trip to camp in the wild. All this had happened in Kenya, a small country in East Africa where I lived before. The program of camping was a really big thing we called it “The President’s Awards Scheme for Young people. It was an optional trip which was organized for all schools by the government its main goal was to survive in the wild by ourselves in the open without staying in a luxurious hotel. I started my first camp which was known as pre-bronze in 8th grade.

At that time the trip was set only for 3 days and since we were young we were allowed to stay in the hotel and camp during the day time period. In 9th grade the trip was a day longer than the one I went (which was called Bronze standard) in 8th grade and the 10th one was a day longer than the one I went in 9th grade.( which was called Silver standard). These names were given based on the difficulty level we faced at our camping sites. Like Pre-bronze was just a day/night trip, we didn’t do any tracking at all and was just for fun. But in Bronze we had to stay in tents and tracking was just a beginning. As we Reached Silver, the camp site was very far away from the city and was located in the mountain areas. We were assigned in groups. The journey in silver standard trip was a very terrifying trip because we had to track in hills all day carrying a heavy rack sack and had to wake up early morning for exercises and food was cooked by our teachers who were great cooks.
Gold standard was the trip that was the one many people didn’t qualify for. This was a trip which was the first real adventure I had ever faced. We had 4 professional trainers who came with us for this trip. It was sited in the tallest mountain known as Mount Kenya. This trip was a real adventure because we had checkpoints to reach and it was all going up the mountain and down on the other side.

It was a real challenge because we had no one to guide us with directions and we had to cook our on breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not only that we had to sleep in the open sky. Thank god it didn’t rain, But it was freezing cold we carried a rack sack, disposable cups, spoons and plates. Food wasn’t to be carried because we had to tell the teachers a day before what we were going to need for different meals and they carried it to our checkpoints and we had to actually create our own fire in that windy place. Tracking as I told above was down without any guide this time and a possibility of getting lost in the jungle was high. We had a cook, a first aider, navigator, captain and an assistant for each of the positioned student. I was a first aider and a navigator. We used a map and a compass to find the bearings and our directions to the checkpoints. We managed to reach our checkpoint before dusk and this was a safe thing. We tracked caring our rack sacks which contained pair of extra clothes, water, fruits, torch and other necessities. I had to carry a first aid kit and the compass, which was heavy to track on sloppy hills. We used our linguistic skills to talk to the local to guide us when we got lost in the middle of nowhere. Nights at the camp were awesome since all the groups got together after eating dinner and extinguished a bonfire. It wasn’t an easy thing we actually had to break branches off with our knives and that wasn’t an easy job but we managed at the end. One person in each group at night had to stay awake to guard our groups rack sacks. We all slept in sleeping bags in the grass. We were actually in the wild where animals such as elephants, deer’s and other animals could be found, so we really had to stay awake, one barely slept instead started telling a story one at a time.

Six long days of tracking, eating food which was cooked just by another teenager and surviving in those cold and wild hills was an amazing experience to have. We had fun at the same time as we discovered waterfalls and rivers and amazing benevolent people who made our tracking uncomplicated. I will never forget this experience and it’s a proud thing to do by challenging yourself. We received a certificate and recommendations by our trainers who observed us and saw our capabilities. The awards was given by our president of Kenya. This trip was to develop and deliver quality experiential activities that impart positive life skills and ethical values to young people for a better society.