1969, Drakenberg Mountains, South Africa

By Allan M. Lees

“I love summer camp,” my daughter said as she snuggled up next to me on the sofa. We were talking about our plans for the coming year and she was staking her claim early. Since coming to the USA I’ve had to adjust to a great many things, and the tradition of summer camp is one of them.

My daughter sees summer camp as a three-week long adventure during the course of which she can eat pretty much whatever she likes, free from the restrictions of home and parental oversight. But when I hear the words summer camp I think about privation, danger, and sudden death. I have to remind myself, over and over, that her summer camp experience will be very different from mine.

My summer camp was in Africa. When I was 10 my father was posted to Cape Town, which back then was a sleepy provincial city nestled under Table Mountain. Nelson Mandela was living through the early years of his incarceration on Robbin Island, out to sea just over the horizon, but back then I was too young to know who he was. I did know, however, that I wanted to learn about this new country, and so when the camp counselors came to Seamount Primary School to talk about their summer camp high in the mountains of the Western Cape I was primed to take their slides and stories at face value.

Mine was one of the hands thrust into the air when they asked, at the end of their presentation, if anyone would like to sign up. I was eager enough that I persuaded my parents, normally reluctant to spend money on anything other than cigarettes and alcohol, to put up half the cost. I met the other half myself by doing a variety of handyman jobs for the neighbors in the four month interval between signing up and the camp commencing.

My little clockwork Timex alarm clock woke me at 3 a.m. and I stumbled out of my warm bed and into the dark chill of the early Cape morning. The tiles were cold underfoot and the water, as always, was cold. But soon enough I was dressed and ready.

My mother had perused the long list the camp had sent to parents and had bought some, though by no means all, of the items proposed. My father had given me his cast-off heavy duty torch, the hard plastic casing split along one side from when he’d dropped it accidentally while climbing to inspect a petroleum storage tank the year before. It was still usable but wouldn’t withstand rain. My clothes and sleeping bag were compressed into a cheap suitcase that was held together by a sturdy brown leather belt. That morning I staggered with it from my bedroom to the carport, and somehow managed to get it into the trunk of the Ford Anglia that was my father’s notion of luxury transportation back then.

My mother drove me to the train station, chain-smoking as always. And then, after a brief, teary hug, I was alone, standing on the platform in the darkness with my suitcase waiting for the train to pull in. Of all the children who had thrust eager hands into the air that day at school, I was the only one actually to make it to the station that morning.

The journey on the rattling old colonial-era train took all day, and by the time I reached the camp I was tired and hungry and thirsty. My mother hadn’t thought to pack anything for the trip and, being a child, I hadn’t considered it either. I’d brought money for treats and extras; in today’s terms it would have been about $50. But the money was quickly confiscated by the camp counselors as a “donation” to the end-of-camp party.

The only food available was what was served in the camp mess. Dinner that night was a very small hamburger and thick black coffee. I was so thirsty I drank six cups and consequently spent the entire night awake, shivering on my tiny bunk in the concrete block-house that served as the dormitory. It was probably just as well that I remained awake because the thin cotton sleeping bag purchased by my mother was woefully inadequate for the mountain climate.

As the sun went down, so fell the thermometer. By midnight my breath was icing in front of me. Every twenty minutes I got up and did press-ups to get warm; then I huddled back into my sleeping bag, wearing every item of clothing I’d brought, until my body temperature fell and I had to repeat the entire process all over again.

Around 3 a.m. I needed to relieve myself so I took my father’s flashlight and stepped out into the night. It was pitch black and the latrines were several hundred yards from the camp’s other buildings. My ears were acutely alert to the sounds of the night, and I watched for snakes and scorpions in the yellow beam of my torch as I stepped cautiously through the brush.

Inside, the latrine stank and I tried to hold my breath as I directed a stream of achingly hot urine at the hole in the floor that passed as the toilet. The moment I finished, I heard a deep growl that shook my bowels and literally made my hair stand up on the back of my neck. I pushed hard on the thin metal door, determined to keep whatever it was at bay. Nothing pressed against the door but from time to time I could hear the animal growl softly, pacing around the camp.

I didn’t come out until the first light of dawn began to break through the gap between the roof of the latrine and the walls. When, at breakfast, I told one of the counselors he just laughed and told me it was probably a leopard. “Did you see how big it was?” he asked. I shook my head, feeling foolish that I’d not seen it, feeling foolish that I’d been so afraid. He seemed unafraid of anything, a big, ruddy-cheeked man who probably strangled lions with his bare hands. I was just an outsider, a gangly boy who didn’t fit in and who hid in the latrine because he was afraid of carnivorous cats.

I certainly didn’t fit in when we were told to collect as many scorpions as possible and put them in jars for the camp’s collection. Nor did I like bathing in the icy river every morning, especially after one of the younger boys was caught in the pulsing current and swept far downriver. They found him an hour later, shivering and delirious and lacerated and bruised, and we didn’t see him again after that.

I was constantly hungry and thirsty. But I was also elated. Each day we went for long hikes in the high mountains, along the ridges and down into valleys where we’d scoop icy liquid in our hands from clear cold waterfalls that seemed a thousand feet high. I couldn’t get enough of these hikes and at night, as I lay awake shivering on my bunk, I’d replay the images in my mind, savoring them again and again until I dozed off an hour before sunrise.

I suppose, looking back, that I was half-delirious during my time at the camp. I was constantly hungry, exhausted, and watchful for new dangers. The older boys liked to play with hunting knives and sometimes there would be accidents.

One afternoon, just before dinner, I watched as one of them slashed another across the arm. Blood spurted from the artery in an elegant fountain as the injured boy stood mutely staring at the phenomenon. He watched as though in a trance for perhaps 15 seconds before his knees buckled and he collapsed. We all stood around, useless and totally lacking in knowledge of what to do, until one of the counselors arrived and wrapped a tourniquet around the injured arm. During dinner I could hear the boy with the knife describing the fountain of blood as though he were describing a particularly good stroke in tennis.

Something in the air seemed to encourage random and arbitrary violence and I felt very insecure. I wished I were like the big, ruddy-cheeked counselor who could kill animals with his hands instead of being a small and relatively weak child whom no one would rescue if ill fortune struck at me.

And yet, every morning the elation would return. I loved the clear mountain air and the incredible vistas that opened up as we strode across the mountain ranges. I didn’t even mind being made to carry some of the heavy cooking equipment. Nothing could detract from the majesty of the experience. Even my bleeding feet, bruised and cut by sharp rocks that easily penetrated my totally unsuitable light tennis shoes, seemed a small price to pay for my daily ticket to heaven. I forgot that I had a home hundreds of miles away and thousands of feet below. I forgot my brother, my parents, my toys.

My world was now the mountain range and the three small meals per day that always left me hungry and wanting more. I was even contemplating signing up for an additional week, though I wasn’t sure I could work enough before school resumed to pay for it all. I wanted was to remain in the mountains, to remain in my euphoric world of danger and vistas and strange white boys who mocked my British accent with their thick Afrikaans.

The night before I planned to sign up for another week at Camp SOS, the boy in the bunk next to me got up in the middle of the night to use the latrine. Most of the boys drank sparingly at dinner and consequently could sleep through the night; Simon, however, had managed to get his hands on a cake his mother had sent and had needed plenty of dark coffee to wash it down. So he padded out in his unlaced shoes and a moment later I heard him scream.

I’d like to be able to write that I leapt from my bunk and rushed out into the night to help him. But I didn’t. I lay there in my thin sleeping bag, clutching my father’s flashlight, wondering what to do. I banged on the metal bunk to rouse the others. By then some of the other boys were stirring and Simon was screaming again, screaming for help. With two of the other boys now up and looking around for guidance, I felt slightly braver.

The three of us went to the door and cautiously opened it. I shone the light of my torch in the direction of the noise and there, illuminated in the beam, a full-grown leopard stood over the huddled body of a small boy, its jaws clenched around the boy’s throat. Simon was not screaming anymore.

The boy next to me started shouting and bent down to pick up a stone. The next moment we were racing toward the animal, screaming and throwing stones and waving our arms. It was a kind of madness, an unreason driven up from the depths of some primordial instinct that most people are fortunate enough never to experience. But whatever it was, it was insufficient to save Simon. And the ruddy camp counselor, who no doubt could have killed the animal with his bare hands, reeked of stale beer when he finally stumbled out of his comfortable quarters to see what all the noise was about.

I didn’t extend my stay at Camp SOS. But I have signed my daughter up for another summer camp this year, secure in the knowledge that she is growing up in a different world, a world in which children at summer camp do not get eaten on their way to the latrine in the middle of the dark and pitiless night.

Allan M. Lees has been creating stories for his children since they were very little and he will continue to do so until they are old enough to steal a car and escape. His day job comprises (in descending order of difficulty) working with humans, computers, and biologically active molecules; his evening job comprises being regularly humbled by his aforementioned children. Allan’s very modest literary success to date includes several published stories, a now-deservedly-out-of-print novel, a radio play, and many megabytes of wasted hard drive space.