Memories of working @ Moral Family Service Centre (Bedok North) – Summer, 2007
A low deep male voice said to us slowly at 10pm at night, “Don’t bring your torchlight. In the jungle, thousands of eyes are watching you when you are walking. Don’t disturb the wild animals with the torchlight.” The serious warning tone caught my attention in the natural setting. Nothing else could catch your attention beside darkness and the voice. “When I shout RUN, just run. You cannot expect anything to come out from the jungle. You know, it is a REAL JUNGLE.”
Standing at the jetty on Pulau Ubin (an outlying island of Singapore), which was the start of the jungle, my heart started jumping wildly. We were told by a social worker in Moral Family Service Centre (Bedok North), Praveen Nair, that our campsite was at a beach opposite of Malaysia.
It was a long distance between the beach and the jetty. I could not get rid of my fears. To prepare for the worst, for instance running in the jungle, three of us Hong Kong interns started doing warm up exercise at the jetty.
After reaching the main road on the island, we prepared to run to our campsite from the jungle but an unexpected scene occurred. There was a truck to bring us to the beach! Thousands of questions came into our minds. “HAHAHAHAHAHA, no one walks from the jetty to the beach!” Praveen could not stop laughing.
Our fears did not disappear immediately; we had learnt how to be “alert”. To prepare for anything unexpected, it was better to be alert every second, every minute. No matter whether it was a jungle or in a city, awareness is the key. After some psychological preparation, we three were ready to go!
To be a trainer in the camp, we needed to overcome the “fear” in order to be a role model for the camp participants. There was a pre-camp preparation for the upcoming 3 day, 2 night camp “I believe” for 20 secondary school students.
I Believe
The camp “I Believe” is an integrated roundup section of 6 months self-building programme for Secondary 1 and 2 students. Before the camp, the students had already completed previous sessions about anger management, time management, communication and teamwork.
This survival camp is a time for them to demonstrate what they have learnt in the previous sessions by participating in the amazing race, standard obstacle course, confident walk, campfire, and so on in a group-based. Each group needed to share one food ration bag throughout the camp.
Thus, they had to compromise within their group to decide how the food was allocated as well as to cooperate with each other, and control their anger wen there were conflicts.
The camp benefited the students and me. Besides learning those self-management skills, we will never forget the “awareness” and “overcome fears” motto taught by Praveen.
Understanding nature is the key to survive in the jungle, including insects, wild boars, wild dogs, snakes… and the weather. On the first day of camping, I learnt something about nature from Praveen. As an experienced soldier in the Singaporean Army previously, he understands a lot about the changes of weather from his valuable experience of camping outdoors in the jungle. He put up a hand and spat on it, in order to make the fingers become more sensitive towards the wild direction. With the help of his eyes, he detected some black, stormy clouds in the afternoon. He told me that it would rain after 15 minutes.
Out of curiosity, I started to count with my stopwatch. And true enough, dark clouds arrived over our campsite on the beach and started raining heavily! Thanks to his advice, we had zipped up the cover of the tents beforehand and thus prevented everything from getting wet.
From his patient teaching on how to detect the change of weather, I was more aware about nature, and it inspired me to think of the relationship between nature and human.
Imagination, fear, humans…
Nature is not all about weather in the afternoon. The activity “Confident Walk” – where students needed to walk in the path inside the jungle at night without any torch – challenged humans to overcome their fears of the great outdoors.
Under the leadership of Praveen, all students needed to stick to the rule of “step where Praveen has stepped” and maintain a high level of awareness under the moon light. They were instructed not to imagine so much towards the natural jungle as our fears were caused by our imagination, as Praveen said.
I used to fear something that has not yet happened in uncertain situations. I always thought that fear comes from realistic situations, not from our imagination. However, Praveen gave me a new prospective to understand what “fear” is.
Fear, sometimes, emerges when we are unsure about something and start to image things. To overcome the fear, I was inspired not to over imagine when I have not measured the real situation sufficiently. Sometimes, worries and fears come from our over imagination.
“I guarantee you; you will have fun in our centre, after this camp.” Praveen kept saying this to us. Under the inspirational leadership of Praveen, from my experience with him at camp, I totally believe him and know that I wil learn a lot too!
我鐘意「InternGaGship」^^