I was very lucky to enjoy an exciting three days of outdoor adventure activities together with 60 year 10 students from Brookhouse International school, where I have been staying as a guest. We set out on Friday morning and after driving along very bumpy, pothole ridden roads, we arrived at the Savage Wilderness Camp in time for lunch. What a beautiful surprise it was! Right from the moment I arrived and saw the lush green idyllic grounds along the banks of the fast moving Tana River, to the moment I left, completely exhausted, I was super impressed.
In an age where the demands of risk assessment are threatening to curb the types of activities people are 
prepared to undertake with students, it was heartening to experience adventure activities in the wilderness run so professionally and skilfully with genuine enthusiasm. All the staff at the camp impressed me immensely. It was pretty much a teacher’s dream. Rock up with a bunch of lively teenagers and step back and let the experts take over! I could have safely sat by the river bank and read a book for 3 days, but you know me! I simply had to get involved! Besides I also took joy in taking loads of photos of the kids and putting together a video for them, which I showed in their assembly the following week to much laughter and embarrassed squeals.
Rafting briefing
The first activity I joined was the white water rafting – the highlight of the trip that all the students were looking forward to. I was actually a little uncertain. Well to be very honest – terrified! But I really wanted to overcome that. My fear stems from some rather unpleasant rafting experiences with idiots! Most recently in Peru, where the guide was simply incompetent. We got trapped against rocks, the raft flooded and pinned. The consequence being spending an hour in the risky process of getting kids to the shore then waiting for extra help and a rope to drag the raft out. An experience further in the past was in Sabah where the cowboy guides delighted in purposely tipping the rafts and trapping everyone underneath. Not fun when you have to deal with hysterical kids who had been convinced they were going to die! Hence my rather spiked adrenaline level as we approached this rafting activity, heightened with the knowledge that the river was very high.
My rafting guide was James and when I asked him how often he had rafted this river his reply was: “tomorrow it will be twice”! Hah! Very funny! Jokes aside, I needn’t have worried. The guides were very skilful and dealt with the students (and me) with a wonderful mixture of humour and patience. Yes the river was high, but we did the “chicken runs”. Still quite scary though, and the next day the groups were not so lucky. The river had risen further and they had to walk around a couple of the rapids we had managed to run.
Simply cannot believe we went down this rapid!
It was super fun and naturally there was much throwing of people overboard in the calm sections. I was not left out of this silliness either, one girl doing a ninja leap from her raft onto mine to toss me overboard, much to the amusement of all.
The other activities were a wonderful hike up a hill and some climbing on a rock wall. There was also a night walk following a rope and many team building activities and games. I had a super time and was sad to leave.
Here is the video I made for the students. It is about 8 minutes long and covers all the activities.