Camping and Glamping

View of Onrus beach from the Habonim campsite in Hermanus

I've spent the last month in and out of Cape Town for 3 different Equal Education (EE) related camps. Equal Education is the NGO I have been working for in the township just outside Cape Town. My first blog post talks about my first impressions of the organisation so take a look at that. We had a busy time in the office with planning and preparation in the youth department running alongside the crazyness of our Policies, Communications and Research (PCR) department preparing for their upcoming court case.


1: Staff Camp


After a week of running training for facilitators and heads of camp, the EE staff made our way to Hermanus for our staff camp. There is a lot of staff at EE and I'm always amazed how many people seem to turn up for our weekly staff lunches on a Friday. I think part of the reason is that wages are so low here due to the high supply of low-skill and semi-skilled workers and so it is relatively cheap to employ people. Post Apartheid there are strict rules about employment and minimum wages to work in favour of domestic workers and black people, although it still seems crazy to me. I just employed a domestic worker to clean my flat, their minimum annual wage is about £1600 and it cost us around £12 for her clean the entire place. At Equal Education the majority of staff are Xhosa people from local areas such as Khayelitsha. Out of the white staff members, there is a highly disproportionate number of Jews, mainly ex-Habonim members. Staff from all departments - Youth, community, School libraries, PCR and admin all came together for a few days of bonding and planning for the future of the movement. 

Afternoon break on the beach

Discussions over the new EE constitution

2: Equal Education summer camp


The next week we began Equal Education camp with around 500 township kids taking part in 5 separate camps from Grade 8 - Grade 12. Each grade meets once a week in local school rooms and there is a head of the youth group who is responsible for running of it. These same heads were joined by a team of facilitators to make up the camp planning team. I was responsible for assisting the Grade 9 team and their head, Zukie. All the facilitators and heads have spent several years in Equal Education and been given the skills to run camp and write and facilitate programs. Around 400 Equalisers (EE members) descended upon 4 separate campsites around the South African countryside. The camp is heavily subsidised so we can reach out to as many people as possible, each person paid R30 (about £2) for 5 days of camp.


Our group of Equalisers were great, they always seemed keen to listen to what the facilitators had to say and were willing to participate in activities.  I always notice people in the township are very proud of their appearance and the way they dress. they aren't able to buy expensive clothes and brands but what they do have they make the most of. During camp the Equalisers  wake up in the early hours for their morning hygiene  routine and a common sight is find kids ironing their clothes to wear that day.


I found the food to be excellent, though the Equalisers didn't seem to agree. All the cooking was done in an outdoor kitchen, some of it under the shelter. These kids are not used to a meal that doesn't contain meat and we did not have a single vegetarian in our grade. We enjoyed bolognese, burgers, chicken stews, sausages and various other meat dishes. As you can expect from kids, we had some fussy eaters and at every meal many kids chose to replace hot cooked food with up to 10 slices of bread and peanut butter.


Our theme of camp was "Justice in our hands". The education the Equalisers receive in school is definitely not just. The Township schools don't see a fair share of the education budget in this country and many people are not able to reach their potential. EE are working to correct this and during camp we spent time running activities to teach the participants about their rights and their eduction. Each day began with a reading group. Many of the participants do not have access to books or reading materials so it is a good place for them to get some practice. They meet in groups of 10 with a facilitator and slowly work their way through a short reading, making sure they understand everything. The days continued with programs written by our facilitators which aimed to educate our participants around the theme and focusing on EEs court case for minimum norms and standards in schools. 

Although the camp environment is a very familiar one to me, this camp had its difference. The Equalisers always seemed to be so content with everything that was going on, their sleeping conditions were far from what British Jewish kids see as acceptable with over 30 kids sharing a room with bunk beds of 4 levels. Camp felt like a great success, all the heads and facilitators worked really hard and all the Equalisers seemed to really enjoy it. 

Dorm room with 4 tiered beds

Grade 9 camp and facilitators

Zukie, Grade 9 head

Ironing at the start of the day

Outdoor cooking

Dinning room

Morning reading group

Opening act of EE talent show. They had some amazing performances, it seems that everyone in EE is so talented and can sing with amazing harmonies.

3: Habonim Shomrim project with Equal Education


My final summer camp experience was a visit to Habonim's summer machane (camp) at their own private campsite in Hermanus. I took a group of 14 EE members to work on a project with Habo's oldest age group, Shomrim. The Habonim camp site is an institution I have heard so much about through stories from mother's childhood summers in the '60s. The same site is still used today and hosts hundreds of Jewish teenagers each year. I had visited the site with EE, this time I was able to see it put to full use. A street sign points to Habonim from the main road to Hermanus. It's like a little village with a central square, named Kikar Rabin, which hosts ceremonies, sports matches and carnivals, there is even a gate to the local beach which chanichim (participants) are free to use daily. Each age group has it's own area with a semi-permanent Chader ochel (dining room) and tent areas protected by the shade of the trees. Everyone there seems to be so familiar with the layout, having spent months of their lives there. I had to navigate myself own marked paths such as Derech Ha'atzmaut and kvish Ayalon.


The program we were running involved planning and running a program for two of the younger age groups on Habonim. We spent the first 2 days preparing which included educating the group on the workings of Equal Education and the problems with the education system in South Africa. They then used all this information to create activities for the younger chanichim. Using the knowledge of the Equalisers on education and the leadership skills of the Habonim Chanichim, they were able to come up with fantastic activities. The participants gained a lot from the experience in learning the difficulties of the pressures of writing and running programs. The bonding experience was a struggle, although we had a lovely friendly group of people, at times it seemed that their cultural and language differences held them them back from really getting on. It amazes me how people living so close in the same country are so foreign to each other, I don't think we really have anything to compare it to in the UK.


By the end of camp all participants were feeling very good about the week. After the struggle of planning and bonding, all participants had great things to say about each other and the experience. They ran 2 fantastic programs for the other camps simulating problems the Equalisers experience in school such as lack of resources.

Street sign on the Habonim Camp Site

Sign for the campsite from the R43 motorway (luckily the weather turned bad just as I left) 

Chanichim ejoying Kikar Rabin during the day, the migdal (tower) in the back where you can sit and lookout over the beauty of the campsite

The Equalisers on a walk around the campsite

The opening ceremony of this years camp taking place in Habo's Kikar Rabin (photo taken from the HDSA facebook page)

Running the peulah

Mural of the Habonim logo

Some of the group by the sea in Hermanus

Habonim chanichim and Equal Education Equalisers meeting to plan the upcoming program

My team - Gary and Maz from Habo and Thobile from Equal Education

Running the program - Lecturing in Xhosa to simulate what it's like to have language barriers with your teacher in school

Program quiz - simulating lack of resources in schools by not providing enough pens

An unusual sight for me, lighting channukah candles in the summer during camp