Bootcamp, Merritt Island, FL
A Travelers Tale
For a little backstory on what in the heck a 14-year-old was doing traveling to the wild jungles of Papua New Guinea, I will tell you how this came about. (read On The Way To Hauna Village-A Traveler’s Tale On Real)
In the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and eighty-four (1984, think the setting for Stranger Things you Millennials and Gen-Zers). I was an innocent 14-year-old, into theater and band and all things kinda nerdy.
It was an easier time…no cell phones, no cable TV, (only if you had cool parents), MTV was still playing music videos and was only four baby years old (excuse me, while I wipe away a tear). Everyone stayed up for 24 hours to watch and record, on our huge VHS tapes, our favorite bands on LIVE AID, and our parents barely knew what we were doing when we were outside. Where we would get ourselves INTO trouble and then OUT of it because we were a clever lot and knew our parents would beat our asses if we didn’t come home at dusk. There I was, fourteen, and not a care in the world…
In my small, bump-in-the-road town of Eagle Point, Oregon, there was a girl who had just moved into town when I was in 9th grade. She was from California, and much more worldly than I. We became fast friends. She introduced me to bands like U2 and The Alarm. She was so cool.
She told me that she had been on a couple of summer trips with a group called Teen Missions International, TMI for short. (They are a non-denominational organization that went, at the time, to 26 different countries with teams of about 30 teenagers and six or seven leaders. Most teams are hosted by local churches or missionaries that are in that country. TMI has work teams and ministry teams).
I was only ever on work teams, but my new friend had gone to Ireland the previous summer, which was a bike/ministry team, and that had really intrigued me. She brought back an awesome wool sweater that said “EIRE” and lots of funny stories. Maaan, I wanted to do this!
I asked my mom if we could investigate this. Of course, she said yes. Anything to further my knowledge about God and the Bible was going to be a yes. It was January, and we had to raise all the money by May, I think, so I could go. It was about $2200 or so at the time. My parents paid a good portion of it, but I was to also get donations, tax-deductible of course, from other people. I was/am a singer, so we kind of did a little tour around our valley. I would call the church, ask if I could come to sing at one of their services and tell the congregation about what I was doing and ask for donations to my cause.
This was the 80s honey…so I had to do all this myself. My parents weren’t running down leads and calling for me. I, myself, had to call the pastor, or whoever, and basically sell my story. I went to several churches in the Rogue Valley. So, I was basically pimpin’ myself out to get money for this trip. Needless to say, this was a very good life lesson, I would file away for future reference.
Now, because I had a late start when I got the brochure, a lot of the teams had already been picked over and were full. There were a couple of teams that went to some different countries in Africa (which I had no desire to go to at the time) and the Papua New Guinea team. And a couple of other teams that I was not really interested in, down in South America. So, I picked Papua New Guinea, mostly because we would also go to Australia and Fiji, which I was really interested in. I knew virtually NOTHING about Papua New Guinea. But INXS was from Australia, and they were one of my favorite bands, so yeah, I wanted to go there. (I was 14, what do you expect).
I had no idea about the structure of the teams and how they all worked. I just knew the description of the team said something to the effect of, “First you will travel 17 hours by air from San Francisco to Brisbane Australia. The team will spend a week there before traveling to their work destination of Hauna Village, then will debrief for one week in the Fiji Islands before coming home.”
This team was the only team that would be gone for almost the entire summer and spend the MOST time at their work site. I did not know what this meant and, I actually wouldn’t find this out until the NEXT summer. A glutton for punishment…I did go again…to Nepal, but that my friends is another story.
So, the time finally came. It was early June and I had been forced to write my thank-you notes to the 20 or so people that gave me money. My mom and dad, sister, and little brother piled into our station wagon, and we were off to Portland to catch the Teen Missions bus. Ok, now, here’s the deal. Teen Missions is based in Florida. There were several buses that had different routes to pick up kids from all over the States.
Portland, Oregon, being one of the farthest away from Florida, but the closest (5 hours) to my little town, is where I could catch the bus. So, I was looking at (which I had no idea at the time) a 4–5-day bus ride across the United States. I mean, it wasn’t terrible. Every time they would stop to pick someone up, all the kids would start chanting, “Another one rides the bus!” to the tune of the fabulous song, by Queen, “Another one bites the dust”.
It was pretty fun, but also long, and hot, and I’m sure the bus reeked by the time we got to Florida. (And, yes, I really want to put in a joke referencing the irony of a bunch of Christian kids singing a gay man’s song on the way to Florida in 1984… and they LET US…but I WON’T.
All kids traveled by bus, and convened in Merritt Island, Florida. Teen Missions headquarters. There we went to a two-week boot camp where we met our teammates and learned how to do all the things that we would be doing on our respective worksites. We learned to lay bricks, mix concrete, build tresses, steel tying, and general work/carpentry skills. There were bible studies, an obstacle course, kitchen patrol, and a big rally every night where you chant the name of your team and participate in learning how to conduct ourselves in the countries where we would soon be arriving.
Our chant? “PA-PA NEW GUINEA! UHH!” it was more of a HUH than a UHH, it’s a hard thing to explain just typing it, but you get the picture.
My main takeaways from those rallies were that Americans are loud, rude, chew gum, and talk fast. So don’t do those things in other countries.
We also swam and bathed in the lake (more of a large pond, really) with alligators. Alligators that you could see…just off in the distance. Alligators, which were roaming free…(although it may have been cordoned off, where we swam, it was just a net, not very secure). Where they could swim right up to you and eat you if they wanted to…in the little free time we had.
Just sayin’… ALL-I-GAT-ORS. (Holy shit…they WERE roaming free! They could have roamed through the camps at night and eaten all of us! This is literally just dawning on me right now as I type this! There were no fences separating us and them…gulp). Eh, I guess it was an easier time when we also had sharp corners on metal jungle gyms that stood on hot concrete slabs and rubbed dirt in wounds. We were told to walk it off if we were somehow injured, just short of dying.
Anyhooo…as I recover from that realization. TMI supplied us with tents, but we kids were only allowed 52 pounds packed into a duffle bag-not a suitcase. This included our sleeping bag, bible, pillow, all our clothes for the entire summer, toiletries, and other stuff we had to bring. PLUS, we had to have room in our duffle for a can of food, like, the big industrial kind.
Each team brought ALL their own food for the summer. Especially our team because there were no restaurants or towns nearby. Also, we had to hope our leaders could cook, or it was going to be a ROUGH summer. Our only footwear for the entire time was steel-toed work boots. In fact, that was the Teen Missions logo and claim to fame. “Work boots for the Lord” or something to that effect, was their motto.
This was Florida in June. We set up our tents at our little group campsites. These were two-person tents, and you had to hope you got along with the person you were tent-mates with, or it would be a long two weeks. There was a small platform, raised up on concrete blocks, so if it rained (which it did) the water wouldn’t get inside the tent and ruin your stuff.
We pitched our tents and left our work boots OUTSIDE. AT NIGHT. You better make sure you shake those things out GOOD in the morning before you shove your foot in there, hurrying because you’re going to be late to the obstacle course. ANYTHING could set up shop in there at night, and you could have a big surprise in the morning! Merritt Island was dense and junglelike. NOT open and sunny. There was also a water pump (the old-fashioned hand crank kind) where we could get fresh water to do all the things, like laundry and washing up, and brushing our teeth.
It was a long two weeks at Boot Camp. As I said, it was Florida in June in a very jungle-like setting. The mosquitos could carry you away, they were so big. We learned all the things that we needed to learn, and at the end of the two weeks, our team boarded a bus, AGAIN, and traveled back across the country to San Francisco, our departure point for Australia. To be clear, that’s two bus trips across the country in a matter of weeks.
So, with our team newly bonded, we ended up in San Francisco and boarded our flight.
Stay tuned for next time when I tell you about what happened when we finally got to Hauna Village in Papua New Guinea and what we did there.
