Team Building and Training Residential
We spent the next week preparing for the residential, discussing what the project was to us and planning personal fundraising. We each have to fundraise £500 by January, from selling cookies to sponsored hikes the collective pockets of all our friends and families is slowly being depleted, as more and more outrageous ideas take to the stage. Rachel is very keen on a sponsored streak, though she may sadly be on her own there...
But what really started the group off was the residential…
Over the weekend, from the 28th to the 30th, we went to Woodrow High House in North London, which was apparently haunted according to some people in the group. According to most sources however, ghosts were by no means the scariest things seen in the house over the course of those three days... The weekend consisted of a mixture of workshops, swimming and a few very questionable dares – but we’ll leave the last one to your imagination. The workshops stretched from identity to low ropes, theme to the infamous Wong Walk in the dark of the night.
Low ropes
We started by getting to know each other, however after around a 15 minute biography about Enis, we set a time limit to how long people would be chatting about each other. Saturday began with the low ropes, after working together in a balancing act on what can only be described as a giant seesaw, and swinging over the ground (or “sea” as the instructor called it) into each others clinging arms as the 16 of us desperately tried to stay on board the tiny “lifeboat” or a few planks of wood.
The real test came with the low ropes, an obstacle course that involved us doing some very unusual gymnastics so as not to touch the floor. Any reservations we had about invading each other’s “personal bubbles” were quickly discarded as we clung to each other for dear life and attempted to cross a thin and very slippery bit of wire. The circus member in our group kindly let everyone else go first before he risked it, but we all made it in the end and were definitely more bonded than ever before! One good skill we learnt was how to encourage each other, with helpful advice such as:
“Just reach for that bit of rope, it’s only a couple of metres away...” and “Arghhhhhh! Lean forwards, or we’ll all fall and die!”
Fun at the pool
That afternoon we spent having fun in the pool, which basically consisted of the girls swimming and floating around happily whilst the boys threw plastic balls at anything that dared to move in their vicinity. Hard. It’s impossible to say just what they found so entertaining about this form of violent warfare but suffice to say it kept them amused for several hours whilst we developed an ingenious way to block oncoming missiles by hiding behind our floats.
Wong Walk
We couldn’t describe the residential, however, without mentioning the Wong Walk. From 10 on a Saturday night, in three groups known only as Fire, Blood and Love, we trekked off into the woods for a number of unique trials. We guessed the siblings of the other groups, memorised the cartoon people on a card to answer questions such as “How many had glasses?” or “Whose hands touched the floor?”
Through games of maths we ended up memorizing 25 cards between us, form the suit, number and message on the middle. Finally covered in mud, having done many food forfeits for some very interesting dishes such as salted plums (Just wrong! Plums are sweet, salt is salty, they should never mix...), thankfully excluding the dreaded chicken foot or duck tongue, we returned to the house.
Commonwealth
We did a lot of fun, physical activities, but on the other hand, we also learnt about the Commonwealth and how it affects the countries that are part of it, particularly Ghana, in such areas as education and a woman’s role in society. We went on to do our own presentations about aspects of Ghanaian life, from politics (the general elections in Ghana were this week), through to history, slavery to climate and culture, which taught us much more about the country we are going to and to understand those who lived there. We ended Saturday working on the themes of the project – peer education, which got confused for meditation at one point, youth leadership and volunteering and thought about now these linked in to what we were going and how we would be developing these skills in the coming months, I especially enjoyed trying out the different types of leaders: laid-back, supporting and militant. (The reason Rachel enjoyed this so much was that she got to be the ‘militant’ leader- i.e. a sadistic dictator, and yes, I was in her group... - Amy)
On the last day we moved on to group fundraising, coming up with 3 very unique ideas, such as a 15-19 night at Oceana or a concert at the Rose Theatre however we settled on the idea of an Auction of Promises, where we will auction off such things as paintings to car washes. But we’ll be planning that later so stay tuned.