Last Day

If you were to silently sneak a peek at Room Seven, you would immediately notice the massive heap of bodies, squashed together and draped with comfy quilts. A soft gentle breathing noise would waft towards your ear as we dreamt happy dreams…

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Bariah jumped up as she abruptly woke up everyone in time with the mentors waking us up for Fajr.

As we slept through our usual waking up time, ten to eight, Alan was busy making us all pancakes. Nikhat Aunty came to wake us up at nine, due to the fact that Mercury and Venus had all trooped over to our bedroom and spent nearly all night pigging out on sweets with the mentors, who were setting us an (unhealthy) example. We went downstairs, our eyes still studded with sleep, but soon were wide awake when the appetising aroma of the batter drifted past our noses and we stumbled over, hypnotised, towards our seats and gobbled down the glorious food.

After breakfast, we then split into our two groups and my group did archery. It was a great experience, but I was no Robin Hood!

Once we had finished our first activity, we went into the lounge and Hanka showed us some games (thumb sleep, thumb stay, thumb behind…) and we also taught Hanka some of our games.

Although most of us weren’t up to it, a small group of us trudged through the slimy mud and some presents from the sheep to complete an obstacle course. We had to carry a massive, heavy log through the perils before us and this activity drained out every last bit of energy left in us.

It was then Zohr Namaaz time and Hanka came to watch our prayers. She was very interested in learning how to pray. I explained the spiritual significance and answered her questions.

We then watched three hilarious presentations; my group (Mercury) did a play on a girl who didn’t want to come to the camp, as she had an attitude and didn’t have much understanding of Hijab and Islam, but slowly learnt as the tables turned and she didn’t want to go home! Venus did a Guess Who, pretending to be the mentors and last but not least was Mars, with a news report, almost drowned out by the raucous laughter at their funny reports!

Faye, Comfort and Hanka then presented the certificates and, amazingly, Faye got everyone’s names right! Bariah and Zoya then got a special present for being so brave and gathering confidence and just being overall superstars!

Sadly, we then had to climb on to our coach and leave. Hanka waved us off with her handkerchief and when we got to the point where we had to change coaches onto our main big coach, we all fled into a shop where we could buy our junk! The bell above the door just kept ringing and ringing as we all clambered into the tiny space.

The coach journey was a long one as we all forced ourselves to stay awake; it could have been the last time we ever saw each other! After many swapping of numbers and emails, the coach halted at Birmingham and most of the people (including myself) hesitantly stepped out of the coach and waved our last farewells. After greeting my parents, I tumbled into the car and fell asleep!

The journey throughout Wales was amazing and I have so many lessons to take away. Hopefully we’ll all meet again next time!

Sumayya Manji