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Day 2 - Mentors Diary - Shuayb Ismail |
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Today was our first full day of camp and it started at 3:30am with jamaat Fajr salaa. I can now understand the difficulties my parents go through in trying to
wake me up for salaa! So we sleepwalked to the namaaz room, and prayed our salaa together as a camp, before returning once again for bed. Breakfast was served at 9am sharp with a selection of cereals, white or brown bread with appropriate conservatives, as well some Swedish Cheese.
After our breakfast we started with our first sports sessions of the camp; football, rugby and cricket; I took the Rugby. Though few people had ever played the game before and thus were very apathetic at the start, by the end of it, it was these campers that were sad to leave. Whilst David Hume argued that war can not be abided by a set of ethics, the campers clearly thought better, stopping to help fellow campers in the game, offering words of encouragement and pushing less experienced campers to achieve better. One memory that will stay with me was when one team captain who was the star scorer of his team, turned to his team and said that he won’t score now, he will pass it to a younger member, thus encouraging whole team participation.
Between our Zohr and Asr, Sheikh gave us his inter-namaaz talk. He discussed the hadith from the Prophet (saw) that if your today is equal to yesterday then you have failed, and if your today is worse than yesterday, then you are cursed. The concept with which he tied this to is the camps motto, “Towards excellence” explaining that we must always, in whatever we do, be it sports or lessons, we must always strive towards the peak of that activity. Then we had lunch, delicious and served to us by Neptune planet. Here my memory gets a bit fuzzy, but all I can remember is a deep satisfaction with what I was eating!
Then we administered a Salaat and Quran assessment with the campers, testing them for ability and knowledge and then explaining any mistakes, wajibaats and mustahabaats. This was followed by classes, which from what I could hear, as I will not be teaching until later in the camp, went very well, especially Shan e-Abbas Bha’s public speaking lesson with talks on Sharks, London Olympics and Cows.
This was followed by Dinner. Again that satisfaction of ‘mashAllah’ came. Another memory that I will keep is of the campers going by themselves to thank and the chefs and compliment the meals. During dinner I sat with the senior planet and was astounded by the conversation we had. We first discussed the pros and cons of the Khoja Jamaat and then debated the role of liberal movements in Islam!!
This was followed by Planet Time. During this time, planets and their mentors go to play games, hold discussions or other such activities catered to their planet by their mentors. In our Planet, Pluto, we went on a hike, with the responsibility of leader, time keeper and last man (to ensure no one is left behind) given to campers whilst we followed. The purpose of the exercise was to emphasize the importance of leadership and teamwork. To ensure that when one person needs support, the planet comes to support them. After this we played Duck, Duck, Goose!
We then went to Magrib and isha prayers. Here the Sheikh discussed the hadith regarding the 3 day fast by the Ahlulbayt (a.s) when they gave away their food to the begger, the orphan and the captive. He explained the relation between this hadith and aya 41 in Sura 76 of the Quran and that with what we do, it should not for benefit of this world but rather with the niyaat of Qurbatan Illalah, “for the sake of Allah (swt)”.
This was followed by our first PDT session with quizzes on lateral thinking, news briefs from the camp and outside world and the mentor introduction by Hasnain Bha Ramji. He explained his education to train to be an optician, his work for CoEJ Education board, oh and that he is a professional sniper marksman for the army!
After PDT was our last Planet Time. Within our planet we discussed rules that the planet wanted to abide by in the camp. Between them they came up rules like “Sharing Responsibility of the Planet”, “Respect For Others” and that we must “clean up our own mess”.
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