Jack jumper ants are carnivores and scavengers. They sting their victims with venom that is similar to stings of wasps, bees, and fire ants. Their venom is one of the most powerful in the insect world. Jack jumper ants are proven hunters; even wasps are hunted and devoured. These ants have excellent vision, which aids them in hunting.
The symptoms of the stings of the ants are similar to stings of the fire ants. The reaction is local swelling and reddening, and fever, followed by formation of a blister. The heart rate increases, and blood pressure falls rapidly. In individuals allergic to the venom (about 3% of cases), a sting sometimes causes anaphylactic shock. Although 3% may seem small, jack jumper ants cause more deaths in Tasmania than spiders, snakes, wasps, and sharks combined
Thank you wikipedia for that bit of info. So, thus far all I need to do is watch out for things that slithers, crawls, and jumps. Not so bad really...
Sitting down to write about the last couple of weeks/month I can think of nothing solid to put down. But crystalized in my mind is the though of running on a treadmill. In the sense that I feel I've been doing a ton of work but overall have not done a great deal.
In a way I suppose the past two weeks have been the best of time and the worst of times. To begin, two weeks ago I had my first group of all girls. The program itself seemed easy as: a four day program consisting of fly fishing (i know right?), rock journey,cycling/high ropes, and packing of the bus the last day. Not only that but these girls were year 10s and had been coming to camp since they were in year 3! My briefing notes said "Girls should be able to run and manage camp with little supervision." It sounded nearly too good to be true. And in fact it was. It was perhaps my most dificult/distressing group of kids I have ever worked with in any capactiy before. And not due to their behaviour, they were great! This is probably what was so tough was the group was great but I as a Group Leader felt like a failure. I'll explain--First of all, I was more than a little apprehensive to have a group of all girls. Never done it before. In fact I've only worked with even mixed gendered groups for the first time last year. I hadn't an idea how to approach the situation. Perhaps they caught on to it because nearly from the get go there was an established 'you' and 'us' division which I found uncomfortable.
Rather than go into ever particular I'll give my day from hell. It had started raining neary 14 hours ago and had been steadily pissing since. The steadiness of it only broke when it gushed for a couple hours during the night. I had warned the girls it was meant to rain. They said they had camped in the rain and it as only an inconvenience. I was blown away by their positive outlook as I fell asleep. They were right of course. When camping rain is only an inconvenience but this morning it was an ankle deep inconvenience. After hopping around our campsite to avoid the knee deep puddle and to hop over riverettes the girls had a bit of breakfast and we packed up and ran away with everyone getting pretty soaked in the effort. That was annoying but nothing I couldn't handle. Cool. We got shuddled to our base camp "Jungai" and had some toast to suppliment the girls' dainty brecky.
All was going well--except for my teacher is complaining to my boss about the amount of rain. Like what was I supposed to do? Do an american rain dance that stopped the stuff?!? My boss had told me she was not happy and then I notice that her and my boss have been talking for 15 min or so. "Oh, great she can't be singing my praises" says my leader brain--anyway, everyone had packed lunch when I look over to Tina (we'll call her). Tina was typically a softspoken, helpful, and cheery if a bit diminutive but when I looked her way, as we were getting ready to load the bus, her face was clenched in pain and tears rolling down her cheeks. "Oh, shit..." goes my leader brain. Hey Tina why don't we go for a bit of a walk. We walk to the ajoining room where Tina promptly has another extremely painful spell which she tells me in between rapid and shallow breaths is an 8 out of 10 on the pain scale. "oh, shit...oh, shit!" goes my leader brain "She's ruptured something, her appendix, her spleen, her liver, hell if I know but AHHH!" She has a minor panic attack, is breathing rapidly and I can't get her to slow her breathing. she is beginning to get dizzy because of the lack of Oxygen. I'd alerted my boss and while I was vainly trying to calm her down he came in and, like a pro, got her to settle down. twenty min later turns out her ruptured appendix was nothing more than a bit of constipation. ... ... ... "wouldn't have happened had you monitored her h20 intake" my leader brain tells me. sweet.
My boss helps Tina, who will not be joining us for the bike/high ropes adventure. He then comes to inform me that the teacher was not venting about me--Awesome! I think--they were talking about what they were going to because my teacher just found out her dad just passed away--NOT awesome! My boss, Marcello, tells me to treat her gently and they'll sort it out later.
So, after an added 45 minutes delay that my group NEEDED to do the bike ride and high ropes we all rush onto the bus, I grap my backpack but i forget my GL kit. Remember this bit. It comes back later.
I have never been cycling with a group before. I did it in training sure but never with 14 faces looking back at me (and 1 teacher face not looking happy at all). I do a haphazard but thorough briefing which takes some more time than I'd like and we start on the exhausting 2 hour bike ride to high ropes. Overall though, I am happy with the ride. No one died, hurt themselves, fell off the bike, broke a bike, or even complaining outright. It took forever because the girls were tired and we were all starving! "Come on girls we are nearly there and then we'll get to have some lunch! Just a bit further!" Of course, that turned out to be a lie because when we got to high ropes I didn't have my GL kit which holds my knives and cutting boards and we needed to cut EVERYTHING for our lunch wraps. I frantically ran around to the 5 surrounding camp sites but of course all the groups were gone and nothing was around to help me. AHHHHH! I call Marcello and he says it'll take him an hour to get there...Well nothing else to do I suppose. We get started on high ropes in the mean time. My brain by now is near the consistancy of a banana left in the sun for a week and I attempt to give a belay/high ropes safety briefing and fail miserably. My high ropes support takes over (Thankfully!) and I pretty much tune out. Only after an hour and a half into our 3 hour session do I realize that only 4 of the 14 girls have gone beacause, of course, I wasn't minding the time. NOOOO! says the inside of my head. To preface nearly ALL the girls said high ropes was what they were looking forward to for whole camp. So, of course, the rest of the high ropes is a cluster#$%^ of pushing people through and trying to cut and eat lunch and have everyone pay attention to belaying.
Then, when we finally get back to camp I try to do a bit of facilitation. ASIDE This is part of my job. Every session I am supposed to run activities but also structure the entire program to incopporate things like LEADERSHIP, COMMUNITY, ENVIORNMENTAL AWARENESS, and such. So, I get the girls all settled down and circled up and start into my activity and discussion and I get the wall face--which resembles someone's face who is under heavy sedation. In other words absolutely no connection. I try to do the activity and it, of course, falls flat on its face.
Oi! What a day. That was the tone for the entirety of it. I ended the program and felt more exhausted than had I worked for a month straight. It was miserable! The group themselves were amazing and did the best they could with what they had but overall I felt like a failure of a leader. Failed to be watchful enough, failed to remember what I needed to do, failed to lead activities appropriately, failed to facilitate at all...lots and lots of failings. And they were all my failures. Not the kids. Not my bosses. Mine.
To quote Slaughter House Five:
So it goes.
TO BE CONTINUED
No comments:
Post a Comment