Written by: Hamzah Moin

Character Reference:
MYNA President: Guido
Camp Organizer: Spikes
MYNA Helper: Hamzah
MYNA Helper: Nipper
Camper: Naz
Camper: Sam
Counsellor: Sid
Counsellor: Noodles
Security: Big Kev
Security: Fadz
Just a clueless attendee: Bhattz

The start of it all.

During my high school days I was quite active in a few youth groups. One of these youth groups was MYNA… the Muslim Youth of North America. MYNA’s goal was to unite all Muslims youth and let them bond and whatnot. I was involved in Toronto’s MYNA. Every year MYNA Toronto sets up a camp that usually boasts close to 80-100 campers. It was to say MYNA Toronto’s Wrestlemania or Super Bowl.

Organization is no easy task. Guido was president of MYNA that year…Spike was the camp organizer. Things weren’t looking good for us… a week before camp we only had around 35 people registered. We should have had 100.

“Guido…this camp is going to bomb.” I said.
“We’ll get more campers this week” replied an optimistic Guido..
“How do you know?”
“This is normal. Always happens.”

Guido of course knew full well that this wasn't normal at all. In fact it was quite the opposite. It was ABNORMAL. Deep down Guido knew this camp was going to bomb hard and he was getting desperate. He had a very successful MYNA year landing a weekly recreational event, a successful ball hockey tournament, a new website and the re-birth of the MYNA Magazine. To end it off with a craptacular camp wasn't what he had in mind.

Guido and I decided to go scouting and tried to get some old friends to come. Guido managed to get Sam, an Egyptian notorious for causing mayhem. Sam didn’t want to come to camp, but Guido made him a promise… “we’ll let you do anything”. Upon hearing this, Sam decided to attend camp for one purpose only…that was to cause as much ruckus as possible during the last night of camp.

I tried looking for some people myself…and was only able to get one person interested, Naz. Now Naz lived in Ottawa, which was quite far from Toronto so he needed some persuasion. He needed some guarantee about this camp. I promised him “it’ll be the greatest camp ever”. After thinking about it for some time, he decided to come. I have no idea why I made such a blind promise but it worked.

Well we were only able to get a small handful of people that week. We had a maximum amount of counsellors… 20, but only 40 campers. This meant there was like a 2:1 camper-counsellor ratio. The camp thus far, wasn’t going according to plan. Naz looked wearily at me…thinking I was absolutely nuts calling this camp “the greatest ever”. It looked like my promise was only a dream.

Rumours.

The MYNA staff heard rumours that there was going to be some pranks during the night. We knew Sam and Naz were keen on pranks, but what alarmed us was that some counsellors were thinking of smearing shaving cream on campers at night. At this point, Guido and Spike hardly cared. We didn’t have too many people and we wanted them happy. 100% anarchy was our way of thanking the campers and counsellors for their support.

Nipper, now he was a loose cannon. Being of Thai decent, naturally he was the minority here. Although he was part of the MYNA staff, he too wanted to be in on the pranks. This was the first time for him to do any sorts of pranks so it was normal to see him overly excited even though he is usually timid and shy. Actually, it was mostly the MYNA staff that wanted to cause chaos. Hell, we organized this thing…we wanted a bit of fun.

Since Spikes was in charge of running this camp he wanted to make sure it ran smoothly. Well obviously it wasnt too hard to run a camp with 40 kids but he was still committed in keeping the camp perfect. However…

...Guido was MYNA President and with this being his last year of presidency, he wanted to leave with a bang. He put rules aside for fun. The MYNA Staff didn’t really care for rules either. Nipper, and myself were keen on having some fun too. Add Naz and Sam and we have a great big party of hooligans. On top of that, add in two crazy counsellors, Sid and Noodles who were giving us permission to cause ruckus on the last night.

Some kid named Bhattz also came to this camp but nobody knew who he was and he was sorta weird. He didn't do anything of importance actually.

A chillin' camp

The journey to that night didn’t take too long. The camps before we were quite strict on rules. In those days, no one was allowed to miss any speeches, recreation or meal times but this year we let people sleep whenever the hell they wanted to. After all, its THEIR camp. As organizers we should have put a stop to the lack of rules but no one really complained. It was quite possibly the most care-free camp in the world. There was a program and although we stuck to it loosely, it was up to the campers to really participate in our events. We really didn’t care if they chose to participate or not because less people meant several things: easier to talk to the crowd, shorter lines for rock climbing and archery, and more food to eat during meal times.

Now naturally the MYNA sisters weren't liking the laid-backness so they told us to toughen it up and start waking up sleepy-heads to attend some sessions. I couldn’t find Naz anywhere so I headed back to his cabin. Lo and behold I see him sleeping in his bed.

“Yo Naz, there’s a session starting soon…and lunch is right after. You gonna get up?”
*grunt*
“Arrighty…”
Meh I tried.

We tried tightening up the rules for the younger kids. The older kids like Naz and Sam we didn’t care what they did. It seemed that councellors like Noodles and Sid were the ones to give us the hard time…they were the ones we had to pretend to keep our eye on as they too were on the verge of doing something crazy.

The Balloon Hand.

As darkness came on the last night, we decided to hold off until a later time for anything drastic. Our only goal was to smear shaving cream all over this small Egyptian kid in the neighbouring cabin. We decided to wait a bit. Guido, Spikes, Nipper and Noodles were all playing a boring card game…watching golf was probably more fun. Naz and I conversed amongst ourselves.

I decided to climb on the top of my bunk bed and watch the card game from there. Perhaps a bird’s eye view would have been interesting. I looked down at my left hand and noticed that it was nearly double the size of my right hand. It looked like a hand-shaped balloon.

I decided to show the guys my wonderful discovery:

“Hey guys…is this normal?”
Guido was the first to scream.
“What the hell is that!? That’s a helluva of a mosquito bite” he said.
“No, I don’t think that’s a mosquito bite. Mosquito bites don’t inflate your hand like that.” explained Guido.
“Dude, we have to go see the nurse.” said Naz.

So Naz volunteered to come with me to go visit the nurse about my clown-like hand. We talked to the security and they decided to escort us. Fadz and Big Kev were great guys. They did a bang-up job on security…although they didn’t have much to secure.

After a short walk we arrived at the nurse’s office.

“Hmmm the lights are on…but it’s locked” said Big Kev.
Big Kev gave a Big Knock on the door.
“Nobody is there I think…” I said.
“That is stupid,” explained Fadz, “this is a camp and a nurse must be here at all times.”

Fadz and Naz decided to take a look at the side. Fadz took a peak in a window and was startled and what he saw.

“What’s in the window? Can I see?” asked an innocent Naz.
Before Naz could take a gander, Fadz stopped him.
“No…let’s go back. There is no nurse.”
“But what’s in the wind-”
“We’re going back now.”

Naz noticed the windows were steamy. It didn’t take long to realize that the nurse and the campsite counsellor were “attempting” to make "another counsellor". We didn’t mean to disturb them but frig, I had a deformed hand. I needed help! But then again, I’m glad they didn’t touch my hand. Dirtiness.

The first prank ever.

So Naz and I decided to head back to our cabins. My hand wasn’t too bothersome, just a bit itchy. We joined the MYNA staff group and see what they up to. Some were too tired to pull any pranks and resumed their mind-numbingly boring card game. Naz and Sam were outraged and wanted to do some pranks this instant. Crazy ol’ Nipper wanted some action too so the three of them took some of my shaving cream and went to seek the little Egyptian kid, who was fast asleep in his cabin.

Now this was Nipper’s first time at doing these kind of pranks. He was obsessed with raiding the cabin that he was making sure he was going to do this correctly.

Nipper was asking a lot of questions, “Okay so we go in and raid them right? Raid? Right?”
“Yeah yeah whatever” replied Naz and Sam. They were concentrating on getting the door open stealthily.

Nipper for some reason, lead the way. He crept up the first step slowly…crept up the next one. Then out of nowhere he ran the last two, kicked the door open with full force and shouted “RAID!!!!!!!!!!!!” Naz and Sam looked at each other in a quizzical look. If question marks could make sounds then Naz and Sam made a flurry of them. They had no idea what just happened. Nipper just kicked the door open and shouted “RAID!” for some odd reason. What’s worse is that he went two steps inside the cabin, ran back out and dashed into the woods. Naz and Sam followed suit and hid somewhere else.

Naz and Sam were panting for breath in the woods somewhere. They were in hiding…making sure that security or the Egytpian kid’s counsellor won’t show up. Nipper later found Naz and Sam in the midst of the woods.

“What the hell is raid?!?” shouted Naz and Sam in unison.
“I uhhh… I dunno.”

So Naz and Sam were yelling at Nipper for awhile. The three headed back to the cabin and Sam wonderfully reinacted the “Raid” scene to all of us. Guido was itching for another go at the Egyptian kid. The entire MYNA staff agreed and the 8 of us, including our counsellor decided to take another stab at this kid.

The Return.

We could have went incognito but we didn’t care. We barged open the door the way Nipper did it. Guido shouted “RAID!!!!!!” for nostalgia purposes. The sleepy Egytpian kid stirred in his bed.

“What the…”
“Close the door!!! MOSQUITOS!” shouted his equally sleepy counsellor.
Apparently he was more worried about mosquitos than 7 guys running into his cabin with shaving cream, mugging one of his campers. After we finished smearing shaving cream all over the kid, we ran out and back into our cabin. ‘twas a huge adreniline rush.

“Dude, that was awesome” said Sam.
I could hardly utter anything. *gasp* *pant* *weeze*
“Yo, who heard me say raid? I’m the man” said Guido.
“I didn’t kick the door like that.” said Nipper.
“I don’t think I should have done that…I’m the camp organizer.” said Spikes.
“Let’s do another raid.” said Naz.
“Yo let’s do this again.” said our counsellor, Noodles.

Apparently when were in the midst of all this, Noodles came back to find his sleeping bag and all his possessions missing. Things were very suspicious. Nearly all of us suspected each other. We figured there was a mole amongst us… we went back to the shaving cream kid and asked him how he managed to steal Noodles’ possessions but he confessed it wasn’t him as he was in the washroom wiping off the aftermath.

So we had to interrogate people around 2 AM. We asked the security if they saw anything suspicious and they said they didn’t see anyone. Then we remembered the person who wanted to cause the most ruckus during camp but wasn’t there for the Raid… Counsellor Sid.

Sid was the wildcard. He was all about pranks but he was unusually quiet. He visited him in his cabin. Apparently he was “sleeping” but he awoke quite quickly.

“Oh hey guys. What’s up. Didn’t lose anything did you Noodles? You still have your sleeping bag right?”
Sid wasn’t good at being incognito.
“Okay…we know you took the stuff… where is it?” asked Noodles.
“What are you talking about…I’ve been *yawn* sleeping here the whole time”.

So yeah, we figured Sid has to be one of the worst liars of all-time. We later found all of Noodle’s stuff in a crevice underneath the cabin. I was getting tired of this late-night tomfoolery so I decided to hit the hay. I was afraid of sleeping on my left side because I was worried my hand would blow up if I put too much weight on it.

MYNA Camp 2002 was one the craziest camps I’ve been to. However, there is quite the story to be told about JDIP…another adventurous camp. Coming soon.

So the moral of the story is to not shout raid when you are sneaking into someone’s cabin.