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Dear readers,
Been at camp 5 days now and it has been a while since I have updated. The days feel like they go forever but there is not much resting. They are definitely always filled with activities.
Matty and Jaymes arrived on Monday and so did a lot of other international staff. The american staff mainly arrived on tuesday. There is a huge group of staff members. Around 120 I think. There are a lot of Kiwi's and Aussies.
On Day 2 of camp we had what can only be described as a tragedy. A 19 Year old Nik from the Netherlands passed away. He was a professional Waterpolo player and went to the pool for an early morning swim. The pool was closed and there was no one watching him. No one even really knew he was down there. Jaymes was the last person to see him and said good morning to him as he left the bunk. He was sleeping opposite me and I remember waking up and thinking "Who was sleeping there again? And I wonder where they are".
After breakfast I had to go to a meeting down at the pool, I though I would go a little early and maybe do some laps. As I was walking down the staircase to the pool, someone came running towards me yelling get some help get some help. Not knowing where to go to get help I said that he should get some help and I will go down and assist with whatever was happening.
I ran down the stairs not knowing what had happened. The stairs seemed to take an eternity to get down. I remeber thinking that it could be a joke or some team sort of team building activity. But when I got to the side of the pool I could see one of the other lifeguards "Superman" holding Someone in the pool. I will never forget the look on his face, without saying anything his face told me that the situation was not good. From here I think I just went into autodrive. I still wasn't sure what had happened but I could tell he was definietly unconscios and probably not breathing. I pulled him out of the pool and Super and I began doing CPR. Out of nowhere some more equipment arrived and we had some oxygen and a defrib. We did CPR for around 20 minutes until paramedics arrived. It seemed like forever and when they arrived there must have been around 8 of them. At one stage I was even yelling orders at the boss of the camp who was assisting me with giving the breaths.
They took him away and he was later pronounced dead. As it turns out he had an epileptic fit and then obviously drowned. He would have been in the water over an hour, so we had no hope of resuscitating him.
The owner of the camp later told all the counsellors what had happened and called him a different name and said he was from New York. This really gave me the s***s. One of the leaders said we were going to have some sort of memorial for him. But it seems like life just has to go on. Which I can understand is important for the camp but I don't feel like we have truely shown respect for what happened.
Like I said this even can only be described as a tragedy and it has deeply affected me. I'm not beating myself up about it and I'm not really depressed but it is a lesson learnt and a valuable one. I think a lot about his family and a lot about mine.
I'm not sure why I felt the need to write this on here I guess I set this up so that I could share my experiences with people and this event is definetly a big part of my experience. I guess I also wrote it to share some of the lessons that I have learnt from it. That you don't know what life will throw you and you dont know when it will end and that you should make the most of every day. I also learnt about the importance of lifeguarding and that even though someone is a professional swimmer accidents can happen. So perhaps this is a lesson for some of the poolies out there to learn from.
I've written stacks so I'll leave it there pretty keen to sleep it is after 12 and we are supposed to be in bed by 1215. Hope all is well back home! Pretty keen to hear from people so feel free to email me.
Will try and write again soon. Also some football scores from the weekend will be greatly appreciated...
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