Crafted from under the wing of its more influential brothers, skating and BMXing, comes the less-established but arguably more extreme sport of extreme unicycling. Unknown to the majority of the world’s sport fanatics, this dare-devil pass time is slowly gaining popularity amongst true admirers of the extreme.

The unicycle is often thought to have been derived from its historic and fairly pointless cousin, the penny-farthing. Curious penny-farthing owners would find that after being thrusted forward onto the front wheel of their contraptions, they could spare the luxury of a mediocre back wheel and complicated handlebars, and instead create what would prove to be the next generation of the unnecessary. But unicycling, a skill which is commonly linked to comedic circus acts and talented clowns, has proved it has a lot more to offer the world than entertaining viewers of the cirque de soleil. “Extreme unicycling is like getting a Christmas present wrapped in the same paper you always get, but the package is different.  It’s got everything skating and BMXing have to offer in terms of the dangers and skills of the sport, but it’s something different, it’s unique I think,” says Jason Auld, front-runner of Britain’s only unicycle trials groups, Voodoo Unicycles, and one of Britain’s elite unicyclists. The unicycle of course is not exactly a new innovation, being introduced to the world around the beginning of the 20^th century, but consistent alterations in the way this vehicle can be used have kept interested unicyclists keen over the years.

Variations in riding a unicycle seem to be as numerous as unicyclists themselves, with extreme unicycling on its own featuring street, trials, and mountain styles, with there even being room for unicycle hockey (UNIhoc) in the wide array of unicycle disciplines. But even with this variety, unicycling has historically failed to compete in the big leagues, and more specifically, failed to compete with the likes of skating and BMXing. Jason Auld believes there are a few reasons for this; “unicycling isn’t something you can just pick up and do, it will take you a few weeks to even be able to get up and ride in a straight line, but most people can already ride a bike or will have tried skating before.”

“Most people ride for enjoyment rather than money; if you just do it for the money then you’re doing the wrong thing!”

King of the hill

Although unicycling may be particularly difficult to pick up, it is obvious that all extreme sports have required extreme dedication over the years to get to the position they are currently at, and Jason assures us that even with a severe lack of money in the unicycling industry, unicyclists remain committed to making a name for not only themselves, but for the sport they love as well. “Most people ride for enjoyment rather than money; if you just do it for the money then you’re doing the wrong thing!” Jason went on to admit that it has been necessary for him and his team to make endless calls to big businesses like Red Bull and to the media, to get any kind of sponsorship or media attention; quite often with little success. “It really does seem to be a case of luck, I’ve been trying to get in touch with Red Bull for years now, even had meetings, but then it always ends up going nowhere. But then luckily, my friend is riding home on his unicycle one day, and someone from Red Bull stops him and talks to him. We’ll see where that one goes though.”

In terms of its price, unicycles come with a diverse price range, and can be bought for as little as £42 for a beginner’s unicycle.  So excessive pricing is not what hinders the sports success, but Jason suggests a lack of practicality may be a large obstacle for unicycling.  “Many people wouldn’t think of just picking up their unicycle and riding to work, or going down to the park and having a day in the sun with it, so I’d say you definitely either love it or hate it.”

Jason’s trials group, voodoo unicycles, acts as a sanctuary for upcoming and enthusiastic unicyclists to arrange meetings and shows, as well as to organise events across the UK. These gatherings allow unicyclists to mix with their counterparts and to discuss potential ideas for their sport, “we currently have 5 main guys, but we meet up with loads of different people who get in contact. We’ve appeared on ITV, Channel 5 and the BBC, but coverage is not always the best for us.” Voodoo unicycles is specifically a trials group that deals in demonstrations and publicity, and is currently Britain’s only one of its kind, but Jason admits that due to this lack of public attention, money can be a bit scarce; “this is currently my only job, and although money’s pretty good in the summer, when it’s cold and raining in the winter no one wants to stand outside and watch some guys on a unicycle, so it can get a bit tight at times.”

“Many people wouldn’t think of just picking up their unicycle and riding to work, or going down to the park and having a day in the sun with it, so I’d say you definitely either love it or hate it.”

The trial groups are known for their innovative new ways to try to attract new and upcoming riders to the sport, with the most recent example being The King of the Road competition, which they held for prospective unicyclists on February 19th and 20th 2011 in Stockton. The original KOTR contest takes 4 teams of pro skaters, gives them a book of challenges, and 2 weeks to travel across the country to complete as many tasks as they can, and is an annual event.

Jason told us the team at Voodoo Unicycles decided that bringing this to unicycling could, not only encourage more people to the sport, but also help Voodoo Unicycles cement their name as Britain’s top unicycling enthusiasts. The success of the event means that there are now plans of making this, like its skating counter-part, an annual event for upcoming unicyclists – information of which will be featured below.

So, it seems that even without the inflated wages of a footballer or without the consistent recognition from an admiring public, these determined unicyclists are committed to improving the sport they love, which is refreshing in a society where money and fame seem to be key aspirations for the current generation of ambitious youth. But at a time when this fascinating sport is doing all it can to get its name to the masses, what does Jason believe is next in its potentially glittering future? “In five years time I see extreme unicycling as hopefully something the masses know about, it’s taken 20 to 30 years for skating and BMXing to get where they are today, so I’m not unrealistic, but I’d like to be known for doing it.”

The King of the Road Contest:

The King of the Road contest takes four teams of pro skaters, gives them a book of challenges, and two weeks to travel across the country and complete as many goals as they can, and now Voodoo has brought it to Unicycling.
The contest will take place annually and happened in February of this year,  the details of next year’s event are to be confirmed.

The last event was a big one. There was no limit on the number of teams who could enter but each team had to have a minimum of 4 members and a maximum of 6. Teams completed a list of challenges, each worth points. Some challenges were skill related, others just pure lunacy and completely unrelated. The team with the most points at the end is crowned Voodoo Unicycles, King of the Road Champions! The winner has been confirmed and the videos can be viewed below.

Four teams took place:

Team Nosh
The People’s Champions
The Bosses
Team 1up

Here are the team’s videos and finishing positions:

1ST PLACE

2ND PLACE

3RD PLACE

4TH PLACE

5 of the 6 Voodoo Unicycles members were involved, 2 in Team Nosh, 2 in The People’s Champions and 1 in The Bosses. HERE is Voodoo Unicycle’s Showreel for 2010.

Check Voodoo Unicycles’ Facebook page for further information about competitions and events: Voodoo Unicycles

A day in the life of a Manny

The manny. What is manny you may ask? Good question. No it is not a convenient nickname for peoples of the world named Manuel or Manuella, a manny is something much more interesting and controversial. Let us look into its formidable history…

We will begin with a brief etymology of the beautiful word brought to you by Foogle Thesaurus:

 The word manny was coined around October 2010 by a very noble, intellectual and damn-right gorgeous male in Edinburgh, named Benjamin Zand. Whilst job-hunting across the vast realms of employment websites across the internet, this toned and legendary man stumbled upon a small website named GumTree. After getting over the original disappointment of the misleading name, he realised that its actual purpose might just be something more useful. The website allowed people to advertise anything they wanted, from used Cher CDs to, significantly for Mr Zand, potential jobs that were required across the land of Edinburger. After much searching and deliberation through the land of GumTree, Benjamin Zand decided to ignore the prospect of a successful escorting career and instead turn his attention to a more rewarding career, through an ad asking  for a ‘student or graduate with child-care experience’. As you may have guessed, here lies the route to the word that has taken the world by storm. Mr Zand, due to his penis and well-defined abdominals, labelled himself as a ‘male’. The job that was being advertised was asking for someone with ‘child-care experience’ also known as a nanny. In a moment of what could only ever be described as William Shakespeare-esque brilliance, Benjamin Zand decided to compound each of these words to create the phenomenon of the word, manny.

But what does a manny do?!

Apart from being a loving and caring male that is simply irresistible to the opposite sex, the life of a manny is not as easy as you may think. Despite its roles following that of its nannying comrade, the title of a manny tends to carry around a stigma unrivalled by its female counterpart. Many critics of the profession argue that being a manny is simply not men’s work, clearly ignoring the fact that the name primarily consists of the word, ‘man’. After speaking to the public though, it seems many of these arguments are reciprocated, with members of the public saying; “wearing an apron and making fairy cakes for children on a Friday night is not cool” and, “manny’s are ‘soccer-mums’, driving mini-vans and sucking penis”.

Due to these controversial viewpoints, I decided I would try to find a man who’s been in the profession himself to get a first-hand account of what life as a manny is like. After much searching I came across a man who called himself, SuperManny. SuperManny has been in the business for about 30 years, but has decided to keep his identity secret so “he doesn’t get ripped by the boys in footy”. SuperManny told us that he has often faced hostility from an unaccepting public, saying, “the worst is when I go to social events, as you do everyone introduces themselves to each other, but when I do things are different. There was this one time where I told a group of bankers that I was a manny. Before I knew it I was dressed as a baby and tied to a tree outside, it just wasn’t right!” He went on to say, “There was another occasion when I went to the butcher’s and asked for a leg of lamb, it was all going okay until we got chatting properly, after 5 minutes he asked me what I did, so I reluctantly told him. He then refused to sell me anything but cow penis because he said it’d be the only thing I’d enjoy.”

 SuperManny went on to tell me that he now refuses to speak about what he does for a living when talking to men, and has decided to grow a beard to look more rugged and dangerous. He ensured me though, that he does find solace in the success of the ultimate manny, Benjamin Zand, ‘he’s just so awesome, despite being a manny, the combination of his Enrique Iglesias like face and chizzled exterior mean that he’d never face these hardships. He is my idol’. Despite these problems, SuperManny insisted that he is more than happy to discuss his career-choice with woman, claiming that ‘getting clunge these days is easier than taking candy off a baby – and I’d know about that!’

It seems the life of a manny is a difficult one, one in which prejudice and discrimination become more common than porridge for breakfast. And, it appears, unless you can handle this, or have the god-like features of Benjamin Zand, it may be a career-path that is better off avoided!

The Happier Times

By Benjamin Zand

Hitch-hiking may not be the most glamorous way to travel, but its price tag definitely is! Believe it or not, this sketchy travel experience was once more common than you may think. Hitch-hiking today is seen by many as nothing more than a terrifying travelling experience one would only ever encounter on the big screen, but can it still be done? It is largely taboo in the UK, and the thought of picking a random stranger up off the corner of a dark street in today’s society would probably be considered a felony in many parts of the country! But is it possible to get people past the idea of bloody murderers and strange passengers, and convince them to give their fellow human beings a helping hand? Maybe it is the not-so-happy endings many have witnessed on their TV screens, or maybe it is just that not enough of us try it, but on a fairly dismal day in January 2011, I found myself with no other choice but to find out.

It was a Friday morning in Edinburgh, and I and my two American friends had just missed our train to London. Due to a mysterious, synchronized fault in all of our alarms, we had slept right through our 06:00am train, and we were now left with the not-so-attractive fates of either paying the extortionate price for another train ticket, or finding a cheaper, less pricey option which would enable us catch our plane the following morning. After much deliberating and suggestions of walking, running, flying, back-flipping, canoeing and cow riding, my friend comically suggested we hitch-hike. ‘Good idea’ I told him, ‘why don’t we also go to Texas and find a friendly guy wearing a mask and a chainsaw?!’ But after my hilarious attempt at comedy didn’t go down too well, we thought why not? It would be virtually free, and it would be an awesome adventure! But how?

We attempted to gather the basics; a sign. A good one, one that not only enticed passersby to read, but also to open their hearts, whilst simultaneously reassuring them we were not free-lance rapists looking for our newest prey. So, we did the most logical thing possible, we got a mangled up piece of cardboard, wrote a completely untrue message stating that we were, ‘travelling down south to catch plane home’, and we decided to write it in completely unreadable pink highlighter so we could be that bit more adventurous.

Never did we consider that the sign would be unreadable. Pink, we thought, is a very prominent colour that is not only very noticeable, but also very reassuring. The cardboard might have been a bit messed up but what the hey, it made us look more desperate, and even though our card only stated that we were, ‘going down south’ and gave no reference to any specific location people could link themselves to, we were friendly looking guys and that didn’t matter! Oh how wrong we were.

We decided to go to a road connecting to a motorway to hold our formidable sign and fight off the crowds of long-distance journey makers we anticipated. This was a good decision we thought, people heading towards a motorway surely must plan on going somewhere far away. The only thing we did not consider though, is where the road was heading.  Due to the fact we wanted to travel down south, a road heading towards the north of Scotland probably wasn’t the best place to stand. Despite the large road-signs scattered nearby, the Scottish geographical ability of two Americans and a Liverpudlian just were not good enough to evaluate the situation properly. Two very cold and unwelcoming hours later, we realised, accompanied by the looks of hatred and confusion vetted on the faces of passersby, that maybe where we were standing wasn’t the best decision, but where else?

We decided to get a bus as far away as possible; simply on the basis that as a considerable amount of time had now elapsed, we desperately needed to make some progress. We found ourselves in Penicuik, a small town situated on the outskirts of Edinburgh, but not Edinburgh, so we had at least travelled somewhere. Things seemed a bit more optimistic, cars were not exactly stopping but they were at least slowing down and noticing our existence, even if it was only to mock us. Then… Success! Someone stopped, could this be it? Our moment of adventure? No. They simply asked us for directions, laughed and drove on. With a plane ride looming, and the idea of missing our plane being a lot more detrimental to our pockets than a pricey train ticket, we decided to call it a day.

With our newly developed colds and bruised egos, we returned to the train station disheartened and paid the £100 for the ticket, but we just could not accept hitch-hiking was impossible. But how is it that you stop people laughing at you, or being afraid of you?

After searching the deserted alcoves of Britain’s hitch-hiking scene, we discovered Britain’s finest low-budget travellers, and asked them for their list of must-dos when going on a hitch-hiking adventure:

• HAVE A GOOD SIGN! – This cannot be stressed more, it’s all good and well wanting someone to take you somewhere, but if they don’t know where you are going, or even if you are hitch-hiking, you have no chance. A sign can be anything from a beautifully carved wooden attraction, to a piece of a paper and a biro. Just make sure it is clear, and comprehensible.
• FIND A GOOD PLACE TO STAND – No matter how good you look, or how well your sign is laid out, if you’re standing in the Morrison’s at the end of your street, you are not going to get anywhere. Find a road that leads to where you’re going, and try to make sure it is busy and well-lit.
• LOOK NOTICABLE AND APPROACHABLE – This may sound a bit crazy, but yes, this is another one of those situations where you have to think about what you look like. Long gone are the days when a scruffy homeless man could jump into a random shmuck’s car and life was good. Try to look clean and happy, it may be difficult, especially if you are a student, but you can do it! Put simply, if you look like you are going to rape somebody, they will think you are going to rape them.
• TELL PEOPLE WHY YOU ARE HITCH-HIKING – Help to put people’s minds at ease by giving them your reasons for getting into their car, especially if you are doing it for a good cause, people love to feel as if they are doing something charitable.
• KNOW THE LAWS OF THE LAND: This may sound a bit strange, but if you are in a foreign country, make sure what you are doing is legal before you do anything. An expensive train journey will look like pocket change when handed a hefty fine for standing on a motorway you were not supposed to, or even worse, JAIL!
• TELL PEOPLE WHAT YOU ARE DOING: I know Indiana Jones may not constantly inform his mother about his latest adventurous plans, but the truth is, you are not Indiana Jones. Hitch-hiking can be a very dangerous experience if approached naively. Tell people where you are at all times, you do not want to be the latest star of hostel III.
• BE SMART WHEN CHOOSING RIDES: No-matter how bad your day is, or how long you have been standing in the cold, if someone looks suspicious, DO NOT GET IN. It’s all well and good wanting to get somewhere, but risking your life is not worth one silly car journey.

And finally,

• BE PREPARED TO FACE REJECTION: Do not be naive like me and my American friends and think hitch-hiking will be easy. These pointers will make things easier, but it is still something that is not expected in many countries, and definitely not common. Just be persistent and your time will come!

As a bailiff it is mandatory to be a master of the Martial Arts

Whilst patiently hibernating in my abandoned flat recently, awaiting the beautiful day I could simultaneously finish work and university, in effect travelling home and enjoying Christmas with my abnormal family, I began to realise my flat, my innocent harmless flat, had received a number of mysterious letters. Despite the fact none of these letters were addressed to me, and some weren’t even addressed to my absent flat-mates, simply stating, ‘the occupier’, I was encouraged by the daredevil in me to ignore morals and laws and take a cheeky little peak at what was inside. What a mistake this was. Not only was I met by a number of letters stating large sums of money that were owed by me and my flat mates to people for various, random, non-entertaining things such as council tax and bills, these letters also seemed to insinuate I was going to get hurt if we were not to pay.

Disregarding the fact that I am a student so I don’t have to pay council tax, the fact that we have tried to sort out our bills on a number of occasions, and also the fact that my university told me they would sort this out for me, I am a generally nice guy who is quite willing to comply with laws as getting anally raped in jail is not my cup of tea. But these letters were different, they seemed to contain a sense of aggression and dissatisfaction with life, as if the person that was writing the letter didn’t just know me personally, they also believed I had killed their family, not only this, they were abused violently as a child and wanted to take out all their resentment and anger on the first person to open the letter they had written.  I was told by this person that I would be getting a visit from bailiffs in the near future, and they had been granted a warrant by the Sheriff court in the trial I wasn’t aware of by the judge that never existed.

This was clearly a wise decision by the court, as this would mean that these resentful, abused, angry and committed bailiffs wouldn’t just be able to enter my humble abode and take their pick of what they were to find in there, they also had the opportunity to urinate on my clothes and punch pictures of me on the wall, something they would clearly be interested in doing.

Due to this, I decided to ring the people who sent me this friendly letter, and query as to why they wanted me dead, as maybe due to my rugged good looks I had been confused with Colin Farrell. I was met by a not-so friendly person, maybe even the unstable person who wrote the original letter, telling me that this was my fault as I should have sorted it out earlier. After explaining the situation, and listening to the operator presumably trying to intimidate me with his irregular breathing patterns, I was told he would grant me two bailiff-free weeks, to try to sort things out in hope that I wouldn’t be dead by this time, which he couldn’t assure would be the case.

After doing everything I was supposed to do, and spending a fearful week with only a knife and a baseball bat to accompany me in fear I would be getting a visit from Stone Cold Steve Austin, I also returned home to my family for Christmas, with only emotional turmoil and scars rather than physical ones. But on the train ride home from the execution waiting room my flat transformed into in the weeks prior to my return, I began to ask myself whether the aggression was necessary? Obviously in some cases, maybe where the suspect is a criminal mastermind posing as a student in an attempt to scam government; it may be necessary to intimidate them with force, but a student sitting alone in his extremely cold flat with only his huge biceps and 8-pack to keep him company? It is hard for me to see the justification.

It seems there are a few lessons I was meant to learn from this though; don’t open mail that hasn’t got your name on it, consider taking up martial arts, and of course, a baseball bat near the door has never harmed anybody.

Sanitary

After manoeuvring around my flat recently, observing the unusual manners of my animal-like, repulsive housemates, I decided it would be useful for me to try to evaluate what exactly makes the majority of students (except me) quite so revolting.

General habits and hobbies that were left behind with the average person’s childhood, such as an extreme disregard for hygiene, eating strange objects you find on the floor, and doing disgusting things ‘just because someone dared you to’ seem to be redeveloped during what I expertly like to call, ‘studenthood’. Although overwhelmingly prominent in the male species of the student entity, the female species is often equally as guilty – I myself have witnessed many a girl’s room that looked like a ransacked hostel for underprivileged pigs. Specific examples of these revolting students are consistent and easy to find, with the staple diet of these students being left over food situated on the floor, and milk, with favoured delicacies being dirty pints and urine. My housemate was recently given one of these dirty pints as a present for his birthday, this particular one containing a lot of spit, pubic hair, paprika, mayonnaise, pepper and wine, but did he hesitate in drinking it? No. Why? Because he is a student. Another of my friends told me of a story of how he earned an ‘easy’ £30 of his friend’s money just by downing a pint of urine. Did this phase him? No, he loved it! A more consistent example of disgusting acts by these creatures is their stance on leftover food. When there is old food leftover in my flat, despite its unholy greenness or terrible smell, do my fellow students hesitate in eating it? Of course not. But why exactly is this?

Many would claim it has something to do with a severe lack of money in the student world, and although this may be true in some cases, students’ budgets seem to be angled towards their seven night-a-week partying addiction, rather than showering or healthy eating. Many others would put this down to lack of education, and a legitimate lack of knowledge of what exactly hygiene is, claiming that students believe you are meant to eat dirty things of the floor and not clean up, as this is right in their warped sense of reality, many charities such as, ‘university’ have been created in a bid to resolve this issue.

Student expert and veteran student, Richard Thornton, believes in the more accepted view of students, and says, ‘it’s just funny isn’t it’, agreeing with many other academics on the subject. Getting a chance to witness a large gathering of students on my visit to Richard; the creatures laying in the corner of a room licking up the reminiscence of a spilt vodka bottle, I decided to shout them some questions, such as; why are you like this? And, do you hate cleanliness? But was only met by sounds of slurping and someone asking me if I had a burger.

I decided to try to find answers elsewhere, visiting many student hangouts in the city of Edinburgh, including night clubs, and pubs, to only be met by similar demands of burgers and alcohol by these unique creatures. Even when I decided to venture to a place these creatures where supposedly educated and trained, the institution earlier mentioned named, ‘university’, I found that many used this as a resting place and of those that were awake; they were eating, drinking, or being aggressive towards their trainers.

But just as my search for answers seemed to enter the uncomfortable path of shame and failure, I was given a life-line, an email from a random man named, TheStudentKilla. This man, who doesn’t want to be named for legal reasons, told me of another theory of studenthood, claiming that it is a disease picked up by many in a week often referred to as, fresher’s week. The disease can often be with the holders for the long-term, causing many side-effects, with examples being, extreme laziness and a large desire to ‘party’. He told me he was once affected, and he ‘got messy’ for 3 years, but was then saved by a ground-breaking therapy named, ‘getting a job’. This therapy involved him getting up consistently early each morning, to go and fulfil a number of tasks throughout the day in an effort to gain money. TheStudentKilla admits it was difficult to adapt to at first, and he often has the urge to go and ‘murder a dzirty kebab’, but he believes he is a better man from the therapy, and plans to enforce the therapy on the unsuspecting student world.

What exactly it is that makes students so revolting is unclear as of yet, but it is clear the pandemic is on the rise. Students can be found all over the UK in a number of different locations, often featuring bad smells and fornication, and their habitual tendencies are easy to distinguish from those of any normal human being. One thing that is safe to say though, is that these students are hard-work, and if you find yourself getting one for Christmas, it is essential you know what is in store with these beasts, and that with their relatively long life span, it is definitely a life-long commitment.

Day in the Life

Many say camp is like a bubble; a good simile being, ‘like the bubble you find on your leg after you have been gang raped in the night by a group of chiggers’, a ‘chigger’ being a rather disturbing little creature that burrows itself into your skin without you knowing, then slowly dies for 16 hours after realising what a terrible mistake it had made. Camp is though, definitely another world. Normal time slowly transforms into, ‘camp time’, which is the same as normal time just around 4 minutes ahead, global current affairs gradually convert into counsellors and their affairs, camp gossip being the main form of entertainment whilst you are cooped up in this bubble that is life, and finally the actual troubles and concerns you once had in your meaningful life, eventually mature into petty troubles, of a child using the word ‘damn’ or your boss putting a particularly insane child into your cabin.

Being a camp counsellor in particular requires a special breed; as many will tell you it requires a very enthusiastic, caring and friendly character, who can handle the responsibilities of having 10 or more children in their care for long hours of a day whilst still maintaining a gleaming smile on their rapidly ageing face. But many do not know of the main traits required at camp, can you perform unbelievably hard tasks all day long without an adequate pay check to match these tasks? If so, then camp is the way for you. Can you not only remember, but still manage to scream to throat damagingly loud levels of enthusiasm, a song you have listened to every single day since camp began three months ago, after another ridiculously tiring day in the bubble? Once again, if you can genuinely do this then camp is for you.

The trouble for many is that they do not know what they can do, I was the same, before I went to camp I was practically dying my whole wardrobe of pantaloons brown with the amount of poo being generated from my anus. What did they expect of me? Due to me teaching sports over in America, was I to teach them phenomenal skills to the standards of Real Madrid? Or were they just there to have fun? Could I actually take care of kids? And would they be watching every single thing I did 100% of the time? In this sense though, camp was pretty, dare I say it, simple. The activities in no way had to be professional, you could pretty much teach ballet in a soccer class and get away with it, in fact I’m pretty sure I saw it done, but as long as it looked like you were doing something then it was fine. Your cabins were not under constant scrutiny, you were pretty much free with your co-counsellor to run the cabin in what way you saw fitting and appropriate, bearing in mind taking care of a constant array of new kids 24/7, is a lot easier said than done.

I realised though that camp was a rather personal place, a place that truly enforced the, ‘you get as much as you put in’ phrase. The supervision was fairly lacklustre, and some counsellors were often punished for simple things, and then totally free to do ridiculous things. But camp was definitely a place that if you tried a lot in everything you did, you’d get a lot from it. I am not the usual guy to believe in these things but I realised that if I did try, things went pretty well, kids were happy, and the activities I was teaching or eventually supervising would run fine. A fellow counsellor of mine summed it up well, or it may have been me, I can’t remember as my camp memories feel to have taken place so long ago, ‘at camp you are either the happiest you have ever been, or the worst you have ever been’. Something I could not agree with more, but from it realised that life is definitely a lot more enjoyable being happy. Waking the reluctant kids up at 7 in the morning, singing songs constantly throughout the day, and trying to get a group of 10 hormonal, bickering boys to clean their dishes after dinner, seems a lot more simple when your mind is at ease with this crazy land you find yourself set upon.

Obviously though, every camp is different, and even within camp everyone has a different role. My camp had crew skippers and specialists, and then people higher than them with confusing titles I will spare you from. Your relationship with crew skippers and specialists is confusing, and will change throughout the course of camp, these people will often be returnees and will know, and ensure you know, that they know nearly everything there is to know about camp. I found that the relationship is often more professional at the start (strict discussions about how to correctly write a camper’s bunk note), then extremely friendly towards the end (strict discussions about how much vodka to buy on your next night off).

Free time, especially in my camp, was few in far between, and camp is a place where it essential you learn how to enjoy yourself when you are off. For me, and basically every other person in camp, time off was what kept me going for my three months at camp. In my camp I had 1 day and 1 night off every two weeks, and then a change-over weekend, and although you may be sitting there realising you have masturbated for longer periods than that, time seems to slow down at camp, and you gradually learn to transform this depressingly short 1 day and night  into a refreshing 1 year and 1 month. You also get things called, rove and fiesta, fiesta being a blessing and rove being a horrible spot on the end of your nose that gets infected and turns green. Fiesta is an occasional hour off in the middle of the day where the kids do their own thing, and you can chill for an hour by yourself, and rove means you having to pointlessly sit on a chair outside in the pitch black getting eaten by various different poisonous creatures, and on the good days, eating something yourself.

One of the good times

Despite all this though, I definitely gained a lot from camp. I learnt bed bugs were not only real, but that human flesh was a delicacy in their world, and they did their best to eat as much of it when it was available, I learnt Americans pretty much believe there is only one country in the world, and those that know better think England is next to Australia, and I learnt working with kids is pretty enjoyable. For me the hardest thing was coming to terms with having to be responsible all the time, and occasionally having to deal with extremely  insane children – I once had a child who would fall to the floor screaming and punching himself in the face, whilst simultaneously pooing his pants. But I believe I am now a better man for it, and shall never see another job as hard in relation to this ever again.

I also had some pretty amazing times at camp. I accomplished my wish of wanting to go to America, I saw over 7 different cities in the space of 2 weeks with stories I can tell for a lifetime, and I made some phenomenal friends I will keep close to me forever whilst actually helping and having a great time with some of the nicest kids you will meet.

In summary, Camp America is definitely made for a specific type of person, and due to the fact that during my experience I saw people break down, and people who frankly shouldn’t have been there, I realise some people are not made to do this job. But if you are considering whether you should go to camp, and have read everything I have written without worrying too much, then apply right now and do it. You won’t know what will happen until you’ve tried it so take the risk and if you end up intoxicated, urinating on a child in the middle of the night like I was told by my friendly Camp America representative, at least you tried. Maybe look for another company than Camp America though, as the main thing that reduced me to sleeping in cinemas during my travel period at the end of camp was them taking a huge cut of my profits!

Good luck

By Benjamin Zand

As an adventurous young boy, who’d been looking forward to the prospect of moving away from home and becoming independent for what seemed like centuries, the start of my student life did not really go as I expected. I had decided to move to Edinburgh –  the idea of moving to a city as historical and picturesque as this, combined with living in the Zion of party destinations that is student halls, made it hard for me to imagine a better place to begin my life as a student.

So whilst I merrily finalised my application for student accommodation, paying the necessary, yet completely stupendous, £800 advanced payment fee, life seemed good. After receiving my confirmation letter, stating that ‘my application had been successful’ I set out for farewell weekend with my friends at the unforgettable Leeds Festival.

Upon my return, smelling like the breath of an 89 year-old man after a visit to an all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant, I decided to check my e-mails. Whilst looking at the uncountable exciting ‘98 for 1 DRINKS FOR ALL STUDENTS’ e-mails I had been receiving since signing myself up for every student website I possibly could, there lay, nestled between these dreams of numerous unforgettable nights out with my peers, a not so enjoyable e-mail. An e-mail telling me how the university had somehow ‘overbooked’ the accommodation and that I would now be staying in ‘temporary accommodation’. Not only that, the temporary accommodation would be a nursing home, a nursing home without a fridge, any sort of self-catering abilities and most importantly of all, the expected scent of death.

After a few calls to my university’s accommodation office, being asked the ridiculous question of whether I wished to take up the offer of the temporary accommodation – what other option did I possibly have – I decided to take up the proposal.

Upon arrival to my university, I was told that my stay in the home would only be around 3 weeks, and after this they would have successfully found me a place in student halls, allowing me to finally complete my transition into being a true party-animal. This though, following the path of most things in my life, did not go at all as planned.

I spent around 4 weeks in the nursing home, a time that consisted of pot-noodles, stair-lifts and a smell formed from the combination of old people, dirty students, and cheese – one that I will truly never forget.  During this time I had the honour of meeting some genuinely interesting people, and some strangely interesting people – the type who think it is necessary to plant a great big anus-burger in the nearest-to-me staircase the building featured.

I don’t deny I had some good times: my constant ability to mock the shocking realness of how bad my life was at this point, the chat-up line of, ‘have you ever made babies on a stair-lift’, and the fact that the university allowed us to stay rent-free and offered us free-meal passes – the only noble act of the devils that were the Napier student accommodation team.

But there were also the bad times, the very bad times: most notably, the university’s choice of ladies – opting to pick possibly the most unattractive bunch of women they humanly could in an attempt to dishearten us even further. We also had an intimidating run-in with the law after the nursing home was trashed and vandalised prior to our eviction from the premises due to our prolonged stay, last but not least though, is the fact that the university never actually found us a place in halls after all, even with the aid of their seemingly flawless method of picking people at random to fill the empty accommodation spaces, they had failed us in their promise of providing a platform to the real student life.

Despite this large blip in my university life though, things turned out reasonably well. I learnt a few vital things: the staff of my university’s accommodation sector are possibly the most useless people ever, and that it is impossible to swallow a spoonful of cinnamon without choking for long periods of time. I also made a lot of good friends during my stretch in the prison that was ‘the home’, 7 of them accompanying  me into a 10 bedroom flat which featured a few more memories that I am sure I will  speak about on a different day.

The most valuable thing I feel I earned though, is my new-found knowledge of the layout of a nursing home, something I believe will become increasingly useful as I grow and my children learn to despise me enough to send me to one of these depressingly morbid places.

Image courtesy of Klein Pictures

By Benjamin Zand

A Hollywood star gives an African community a batch of mosquito nets for free, and the community is protected against mosquito bites. But what happens to the local business man that sells these same nets and can no longer make money to support his family?

A US charity sends out huge supplies of American-grown food each year to help African communities in a bid to help the poor put food on the table, but what happens to the African farmers whose now American-import-flooded-market leaves them with no one left to sell to?

Over the past 60 years at least £700 billion ($1 trillion) of development-related aid has been transferred from wealthier countries to Africa, but despite this fact, Africa’s economy has only worsened and poverty increased. Shockingly, between 1970 and 1998, when aid flows to Africa were at their peak, poverty in Africa rose from 11% to a staggering 66%.

Equally as worrying, much of the aid donated by foreign countries is intercepted by corrupt governments or by rogue Africans wishing to seize control of the donated goods business. As recently as 2002, the African Union, an organization of African nations, estimated that corruption was costing the continent £100 billion a year. Worse still, ‘pitiful’ international donors appear relatively content to keep supplying aid, despite often knowing there is a high chance it will not serve the purpose it is set out to achieve.

This argument is only supported by the real-life examples that have increasingly plagued Africa since aid began circulating from Western countries to Africa over 70 years ago. According to corruption watchdog agency, Transparency International, Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire’s president from 1965 to 1997, is reputed to have stolen at least £3.5 billion from his country and his people. Malawi’s former President Bakili Muluzi is yet another one of many that has been guilty of embezzling aid money, in this case the amount being worth £8 million.

As Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo discusses in her book, Dead Aid, supplying aid to Africa has become a staple topic in the foreign-policies of today’s Western nations, and in the speeches and minds of a generation of movie and pop stars. Moyo discusses how the world seems to hold an unspoken, untrusting view of Africa, ‘The largely unspoken and insidious view that the problem with Africa is Africans – that culturally, mentally and physically Africans are innately different. That, somehow, deeply embedded in their psyche is an inability to embrace development and improve their own lot in life without guidance and help.’

Many also believe that due to the constant influx of foreign aid making its way into African lands, people have not been allowed to create their own businesses, make their own mistakes, and ultimately find out what works in their particular community and what does not.

The aims of an African charity organisation are clear: reduce poverty, improve the economy, school systems and health of African countries, and to see an end to the relentless wars and corrupt governments that infect Africa’s astonishing landscape. But despite an occasional aid-related success in an African nation, things predominantly appear to be deteriorating in the land of 1000 faces, and it seems questions need to be asked about the efficiency of the aid industry.

But what could be done that would effectively compensate the departure of foreign aid, in a land that has come to rely so dangerously on it? Many believe the answer is Microfinance. Microfinance is the idea of operating small community-run banks in low-income African communities, giving these communities the opportunity to obtain small loans, typically under £65, with considerably low-interest rates. This would create an incentive for poorer Africans to buy their own tools, or to obtain the equipment to make their own tools and potentially instigate their own business. This would effectively generate considerably more small businesses in Africa; creating more jobs and allowing poorer Africans to have a regular, good-sized income, instead of relying on inconsistent handouts or dangerous jobs.

Money loaning though is by no means a new thing in Africa, with potential lenders being prominent across the content. The main problems that exist are the extortionate and inconsistent interest rates that people are often forced into paying. In an analysis of 28 studies of informal money lending rates in 14 countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa, it was concluded that 76% of money-lender rates exceed 10% per month, including 22% that exceeded 100% per month, resulting in huge problems for Africans planning on establishing a business.

Many argue though, whether the idea of introducing opportunities for Africans to increase their money woes is a palpable one in terms of the future of Africa, especially in the current economic climate. Economist Dambisa Moyo, though, welcomes the idea, and believes money from foreign aid should be funnelled into microfinance.

The idea of microfinance was created by Nobel Peace Prize winner and Bangladeshi economist Professor Muhammad Yunus, originally with huge acclaim, but critics now argue that the idea of micro-financing is in danger of being oversold. Also, because the loans are often repaid by villagers banding together in loan clubs, this has led to accusations that some of the poor can come under peer pressure to repay the money they owe when times are difficult.

Ultimately, Moyo believes the true solution for the poorer regions of Africa lies within investing in bonds and the sale of African produce on a global market, mentioning that working more closely with China would be a push in the right direction.

The question of whether foreign aid has restricted Africa’s ability to grow remains a tricky one. While it is true that foreign aid plays an important role in providing a life-line to desperate communities, it is clear that such aid can hamstring Africa’s development by denying Africans the ability to take their destiny into their own hands, and eventually build their own path to prosperity.