FAMSY Anglesea Camp 2009

Things change a lot in one year. This time last year, my otherwise boring holidays were interrupted by a phone call from a friend, trying to convince me to join him for the FAMSY camp in Anglesea. Having never been to FAMSY camp before, I didn’t know what to expect but decided to go along with my friend’s recommendation. One year later, and I was the one doing the recommending. I was looking forward to catching up with all the new people I had met in 2008, and to spend 3 days eating great food, playing lots of sport, and increasing our iman which inevitably goes down over exam periods.

Arriving at ICV early on Friday morning (8:30am being very early for summer break), I realized that there were many new faces joining us for the camp. Their first surprise was that our very first activity would be a two hour hike to the campsite. There were grumbles and complaints as the buses left us at the start of the walking track and drove off, but they soon disappeared as we took in the views of the beaches and the ocean along the way. Arriving at the campsite, we prayed then tucked in to a well deserved lunch. One thing we learned at camp was that young men can have huge appetites.

Along with the great food that we had over the three days, the YMCA campsite in Anglesea has a wide range of activities and sports facilities available, and we certainly made the most of them. Aside from the hours of soccer, basketball and table tennis that we played, the camp leaders had organised for us special activities such as high ropes, archery and canoeing (which suprisingly did not end up with everyone in the water as it usually does). There was much fun to be had and many rivalries developed, and it was inspiring to see everyone showing Islamic qualities of kindness, generosity and brotherhood throughout everything that we did.

The camp leaders also had a surprise in store for us that would test our creativity; as teams we were given 30 minutes to prepare a comedy sketch on one of 3 zany topics. Chaos and hilarity ensued as each of the teams had their turn on stage. Everyone was surprised and impressed by the level of creativity displayed.

Not to be overlooked of course was the spiritual component of the camp. Two hour long workshops were given on Time Management and Quran memorization by brother Amr Foda. They proved to be a great choice of topics which we all found useful and interesting, and which provoked some thoughtful responses from everyone. These sessions were followed in the evening with a talk by brother Muhammad Helmy on loving the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), which was very moving and definitely increased everyone’s Iman.

At the end of the third day, we boarded the buses feeling tired but very happy, and already we were discussing our plans for next year’s camp with our new friends that we had made. We would like to thank the organisers of the camp who made it such and enjoyable time, we can imagine how much work they had to put in to make everything run so smoothly. I highly recommend FAMSY camp to anyone who wants to relax and have some fun during the summer break!

Amir Zayegh