Camping and Transcultural Awareness

There is a lot more to camping than I had previously thought. Campers must be aware of the country code which consists of 10 rules for campers to be of no disturbance to the environment. Some of the rules such as leave no litter and avoid damaging fences, hedges and walls are expected. Keep to the paths across farm land is a strange rule to me but then again it explains why I never saw people camping on the main road lol.

I also thought that campers just pitched their tents in clear area and that was all there was to it. However, I learnt that camp sites must be selectively placed in areas where they are protected from the wind and areas that would not allow for large pools of water to be formed from a little rain. It was said that the camp site must always be facing the morning sun. I cannot remember the reason for this but I think it may act as an alarm clock for the campers to awake on mornings.

The Ghana crew and myself also had the opportunity to make a tripod camp fire. This fire uses three medium-large rocks as a base, hence the name tripod. We took our time and assembled the 3 levels of a fire which were;

1.     Kindle - the base level which consisted of very small flammable items such as small dried leaves and pieces of cardboard.
2.     Twigs - the second level.
3.     Wood - the third level.

Shane shared his experience in Ghana with us and it helped us to better understand transcultural awareness. The similarities and differences between Ghana and Trinidad and Tobago cultures. For instance Ghana has chiefs that are the overseers of different districts whereas Trinidad and Tobago have majors that do the same thing. Different titles but very similar responsibilities. He also encouraged us be open-minded and to not express ethnocentrism, whereby we view our culture as being better than other cultures.