Baca Befriending Event Report

2007-06-19

Baca Befriending event : Arches Adventure Base

On a slightly damp Tuesday night, I got the chance to blur my 1 day a week role with Baca and my outdoor pursuits job and welcome 5 Baca volunteers and 5 young forced migrants to my work place in Nottingham, The Arches Adventure Base.  Way back in February, we looked forward to the summer and booked a canoeing session as a chance for some Baca volunteers to get to know some of the many young lads we work with from around the world. Imagining the warm sun setting over the beautiful river Trent, 5 people signed up for it at our first Awareness Raising event, “We’re all going on an asylum holiday”.

Sadly, due to the ridiculous rainfall this June, the river was flowing too fast to allow beginners to safely mess about in boats, so we met up anyway and tackled some of the land based activities on offer instead.

So these 10 lads and ladies (from hereon known as “The team” because that’s what they were) set to on some warm up challenges.

Firstly a trust exercise known as tram lines, where 2 people at a time have to balance on 2 ropes and edge their way carefully across to the other side without falling off. It was great to see a mix of cultures, ages and genders relying on each other to succeed at this, totally supporting each other and taking any extra challenges thrown in too.

The team was gelling well, so the beam was quickly polished off to allow us to have a go at the Big Wall. At least 12 feet high, the Big Wall is reserved only for the best teams that show promise and good, safe teamwork at the less severe challenges. Even Team Baca needed a good plan to get 10 people over this formidable obstacle and one was soon formed which involved human pyramids, dangling by feet and lots of red faced huffing, puffing, pushing and pulling until James Willott was finally pulled over the lip by all 8 other members, cheering over the sound of his straining clothing seams.

 Now fully a team, we headed to the Bridge Swing, which involves climbing 10 metres up a thin ladder, then launching yourself out over the river Trent, suspended from the bridge by a climbing rope attached to a harness around your middle. Even though more of an individual challenge, there was great team morale as each person left the nervous queue and was cheered and encouraged to perform ever weirder aerobatics whilst gliding like some multicutural Peter Pan show, over the flowing waters.

 Our 2 hours were over and a great night was complete. Loads of fun but really significant too, with new people meeting, trying new things and learning loads about each other. We’re all looking forward to the next one and I’m sure we’ll need volunteers to come along, so let us know what sort of things you’d be up for.