Hi. I’m Leah Mesches, and I am the founder of the Champions Educational Foundation. I have worked in the camp world full-time since 2006, and found my home here at Camp Champions in 2009. But camp has always been a part of who I am. I attended day camp starting at 4 years old. I later spent my summers at a sleep-away camp as a camper, and then as a counselor and leadership member. I loved the experience. It helped me develop through a challenging phase of my life, and it also sustained me throughout the school year, even when things were great.

There is an inverse relationship between the comfort of a location and the quality of the blog it induces.

Today is less of a good-story blog and more of a journal with good photo blog. For those of you who have enjoyed reading about our missteps and gaffes will need to hope for some silliness tomorrow. 

Susie and I are wonderfully compatible in virtually every important way. We have similar interests and parenting philosophies. We both like art and the theater. Our favorite foods are similar enough to assure happy meals and variety.

We did not need that meal.

Part of the reason we came to Joburg was to visit Global Camps Africa "GCA", the camp created by one of my camping heroes, Phil Lilienthal. This camp offers 4 1-week sessions to children who have family members infected with HIV or AIDS.

Some experiences test the true mettle of a man.

As my uncle used to say, this blog “has nothing to do with the price of beans.” It is only thinly related to our current trip. But it describes an incident that happened on previous international travels when I was not blogging. I have wanted to document my idiocy, so here is a bonus blog from the bumbling Baskin.

No trip to South Africa is complete without spending some time studying the abomination that was Apartheid, the elaborate system of racial segregation and privilege that defined this multi-cultural nation.

Our expectations for Johannesburg were low. Everyone we talked to about South Africa had one of three comments when we said we were “going to Johannesburg and Cape Town”: