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KAMAS — At the YMCA’s Camp Roger, nestled in the lush Uinta Mountains, kids learn archery, arts and crafts and camp songs, eat s’mores and live in log cabins. It’s a pretty traditional American summer camp.
Listen to the conversations around the campfire, though, and you might think you’re in Dublin, or Manchester or Bogotá. That’s because Camp Roger, like many summer camps, can’t recruit enough young Americans to be camp counselors, so they hire from all over the world.
This summer about half the staff is from another country — England, Ireland, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Germany and the Czech Republic.
“My name is Trish. I am Irish. I don't eat fish and my hair goes to swish,” chants head counselor Trish O’Beirne at a lively mess hall breakfast.
A Dublin college student studying history and geography, O’Beirne’s spending her third summer at Camp Roger.
“I don't know, maybe it's because of how much American culture we’re exposed to in England and Ireland, I just really want to see what it was like to be here,” O'Beirne said.
This year, O’Beirne was in charge of organizing the camp’s 4th of July celebration.
“It's just funny because I'm Irish organizing American independence celebrations at camp,” she said.
His first year at camp, head counselor Jesus Alberto Castaño, a linguistics student from Colombia, wasn’t prepared for the comical camp songs and chants, skits and costumes — behavior he says he didn’t see back home in Bogotá.
"The first time we were like, ‘What's going on here? Why are these people being goofy? What did I get myself into?’” Castaño said. “But after a few weeks, you just get along. You get to enjoy those dynamics and they become a part of your life.
“I can be whoever I want to be here,” Castaño said. “If I want to shave my head as I did last year, I'll just do it. It'll be fine, but back home, I don't feel like I can do it.”
The result of having an international staff, the counselors say, is a camp that’s not quite as isolated from the rest of the world.
“When you have a camp with 12 different cultures, it makes it so much bigger and has so much more impact,” O'Beirne said. “You're in no (internet) service, you have no Wi-Fi, but yet you have so many connections all over the world."
