I would like to start off with saying that once I joined the scout movement, it has
taken over my life and changed it for the better. Most of my free time has
been taken up by scouting activities and basically it is the only thing I talk about
that is not school related. Also out of the friends I have made in my life I see
my scout friends as the ones that will most probably stay with me for a long time.
I am going to describe the scout movement as how I have experienced and
observed it, as a scout from 1st Claremont. This is not a standard for South
African scouting or even scouting in Cape Town as every troop is run differently.
Each troop has a bunch of small groups or cliques made up of 6-8 people which
we call a patrol. In these patrols we have a PL and APL which is a patrol leader
and an assistant patrol leader, and in my opinion this is the best place to see
youth leadership in action. These small patrols conform to the need for group
belonging and encourage patrol pride. At 1st Claremont we have an inter-patrol
competition called MOSCIP.
The South African Scout Movement has its own advancement programme with four
levels: Traveller, Discoverer, First Class and then Springbok, with each level
increasing in difficulty and decreasing the reliance on other people to teach and
pass skills, to running your own activities. The Springbok level is the highest
award that a scout can achieve, sort of like Gold President’s Award, but harder.
In each level there are six sub-categories which are Adventure, Safety
awareness, Living outdoors, Service, Scout skills and Personal development.
Once one completes a sub-category one gets a badge and I assume that this is
there to encourage people to advance due to the satisfaction of getting a
badge, but it makes us look like cubs.
The sub-categories have a general theme behind them. Adventure’s theme is
hiking and generally activities take place away from the hall. Safety
awareness is about safety, Living outdoors is about camping, Scout skills is
about knots and lashings, and first aid, Personal development is about developing
yourself as a person and your leadership abilities, and Service is about service to
the movement and service to the community. That means that we do community service. I have taken part in campsite constructions, playground construction, improving an old age home, making food for U-turn and even crocheted octopuses for premature babies. I have also run community service. For my first class I ran beach clean-ups and hacks in
Constantia Neck, and most recently I ran 40 hours of alien removal and a little
bit of replanting sour figs.
Outside of the advancement programme we also have competitions that scouts
take part in, in teams formed within a troop. These competitions are regional
and therefore are different throughout the country (if they have them). We
have a standing camp competition called Gordon’s Shield and it is overnight and
tests general scout skills. There are also two hiking competitions: Upton Shield – a day
hike for junior scouts – and Rayner Trophy – an overnight hike for seniors.
These are the core competitions that my troop enters and for the last two
years we have won Rayner and Gordon’s Shield and this year our juniors came
second in Upton. There are other competitions such as Kontiki – a raft building
competition that takes place over a weekend at Zandvlei – and the orienteering and
Quinn Trophy but our troop does not prioritise these.
1st Claremont is a very active troop as we run a lot of activities outside of
Thursday meetings. We hike a lot, run camps, construction projects and our
favourite – an annual campfire. This suggests that there is a lot of stuff that
the adults have to run but a number of the activities are also planned, organised
and run by scouts. By running activities such as camps and hikes, scouts learns incredible life skills such as how to communicate with WhatsApp. This is very specific to my brother and I as we don’t have WhatsApp. It does get frustrating a times because not
everyone looks at their emails, let alone answers them. This problem of mine has
also taught me how to phone someone. I can now phone someone without trying
to bargain my way out. I have also learnt how to cater for events such as a camp
and just simply how to run an event smoothly. A lot of these life lessons I have
learnt aren’t actually conscious to me and I would have to think about them for a
while before identifying them because they just come naturally to me now.
That’s all from me now. I hope it gave you new insight into the scout movement
and thank you to listening to me.
