Scout Camp

All of my brothers and sisters were scouts.  I remember them doing projects and activities to earn the various badges, and then our mom or they themselves would sew them on their uniforms.  I was the lone hold out, and I can’t remember why it was that I didn’t join.  I have vague memories of going to a couple meetings, but that’s it. 

In any event, never having been a scout and therefore having no concrete idea of what scout camps are like, when I was invited to go on the 6^th grade scout camping trip, I accepted solely on the basis of being told that it was a lot of fun.  And indeed, a rollicking good time was had by all.  The trip involved scouts from 8 schools in the area, a total of around 300 kids give or take, and probably about 50-60 teachers.  The location was a campground on a lake about a 20-minute drive away from our school.

As usual, I could discern little or no organization in how people, equipment, and supplies were loaded into the back of a caravan of pick-up trucks, but also as usual, whether by magic or happy coincidence or principles of organization to subtle for my faculties of perception, everything and everyone made it to the camp site “on time”.  Admittedly, this did involve my co-teacher asking directions along the way and at one point being presented with three conflicting possibilities, as well as multiple phone calls between her and various other teachers from our school.

Over the course of the camp I was repeatedly asked if I was cold.  The Thais were all bundled up in jackets, sweaters, and scarves and still shivered and commented on how cold it was.  One of the teachers from my school wore a knitted sweater with a furry hood throughout and was jokingly referred to as “the Eskimo.”  So how cold was it?  The low at night was in the upper 50s.  Mornings were in the upper 60s, but in the shade when the wind was blowing it probably felt more like lower 60s.  I’ll admit that it was the tiniest bit nippy in the tent at night, and I was glad of the loan of a light blanket from one of the teachers, but after 11 straight months of 90-100+ temperatures I welcomed the slight chill in shorts and t-shirts.

Scouts are called tiger cubs in Thai, and to kick things off, all of the scouts had to crawl through the mouth of a tiger and a 20 foot-long tunnel behind it which had been filled with rocks, sticks, leaves, and red ants.  (See pictures on Facebook.)  Meanwhile, some teachers yelled and beat on the top of the tunnel, while others played drums and cycled through a large repertoire of scout songs.  (It can take some time for 300 kids to crawl through, especially if some of them are almost too big to fit into the tunnel.)

The scouts pitched tents in groups of ten and were then put into larger groups of 4 to 6 tents for the purposes of cycling through a series of activities and tests, such as marching drills, traversing a vertical rope bridge at night, and guessing the ingredients of a mixture of herbs and other things that they tasted blind.  (These were the three tests that the teachers from my school were tasked with evaluating.)  In addition to these activities, there were also big group sing-a-longs, morning (5AM) exercise, a 6-mile hike around the lake (with additional test stations along the way), a variety of ceremonies and speeches about the virtues and benefits of being a scout.

The camp ended on Saturday morning with a closing ceremony and awarding of certificates, but the real culmination was the evening prior, which involved a big campfire, a “zulu dance” involving yours truly, and performances by each of the schools.  Although there was one skit, the performances were mostly dances to music ranging from traditional folk songs to contemporary pop.  All prejudice aside, I think my school’s performance was the best.  (See video on YouTube.)

(I was drafted to participate in the Zulu dance by one of the teachers from my school who begged off because of “back problems.”  I’ll admit I was a little trepidatious about this dance for a number of reasons, the two biggest being that I don’t like doing anything in front of large groups of people, and that as described to me, the dance seemed like it could be wildly inappropriate in terms of cultural sensitivity or lack thereof.  Since it involved my face and body being painted beyond the point of recognition—see pictures on Facebook—and also being part of a group of 20 or so dancers, my anxieties due to the first reason were largely mitigated.  As regards the second, the dance, make-up, and costumes were sheer invention and probably called “Zulu” because Thais have little or no concept of Africa but have heard the word and think of it as representative of indigenous peoples who are likely to paint their bodies and do dances around a fire.  So, all in all, probably only moderately inappropriate, but I’ll let you be the judge.)

The best thing about the camp was the opportunity it afforded to just hang out and socialize with some of my students outside of the classroom and school setting.  No huge surprise, but as I slowly get to know them as people, see their personalities, and hear a little more about their lives, the more meaningful the work I’m doing here becomes.  This is not so much in terms of any concrete benefits they might get from learning English, for truth be told, most of them will likely never progress beyond a secondary degree or have much if any occasion to use English in their future lives.  Rather, the meaning of my time here comes from my sense, which I hope is shared by many of the people with whom I have lived and worked these past 11+ months, or even have just come into casual contact, that the world becomes a better place when we recognize that we have more in common than what separates us as individuals and cultures, and that the effort to reach this understanding and the attempt to make connections across individual and cultural differences, however they succeed or fail, are always worthwhile.  For me, this is because they recognize and manifest our smallness and fragility, as well as our strength.