In Thailand every kid is enrolled in the scouts up until the end of M3. It seems to be that scouting and schooling are very much intertwined. The teachers at school all seemed to be ex-scouts themselves and were running the camp without any outside help.
As it was a Thursday all teachers had to come into school anyway, but most helped/ ran the scout camp.
After we had run out of work to do, the other farang teachers and I decided to go and check out what was happening. All day we had been hearing loud music but it seemed to have subsided for now.
In the hall (the big purple roof thing) all the kids were in different groups and were rotating around different activities. There seemed to be 3 knot tying stations, a station where they recited something, a couple of First Aid stations and some other ones that I couldn't figure out.
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| Alex, PeTong and I |
After the stations packed up the kids sat in lines in the hall and sang songs. They also did some sort of interactive song - they stayed sat on the floor but then the woman singing would say something and they would also sway either forwards, backwards, left or right.
By this time it was about 5pm so Alex and I decided to leave them to it as we set off to market to buy dinner.
That evening we decided to go and see the evening activities. This was a lot more like the scouting I was used to. I even joined in some of the activities myself. Although, people's impression of farang girls seems to be that we're all very delicate.
One of the activities was walking a long a piece of rope tied between two trees. I did this in about 2 seconds flat, but one of the guys insisted on walking besides me. At another base the kids had to climb up and over a metal ladder which was being swung my some older kids. I did this one as well. I assure you there was minimal swinging involved. The third base was a ladder hanging from a tree. The kids held the ladder and yelled at me to be careful whilst I climbed. The fourth and final base that I tried was climbing a tree - my specialty. Before I started I told everyone that I would be fine - I used to be a scout and I've climbed many trees in my life. Still they were worried.
At least they care.
One of the bases that I didn't participate in was a base where kids had to climb through a tunnel whilst being sprayed with paint and being pelted with powder. It looked like a lot of fun!
At this base we got talking to an M6 student called Mox. His English was really good but he wanted to improve it further. We talked about travelling, shopping and university. He told us that he had a university interview next week and that he was really nervous about it! We told him he'd be fine and wished him good luck!
Friday was the second and final day of the scout camp. They did a lot of singing and dancing today. As well as 5am exercises over the loud speaker that we got woken up by.
In the evening was a sort of evening ceremony that seemed like a lot of fun. There was a fake campfire, kids is a semi-circle and a band.
This is my artistic interpretation:
From then on, this night will go down as one of the most confusing nights of my life.
Basically, the band would play a song. A teacher would sing. Random kids would be overcome by the power of music and decided that they can't resist the urge to dance and so would just stand up and dance madly for a couple of minutes before sitting back down.
Every once in a while all the kids would stand up and dance and go mental.
Towards the end each group of kids would come into the middle of the circle and perform some sort of sketch. The sketches were apparently very funny. Not that we could understand them. Just based on what we could see there were some very weird ideas.
When we got talking to the Chinese teacher she said the reason that they did stuff like this was so that when the kids are older they're not as tempted to have fun by drugs or alcohol - they can have fun without them. Which is a cute idea, not sure how practical it is though.
And so concluded our very first Thai scout camp. Drastically different from the ones at home but fun nevertheless.
Sorry for the lack of pics but I still feel weird taking photos of children.
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