Scoutmaster Podcast 86

And now the old Scoutmaster. We had a group camp and we got to this campsite and it was a really beautiful sort of lush campsite next to a river. We had a great weekend. I borrowed a tent. We put the tent up, Had a bit of difficulty hammering some of the pegs in because the ground was quite hard. Instead of using the small rubber mallet, I borrowed a four pound mallet from one of our neighbours, hammered the tent pegs in without any hassles, Had a great weekend.

There was a troop of monkeys in the forest across the stream and they were sort of coming to camp every now and then and we chased the monkeys away. We had a lot of fun exploring the area. Time comes to pack up and I'm pulling tent pegs out of the ground and I pull one out and get hits in the face by a spray of water And at this point I realised hammering it through a plastic water pipe which ran through the middle of the campsite.

It's the fastest I've ever seen a tent move, because now this tent was being filled with water. So we put the tent up and ran away with it.

But we were in quite a small town and in rural South African towns there isn't a plumber available on a Sunday afternoon to attend to these things. So the campsite warden asked if I wouldn't mind leaving the tent peg there so that he could seal up the hole with it. And I'm not sure what came after that, but I hope the end result was that they buried this water pipe a little deeper, because a plastic water pipe forages underground in the campsite seems like a race. You have to be giving credit for being able to find that water pipe. And he was told that if there was a water dowsing badge or water divine badge, there wouldn't be the chin. It was a picture.

Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. You're going to hear more from my friend Peter LaRue, who you heard just before the theme there a little bit later on, but we'll get to that in a moment. Heard from Frank Maynard this week. He says nice interview with Hab Butler on the development of the Journey to Excellence program. It's good to know they just didn't pull numbers out of thin air.

When I first heard about the Journey to Excellence I was skeptical that we were going to go back to the same arbitrary numerical system that the quality unit used before the four centennial quality unit years, But after seeing the worksheets I realized a lot of thought went into it. Hab summed up what the program is all about. Units that do scouting the way scouting is done will have no difficulty earning high marks in the Journey to Excellence.

Any shortcomings in one or more of the categories are leading indicators of what needs improvement in the unit, And right now is a good time to run your own unit's numbers so far this year and see how you're doing, while there's time to work on anything that needs attention. Well thanks, Frank. That's a good comment And it's indicative of the different feedback I've gotten about the Journey to Excellence program and kind of reflects my own feelings about it too. Very positive thing.

If you didn't listen to last week's podcast, we were talking with Hab Butler, who is a regional vice president for the BSA and was the chair of the Journey to Excellence development working group. He had some things to say about the way that things were developed and what the hopes are for that program. I also heard this week from Tony Rotol. Tony is from Troop 457 in Cordova, Tennessee, And he wrote in to tell me a little bit about his dad, And his dad is up there in St Charles Illinois, A little farther north, A lot farther north, And his dad's, with Troop 13, was with Troop 969 in Chicago for about 50 years. Tony is rightfully proud of his pop there and said that he finally convinced him to start listening to the podcast.

So, Ted, hello. Nice to meet you, Ted Rotol, up there in St Charles Illinois, And Tony said hi too. By the way, Today on the Scoutmaster Podcast, we're going to talk with Peter LaRue. Peter is a group scout leader in South Africa and he also attended the International Jamboree this summer And he is also the author of a blog about pioneering called Ropes and Polls. Peter and I had a wide ranging discussion about a lot of interesting things.

You know kind of comparing and contrasting what it's like to be a scout in South Africa and what it's like to be a scout here, and the spoiler alert on that one is pretty much the same. I really enjoy talking with international scouts because it just cements that idea of worldwide movement and the applicability of all of these scouting principles wherever they happen to land, And I'm anxious to get to the interview.

So let's get started, shall we

Music Today on the Scoutmaster Podcast. I'm very happy to welcome Peter LaRue from South Africa. Peter LaRue, that might be a familiar name to some of you. He's the author of the Ropes and Polls blog, A blog that principally concentrates on pioneering, but we get to see some interesting things about international scouting and scouting in South Africa.

How are you today, Peter? I'm good. Thanks, Clark.

I've had a great day so far. It's Saturday here.

It's Saturday there, am I correct? Yeah, it's Saturday evening And springtime there. Yes, Yeah it is.

We had the first rains of the season this week, So it's springtime, but you had a bribe, a barbecue, this afternoon, So it's been a pretty warm day. So tell me a little bit about the area that you live in, because I'm still amazed by this, Peter. I'm still amazed that I can get on the computer and speak with somebody in South Africa in real time.

Basically halfway across the world There's a town called well, a city called Bononi, which is about 30 kilometers away from Johannesburg, and it's really a continuous urban area. There's about 9 million people that live in the urban area around Johannesburg.

At the same time, I'm also right on the edge of that area, So if I'm half an hour driving in one direction, I'm in the middle of the city and in the other direction I can be in a nature reserve, So I'm very lucky. In terms of scouting, It's very easy.

Our local campsite is a 10-minute drive away and then half an hour down the road I can be out in the real backcountry felt areas. What does that look like? Most of the time when we see South Africa on the television or something like that, it's lions and grasslands and things like that.

Is that what we're thinking of? Well, where I live, it's mostly open, flat country.

In fact, where my house is, there are a lot of wetlands around, So there are a few lakes and marshes. There's not a lot of trees here, It's mostly crossland. Like I said, the area where I live is 9 million people living here. In terms of wildlife, there's not a lot of big animals around still, except in place names. There's an elephant fountain and a lion river and that sort of thing.

But in terms of big wildlife, there are some antelope around, things like porcupines and otters, owls, eagles, But on the whole, as much as my scouts like to joke with people, the on-lines walking down the street, Well, except occasionally, maybe, Who knows? Yes, well, there was a hyena that came into the suburbs around here a few years back, But of course, as much problem as it would if a cougar came into the suburbs in Florida.

I suppose What's your role in scouting there in South Africa? I am a troop scouter, Not only in Grayspear.

We have two troops in my scout group. We have a boy troop and a girl troop. Scouting has been open to girls to join what was formerly the boy scout movement for about the last 15 years.

So we have two troops, two separate troops At the moment. We do a lot of activities together But I have about 24 boys in four patrols and we meet on a Friday night And you do basically the type of thing that scouts do everywhere. Yes, I mean it seems, having spoken to a few scouts from actually from Pennsylvania, that our programs are very similar. Basic terminology might be different And the things, the emphasis on things, is a little different.

You know, when my guys learn about survival situations, they don't learn much about, say, surviving in the snow, And we deal with local conditions. But on the whole our program would be recognizable to your scouts. One event that you featured on the blog that is just fascinating to me and that is the Contiki camp that you guys do annually.

What is that all about? I think it was in the early 50s, For Hayadol, who's a Norwegian anthropologist, had this idea that he could recreate the journeys that the Polynesian islanders used to travel from island to island, And he had this idea of building a raft out of Balsawood and sailing at 4,000 miles across the South Pacific, And in fact, a lot of the people who joined him on their journey were former scouts. And in the mid 1960s, there were a few scouts from South Africa who liked the idea and they built a raft and they spent 24 hours living on this raft on one of the bigger dams in South Africa.

And then, after that, in the early 1980s, they picked it up as a pioneering competition in our province, And every year, between 70 and 100 rafts take part in the competition, which is part of it is about living on the water on a raft that you've built for 24 hours. But then, on top of that, there's always a theme, so you have to decorate your raft to match the theme.

So, for example, in 2011,, the theme was Contiki goes to Rome. So you had rafts decorated like chariots, like Roman temples. You had scouts dressed up in togas and with wreaths on their heads And that's what they do. It is the biggest annual event in South African scouting And it's a lot of fun. A lot of troops who take part spend the better part of the year preparing for it, And people like I say: when you're spending 24 hours living on your raft, you concentrate on time your square elections properly. It is absolutely fascinating.

It's something that I would just love to try. And how many rafts did you say participant?

I think the most we've had is around 120.. This last year, I think there were 70 teams. Wow, I mean, that's just huge.

And so everybody is floating on this impoundment on this lake And that is I'll tell you. I'll have a link to a couple of Peter's posts on his blog about the Contiki thing. You got to see it. It is just amazing If I could get my fellows to South Africa with a raft.

Well, hey, that's not a bad idea. That is just a really cool idea. We actually have a BSA troop at the American School in Johannesburg and they participate this year.

So there is a small BSA involvement in Contiki. I think this year was the first time there, But, speaking to the troop scout, they'll need to be back next year. We talked a little bit about the fact that you have scout troops. You have cub groups as well.

Tell me about the group concept. You said that you're a group scouter And that's unfamiliar to us here.

How does that work? The structure here is that we have scouting groups in three age groups.

We have cub scouts from 7 to 11.. We have scouts from 11 to 18..

And then we have rover scouts, which is roughly equivalent to venture scouts or velocity teams from 18 up to 30-ish. So those branches are generally in South Africa would all be members of a group.

So a group consists of a cub pack, a scout troop and optionally a rover group. So I was a cub at Nantes Benoni Cub pack and when I left cubs I naturally went on to the scout troop at Nantes Benoni And that is generally how scouting works in South Africa. Every cub pack is attached to a scout troop, Every scout troop is attached to a cub pack And that group committee forms sort of carries out a lot of the functions of a sponsoring body in other movements.

So if you're sponsored by a church or a school or whatever, then those functions are carried out by the committee in terms of maintenance and administration, looking after the property and that sort of thing. I'm fascinated by the group concept because I think there's many things that recommend it And I think it's something that we should study here and see if there's some aspects of it we should adopt. You've described a rather smooth transition into a scout troop and that's something that we worry over quite a bit here in the States.

Do you see that Roughly what percentage of boys and girls from a cub pack end up in scout troops in South Africa? I would imagine I don't know of hand, but on the whole I would say it's probably between 80 and 90 percent. That would come through smoothly. That's an enviable percentage for us. You compared rovers to explorers or varsity scouts or venture scouts. All of our youth programs pretty much stop at age 21..

But rovers can be rovers into their 30s. You say I think globally the idea with rovers I mean in other countries they said the limit is around 25.. Historically here there hasn't been a limit. If you invest as a rover as long as you are invested as a rover before you turn 35, you can stay a rover forever. That's historically been what's happened here. But in terms of recruiting new rovers it becomes a different proposition to try and recruit a new rover into the crew when the rest of the crew is 50 or 60 or 70, because an 18-year-old might not feel he has anything in common.

So that's why the age limit's being bought in. The idea really is that rovering is covering that part of your life when you're leaving home, setting up your career, getting married, starting a family, and it's to help you apply scouting principles to your life through that period.

And specifically for people who feel they don't have the inclination or the time to be a troop scout or a pack scout, So they don't necessarily want to be involved with running a troop, but they do want to stay involved in the movement. That's who it serves.

I was in Switzerland at Kandersteg this year, Met a lot of rovers Again, something that I think would be a very interesting aspect of scouting that's pretty much unknown here. People do tend to stay involved, but you kind of cross the Rubicon into this adult leadership world. It's just a different way of looking at things and a different way of experiencing the program.

You attended the Which international jamboree? What number was it? This year It was the 22nd, The 22nd international jamboree, and that was in Sweden. Yes, That's right.

And so tell me a little bit about that experience. For me it was a fantastic experience.

We, Our contingent- all in all from South Africa was 135 people, of which 105 were scouts, 12 were unit leaders who were traveling with the three scouts- The three scout troops And the remainder were ISD International Service Team and then contingent staff- And we joined 40,100 other scouts in Kristianstatt, which is in the south of Sweden, for the jamboree. The jamboree itself was 12 days long. Prior to the jamboree we traveled in Germany for a week.

We were hosted by the DPSG, who's the Catholic Scout Association in Germany, And we then spent three days on home hospitality living with scout troops in Denmark. The four patrols in my troops stayed in three different towns for that, but that was also quite an experience to see.

So we got to experience a bit of German scouting and Danish scouting and then got to meet everybody else at the jamboree. What do you take away from an experience like that? It must be just an incredible opportunity to get a real interesting look at scouting throughout the world. One of the things that was very interesting for a lot of us is we came away from it realizing how similar our programs are. I got to speaking. I had long conversations with.

We had neighbors from Denmark and a few people from Belgium. I spoke to some Australians and some American scouts And to realize how, although historically and culturally and in terms of background were quite different, that the scouting principles are very similar And, more important than that, that the ideals of the promise and law are so similar around the world And that, although at times there was a language gap and there was difficulty in communicating, we were all there with the same intention And that was something that a lot of my scouts remarked on as well.

And I think, if you look back to when Baden Powell had the idea of a chapter, this idea of people learning to cooperate internationally was a big part of why he did it And that came through very strongly for my scouts and for me. It would be difficult to hold a stereotype or dislike people who you've spent a couple of weeks camping with.

I mean, that was really his intention, I think. And I think that was the first time across for us, whereas I think there were 156 countries represented at the Jamboree.

So for most of my scouts and I'm sure a lot of other people, it was the first time they made someone from Bhutan or from South Korea or from Brazil or Italy. So it was a really good opportunity to get to know those people better. We found that when we traveled to the background An immediate, shared way of looking at the world that kind of surpassed any differences that we had. One of the great stories from the Jamboree was at the opening ceremony there was an arena which was sort of a little valley off to the one side of the campsite and at the bottom of the valley was a stage and we all sat on the slopes of this valley facing the stage and 40,000 people had to move from the sub-camps in their campsites.

And speaking to the police officers off to it who were there to provide safety, they said they were so surprised that 40,000 people got to this opening ceremony and stayed for the concert and got back off to it. So there wasn't a single incidence of violence or a disagreement or anything like that reported and the police were really surprised because they never dealt with that in a public gathering- all in Sweden There's always a scuffle that breaks out somewhere- but because all of these people, with 40,000 of us, were there for the same reason and we were all making friends and trading badges and being there. For the same reason, it went very smoothly. Obviously, you described a trip that took about a month altogether. Yeah, three weeks, 21 days out of the country, and you had to travel a pretty respectable distance to get there.

Yeah, I think our total travel distance was in the region of 22,000 km there and back. The interesting thing is, for some of my scouts who had never traveled outside the country before, it was their first time flying on an aeroplane, their first time flying or their first time traveling on a ferry, their first time traveling in an underground train, their first time on a tram, which we did in Berlin.

So it was really a big whole new world of experiences for them. It was probably a bit costly as well, wasn't it? In today's exchange rate, $3,500, purchasing parity wise, it's a significant amount of money in South Africa. It was quite an expensive trip. That's the interesting thing. There were some great stories from our contingent.

One of the boys in my troop phoned into a local radio station and won a general knowledge competition and that paid for half of his trip. One of the boys sold hot dogs outside a shopping centre for two years to pay for his trip, and then one of the girls in my troop was also able to get sponsorship from local companies and she went around from company to company with a letter explaining what Scouting did for the community and what she was hoping to do in Sweden and sponsorship for the entire troop. The overall point being, if you are a scout or a scouter, you really must find one of these opportunities and take advantage of it. It is a life changing experience and it's not limited to the world jamboree or something like that. There are many, many different opportunities for international events and travel for scouts, For any scout pretty much going to be the highlight of his time in scouting, Absolutely. I mean we've had in the past.

I've had scouts from our troop attend the American national jamboree. We've had scouts from other countries- I know definitely Germany- attend Kontiki.

Here we have another event which is a 12 day hike adventure in the Cedarburg in South African. A lot of international scouts come to that as well and it really is. I know those scouts are still in touch with people they meet when they were here and it's a great chance to see the world and to see the world with people, to see the world the same way that you do.

So my message for folks listening in: it may seem difficult and expensive and in many respects, yes, it can be difficult and expensive. It's a lot of arrangements to make, a lot of things to do and it's definitely something that you should set your sights on, if you can manage it at all, and everybody can manage it. It's just how you go about it.

What happens in coming months in your scout group? The next big event we have coming up, is the next big international event, which is the jamboree on the internet and jamboree on the A, which is the 14th and 15th of October. We always have a camp at our local campsite and we also have some radio amateurs who help us get onto the radio waves and speak to scouts from all over the world. That's the next big thing we're doing.

And the other thing- believe it or not, although it's in September, we are looking forward to contiki in march and preparing for that. I have a lot of young scouts, so there's a lot of training we have to do: making sure everybody is able to tie the mashings and assemble the raft, able to handle the raft on the water, getting everybody through their swimming proficiency badges so it's safe for them to be on the water and we are probably planning a hiking trip in December. Tell me a little bit about the way the youth leadership concept works in South Africa. I imagine it's somewhat similar.

Do you have, for instance, a senior patrol leader in that type of thing? In the South African Scouts Association we called it a troop leader. We then have patrol leaders and patrol leaders have an assistant patrol leader and the goal is for those patrol leaders and the troop leader to be driving the program and running the troop meetings, much as it is in the BSA system. At the moment I have some new patrol leaders because I had three of my scouts age out and turn 18 in the last two months.

So their former assistants are now training up for the job and they are doing a pretty good job. But they do need a bit of a helping hand every now and then.

But the idea in the course of a meeting is that they well, in the course of a year they will tell me and my assistants what it is they want to do in the meetings and we will help them put that together. And then in the course of a troop meeting I will issue instructions to the patrol leaders and they will then carry those back to their patrols and as far as possible they do all the training and all of the instructing and all of the running of the program. I'm sure, as it happens here, that they do just a flawless job. There's never any problems, difficulties, setbacks or anything like that.

One of the things I try to remind them is that the point of being a patrol leader is to learn how to lead, because sometimes I think it's difficult when you are 14 or 13 and you're trying as hard as you can and things don't work out because you haven't quite understood the dynamics of your patrol. But I try always to encourage them and remind them that they're doing- probably doing a better job than they think they are- and just help them identify what hasn't worked. And just thinking back- I saw you had a blog post this week about that black bulb or a harm moment when you see a scout realize something. And for me one of the great things is when I see a patrol leader understand how this member of the patrol who they don't quite get on with or who never quite listens to them, when they understand how to speak that person's language and get them to cooperate, and when I see that patrol certainly mesh together and see that the patrol leader's understood what he's got to do. That's quite a rewarding thing for them and for me as well.

Okay folks, so we're talking halfway across the world, same thing happening, same exact thing happening. Because I think sometimes we get our heads down in our own concerns, in our own scout troops, and we don't think that anyone else is experiencing either in the way of difficulties or achievement or things like that. But it's always a bit of a reassurance to know that this is just the way things are.

I was speaking to scouts from Belgium at the Jamboree and we were just saying laughing at how his patrol leaders and my patrol leaders were battling the same things in their patrols at the Jamboree. And even if you read, there was a report done by the Scouts Association in the UK in the 60s or late 50s called the Advanced Report, and it spoke about problems in the movement and the interesting thing is that you can read that report and it's like it was written yesterday.

The problems in the movement are too much bureaucracy, difficulty attracting adult volunteers, difficulty retaining Scouts around the age of 13 to 14, and these really, I think in every country and every time those are things we've battled with. I could always do with an extra assistant helping at a meeting. I always noticed that when Scouts reach that 9th grade they find things that are more interesting to them than Scouting, and I always found myself filling in more paperwork than I'd like to.

I think those are universal problems and it's reassuring to know that it's not just you that's battling with these things. You know, I go back and I look at what was being said during that kind of founding years of Scouting. When it comes down to opening the door and meeting with your patrol leaders and watching Scouts do what they do, I don't think people who were involved at that time would see too much that was unfamiliar to them, Absolutely. I mean, if I read Age to Scout, which was paid in Pal's book, I can apply all of those things directly to the way I'm on that trip today and the patrol leaders handbooks that were written in the 20s are as applicable to the Scouts today as they were then. Yeah, and it is just a remarkable thing.

Now your advancement program culminates with a Springbok Scout. Is that correct? That's right And that is, we would imagine is, kind of equivalent to Eagle Scout here.

How's that looked at there and how do you manage that level of advancement? It's certainly a great achievement.

I think that the statistics are roughly 1% of Scouts who start as a Cub Age 7 achieve Springbok Scouts. One of the things in our current advancement program that works very nicely is that the levels are all integrated, so as a in the first level of advancement most of the advancement is experiential things. You'd come to a true meeting and you learn how to tie knot or you learn how to deal with the first aid situation. In the second level of advancement you are more involved.

You learn that in greater detail and then, starting up into the high levels of advancement, you start taking responsibility for training your Scouts in those things. And then finally, at the Springbok Scout level, you'd be responsible for planning and putting together a camp for your whole troop and one of the things you'd look at on that camp is making sure that all the advancement levels below yours are receiving their training and advancement that they need in the course of that camp and that vertical integration works really well so that your patrol leaders, in the course of running their patrol, will be required to in earning their own advancements to help their patrol members advance. In terms of managing the whole process, the Springbok Scout, there are three particular overseen by the Provincial Commissioner for Scouting.

So everything else in that advancement would be signed off by me as a troop Scouter. But one of them is a construction project. And the second of those three things is an expedition, which is a multi-day hike in territory that's unfamiliar to you and you have to produce a log afterwards and that log is examined.

And then the third thing is there's a community service and service project component which you're required to complete- again largely similar to, I believe, a similar requirement for Eagle Scout, and those are examined and tested by the Provincial Commissioner. But everything else is handled by the troop Scouter.

And the way you arrive at Springbok Scout, there are five advancement labels and at the end of each advancement label we have a personal growth agreement. When you reach the first class, which is to advance, part of your personal growth agreement is to sit down and do a proper managed project, then how you're going to achieve your Springbok Scout.

So it starts at that level where you plan out which merit badges you're going to do and how you're going to work your way through to Springbok Scout. It sounds very familiar.

So well, I really appreciate you spending some time with me and maybe we'll get to do it again someday. Is there anything I've missed or anything you'd like to add? I'll just remember, as I say, Kentucky Structure as a pioneering competition and one of the things that happens is that the top 10 teams that have Kentucky are invited to the Kentucky Chairman's Challenge event. Normally that takes the form of a raft race, about a 15 mile race down a river, and this year they did it a little differently and the 10 teams that took part in Chairman's Challenge this year had to start at a campsite near my house and they built their raft and put it onto the water and did an obstacle course on water and they had to dismantle their raft and load it up on a track and drive 20 kilometers to another scout campsite, build their raft again, do some obstacles there, and they did this four times over the course of the weekend, traveling across the province, starting here on the east strand and ending on the west, and along the way, focusing on how the pioneering worked at each campsite. But also tracks had to be decorated with scout badges and to promote the movement and they were given a few scavenger hand sort of items to pick up along the way, questions to answer about the trip and that sort of thing.

So just speaking to some of the people who went on that and seeing the guys at the first base near my house, it looked like a lot of fun and something quite challenging. We have a couple of ponds nearby. We've talked about trying to scale the whole contiki idea into something that we could do there. I mean, it just sounds like a tremendous amount of fun.

It ties in with so many of the other things that you want to do anyway. You know all the pioneering skills, the camping skills, the swimming bit, a really interesting scout event.

Is English the principal language in your area, or are other languages spoken? South Africa has 11 official languages and I only speak two of them. It's not unusual for people to be able to speak four of them. In the area where I live, there are probably four languages that most people will speak. Two out of the four languages: English. Afrikaans, which is related to Dutch, is very similar to the dialect of Dutch.

Zulu, which is an African language, an indigenous language. And Swana, which is also an indigenous language, which we also share with Swana, which is one of our neighboring countries, so most people in my province will speak at least two of those four languages. Largely in urban areas most people can understand English. As you move out into the rural areas it depends very much on the part of the country which language is the easiest to communicate in.

So you speak English and Afrikaans. That's right.

And let me ask a favor of you and, if you'd be comfortable doing it, if you could say the scout motto in Afrikaans and then in English. So in English the scout motto is be prepared in Afrikaans. In Afrikaans we speak excellent. Thank you very much. I followed the blog and I was heartened to see your post about the jamboree and all the interesting pioneering that was going on there. I'm going to definitely point everybody back to ropes and poles.

The other really fascinating thing I saw on that- I guess it's been a while, but it was the Israeli pioneering. I would like to see that up close Monday. I'd like to give that a shot, actually make a couple of those interesting projects a giant hedgehog or something that looks like a lot of fun.

I was hoping to see something like that at the jamboree, but I guess at the jamboree people are more focused on meeting the scouts and holding gateways, which is as it should be, I think. Well, I think we went to Switzerland with big plans and we left our time open because it was our first trip there and really didn't know the conditions and everything, and what we found was the best part of the time we spent there meeting with other scouts and talking and to swap things. Yes, absolutely. We found we had a fantastic trip in Germany and Denmark.

Where the trip really came alive for my scouts was that they were in Copenhagen and, as luck would have it, we went down to the harbour to look at the statue of the little mermaid at the same time as the UK contingent did, and my troop- the patrol I was- was in my scouts, but the UK contingent was 4,000 strong, so we came around the corner and they were 4,000 scouts, so you can find some trading badges with each other on the streets, you know. So they were carrying with them and they started trading them and you know little silver flags, stickers and labels and everybody started swapping things and it was completely unplanned. We didn't know they were going to be there and it just became a highlight for my scouts. They were very excited to meet all these people and it was really where the jamboree started for them. That's quite a picture I can imagine turning a corner and, yeah, all of a sudden running into a few thousand UK scouts coming the other way. They're pretty garrulous, those UK scouts.

The sun happened to be shining that day and there were a few Scottish scouts running around in kilts enjoying the sun. We were sort of walking through the old town in the opposite direction, in the opposite direction from the UK scouts and at every traffic signal when we'd stop there, be on the other side of the road and we'd wave at each other and salute to each other and shake hands with the left hand as we crossed through the intersection. And that happened all the way down the street through the old town. I will say again: you got to make this happen, it's at all possible. Get your scouts together, figure out how to make it happen and get to an international scout event. You'll never, ever regret it.

It's just so much fun. On the strip I got to meet people speaking to the internet and on the radio for five or six years with the jamboree on the internet and just to to realise we're part of a very big worldwide brotherhood of 30 million people is really, really exciting and really inspiring for your home troop.

I've come back with so many ideas from people I've met and so many people that I can get my scouts in touch with that. It really is something that's worth doing and I mean, it's hard to seem to pull together. I thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today and we'll be watching the blog. Great, thank you very much, Clark.