A total of 320 scouts, cubs, meerkats and their leaders from the 11 scout groups in the Tshwane North East district camped at Willem Prinsloo Agricultural Museum from 21 to 23 February.

The event was organised to fit in with the annual world-wide commemoration of the birthday of Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of scouting, on 22 February. Scouts, boys and girls aged 11 to 18, camped for the weekend and participated in activities themed around communication.

Eduard Plint
Photo’s: George Oosthuizen

They had eight bases to cover to find parts of a message, a quote from Baden-Powell, which they had to put together. Finding the message included using Morse code, semaphore, Sudoku, binary code, word search and even paddling over the dam.

There was a scout cooking competition on the Saturday evening in the rain. The scouts had to transform a mystery box of ingredients into Tandoori spiced fall-off-the-bone chicken on a bed of cinnamon sugar butternut puree with vegetables, Dutch-oven baked bread and coleslaw.

Hanno van Deventer

On the Sunday, cubs and meerkats, age five to 11, learnt a little about farm life of yesteryear, wrote with feather quills and enjoyed roosterkoek; taking home a good understanding of the character and life of Willem Prinsloo.

The scouts at Willem Prinsloo Agricultural Museum

The weekend concluded with a parade and church service.

Scouting is a global youth movement with 50 million members in 216 countries. It is 113 years old and combines adventure with solid values that inspire members to leave the world a little better than they found it.

Michael Morrison

Scouts South Africa’s value-system is based on Baden Powell’s Scout Principles, Scout Promise and Scout Law. Values such as honesty, loyalty, kindness and respect are inculcated through the scouting activities within schools and communities.

Anwyn Oosthuizen and Jethro-Jon Kershaw