Written by Betty Hlathi, SSA Youth Influencer Free State
Thabong, Welkom, is home to the First Nanabolela Secondary School, and the 1st Nanabolela Scout Group. Over the year’s the Group’ has become known for it’s unwavering devotion to understanding the outdoors, wild life, survival and backwoods. Annually the Group has celebrated backwoods, with the goal of improving the cooking abilities and knowledge of members, as well as their understanding of wild life. I sat down with some of the Group members and spoke to them about the joys of backwoods and how this skills building activity has aided in the expansion of the Troop.
“People are awestruck by the incredible experience of living and surviving in the bush”, explains Lerato Thinda excitedly. “Because of the style of living, and the current state of safety, we go to great lengths to guarantee that our Scouts get to have a successful, safe, and fun experience. Because there are no open plots in the township, the backwoods camp takes place 30 kilometers outside of Thabong.”
“Our most recent backwoods event in the wilderness took place at the end of 2021″, recalls Banele. ” Due to bad weather, only a few people were able to participate, and we were not able to cook all the meals we had planned. We had a lot of cooks, but in the end focused only on a few foods. These included among others like potatoes wrapped in foil and grilled, twisters – where we combined flour, salt, and water to make a dough, then wrapped it around the sticks and cooked them over the fire.”
As I sit here with the Troop members, they laugh and giggle as they continuously reflect on the fact that the meals they prepare at home and the food they prepare in the woods have completely different flavours, even though they are both “edible”.
“We don’t only cook, but also make food storage containers by cutting plastic bottles in half and inserting cotton wool inside the bottles to keep them cool”, they explain “When it comes to shelter, our leaders become too strict because a lot of people we know are homeless, and the majority of places we live in are in bad conditions. Some of our family members get lost in the forest, some are fortunate enough to survive whereas other have died”, continue Banele and Lerato. ” People in our community blame it on the lack of fundamentals for survival in the wild. ”
“A Scout’s duty is to be useful and help others, so sometimes as Scouts we practice our knowledge from the backwoods event and assist homeless people in building rigid shelters. We also share ways to find food and cook food with less resources. If every Scout can spread their skill and knowledge wherever they can, as small or big as it is, it might be a great deal to someone else and furthermore change or impact their lives in the most positive manner one could have never thought of” conclude the Scouts.
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