Africa Scout Day 2011: Fund the Fence

On the 13th March 2011 was the First Africa Scout Day that Scout African Scout participated in and Gauteng scouts focussed on the environment. It was held at Delta Park Camp Ground and there were three projects run in the day. There was a weed project where invasive verbena was removed, feathering of exotic trees and Fund the Fence.

Fund the Fence was an initiative started by Adiero to plant a hedge along the back of Delta Park Camp Ground to increase security. We asked that people donate R25 for a meter of hedge so that we could plant Carrissa macrocarpa which is an indigenous plant that produces an edible fruit and has thorns for security.

This project was a great success and we managed to raise R6700 of the R7800 needed (Delta committee covered the rest) and so the planting went ahead.

A hundred scouts got together for Africa Scout Day and of that about 80 participated in the Fund the Fence project. The troops that attended and helped were: Adiero, White Horse, Rivertrail, 1st Discovery, Florida Sea Scouts, Jan Smuts, 1st Edenvale (girls and boys), 1st Randburg, Fairlands, 1st Halfway House, 37th Springvale, 1st Craighall, 1st Rosebank and North West District Rovers.

We started by digging a trench so that we could loosen the hard soil for the plants to establish themselves quicker. This took a long time as we had to dig 250m. Thankfully one of the parents had a hole diggers and so he managed to make about a third of the required holes.
The planting then began, 250 plants spread over 270 meters, giving each plant compost and fertilizer to help them grow.

Then came the watering and this also took a large amount of time as 270m requires a large amount of water. Watering was done by hose pipe and by a relay system with scouts carrying water bottles to plants further away.

Finally the job was done and it looks that a great hedge will soon develop to provide security for Delta camp Ground especially after the great rain we had for two days after the event.

Thanks to everyone who helped out for making this day a success and getting together just to have fun.


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Kontiki 2011

The end of March always signals Kontiki is coming and this year the theme was “Kontiki visits Rome”. This year we decided to compete in all of the competitions and build a raft and shore camp. As usual we never do anything boring we decided to host a brand new girl scout troop on their first ever Kontiki. 1^st Edenvale girls have been going for three months and didn’t have the knowledge of how to do run Kontiki effectively so we decided to help out and teach them.

The raft was run by one of our scouts and consisted of 6 Adiero girls and 2 1^st Edenvale girls. The raft had a different design to what we have usually built but it worked well and provided a lot of shelter for the girls. The raft crew did very well and managed to complete the raft and get it on the water where they did very well in the mobility challenge.

The shore camp also consisted of Adiero and 1^st Edenvale girls and they all did a great job. Everyone got there on Friday and started to setup camp. This was successful as we managed to almost finish the beaver challenge and the 6m table on Friday. Edenvale managed to learn the dress up on Saturday morning and they all enjoyed doing our dress-up of the Latin scout verse. The rest of Saturday consisted of teaching Edenvale how to build a campsite and the cooking competition where the PL of shore did a great job and made really good food.

One of our favourite events on shore was the STA (Spare Time Activity) where we had to create a chariot that the emperor would want to ride in. The girls had lots of fun decorating a trailer and dressing themsleves up to look like emperor, queen, driver and slave. Well done girls for ebing so creative.

All in all Kontiki was a great success as we came 16^th overall with raft coming 14^th and being on the reserve list for chairman’s and shore coming in 29^th. This was very successful for us as we got to teach our younger scouts how to teach and teach 1^st Edenvale how Kontiki works. We hope that they have learnt a lot and will come back next year by themselves and do a great job.

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