Nyeri->pedro->scouting->Lord BP->Nyeri

I am seated at a balcony on an elevation facing the rows of pine trees on chilly Nyeri night. Behind me is a fire place, for which I am planning to make a request to have it lit for me later in the night. For now its very relaxing and I cannot stop making comparisons to the Pedro camp site in Sri Lanka, which was the place to which I went on my first camping as a 11 year old. There is something similar, perhaps the coldness, perhaps the wooden furniture, perhaps pine trees, perhaps the ceiling and the wood work reminds me of Mr. Gnanaprakasam, who was our legendary scout master.

As a kid one of the best things I choose to do, is scouting. I choose to do scouting not because I understood anything about it, but it was because my siblings were scouts and I have heard too many tales from scout camps, hence I wanted go and experience the same.

As soon as I joined, I realized that I was a junior and I am not really a scout till I passed tender foot. Initially I was told that I will be given four weeks and if I don't pass the exams; I cannot make it to the camp. I tried hard but still I couldn't pass all the exams on time. I struggled to pass the history of scouting exam. It was not easy to pass for two reasons, one because my hard disk has always been bad secondly, when Mr. Gnanaprakasam asks those questions its impossible to recall what you memorized.

By being a scout I learned a lot of things which are helping me in each day of my life. Starting from travelling, cooking, getting along with people and above all it has contributed in crafting my value system. As a child I was thankful to scouting for giving all the fun. Today as an adult I admire the contribution that it has made to make what I am. At that time Lord Baden Powell was just the founder of the movement, but today I realize what an admirable man he is, to have started such a movement and enriched the life of millions ( or is it billions).

Although I was weak in the history of scouting, right at this moment here I am seated at Nyeri in Kenya, right at the scenic place at which lord BP picked to spend his last three years of his life and doing the best I can do by writing a blog to pay tribute to the great man!

Tomorrow I plan to make a visit to the lord BP museum and then a game drive in to the adjoining nature park and spend the night there. Be prepared to read my post tomorrow.

Note: Nuwan has been chasing me to write about our days of scouting for many months, I guess it was fittingly postponed and probably meant to be written from this historical place!

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