Scouting as it was and as it is now

Dwayne Fields has just become the UK’s first black Chief Scout. It makes me wonder whether Lord Baden Powell, the founder of the scout movement back in 1908, would be turning in his grave in Kenya or applauding. Yes, Baden Powell’s grave is here in Kenya – in the cemetery of Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Nyeri. On his retirement, he chose to live here, where he and his wife, Olive, had often ‘wintered’.

They had a cottage called Paxtu in the grounds of the Outspan Hotel, which now is a small museum of Baden Powell memorabilia. On his grave stone there is a special scouting symbol: a small circle with a dot in its middle; it means ‘I have gone home’ – a sign used after a competitive ‘wide game’.

The grave has been declared a national monument, and the Nation newspaper once declared it ‘one of the most revered shrines and pilgrimage sites in the world’.

At the headquarters of the Kenya Scouts Association in the Rowallan Camp in Jamhuri Park there is what I take to be the original gravestone of Baden Powell; alongside it is a mould of his footprint. Clearly, he is still revered by Kenyan scouts – the 4.5 million of them, as at now – as he is revered by the many million scouts in the 170 national scout organisations around the world.

I was a scout when I was a young teenager in England. I value that time; I learnt to enjoy camping and hiking; I had my first experience of travel – travelling outside Britain for the first time when I attended a Jamboree in Austria. I think scouting builds a youngster’s confidence, resilience and respect for other cultures. So, I think you will understand how shocked I was years later to read Baden Powell’s first edition of Scouting for Boys that he wrote in 1908.

First, it is so militaristic. This is not surprising, in that Baden Powell had been a high-ranking British Army Officer and was well known as a hero of the relief of Mafeking in 1900, during the Boer War in South Africa. In fact, his model for scouting owed much to what he had witnessed when boys in Mafeking were used as message carriers during the siege. This is how the ‘Be prepared’ motto of scouts was used in the first ‘camp fire yarn’ about the Mafeking scouts: ‘We ought to be prepared in Britain against being attacked by enemies; for though it may not be probable, it is quite as possible as it was in Mafeking; and every boy in Britain should be just as ready as those boys were in Mafeking to take their share in its defence’.

Baden Powell went on to say, ‘Every boy ought to learn how to shoot and to obey orders, else he is no more good when war breaks out than an old woman, and merely gets killed like a squealing rabbit, unable to defend himself’. War did break out six years later – the First World War.

Baden Powell also sings the praises of the British Empire. ‘The History of the Empire has been made by British adventurers and explorers,’ he wrote, ‘the scouts of the nation, for hundreds of years past up to the present time.’ He goes on to list many names of British heroes, among them Speke, Baker and Livingston, who ‘pushed their way through the savage deserts and forests of Africa’.

And it was Africa that he chose as his retirement home. However, in those days Kenya had a degree of apartheid in force; Africans would have been barred from using the Outspan Hotel where his cottage was.

Baden Powell died in 1941, during the Second World War. If he had written down after that war some of the things he wrote in 1908, he would have been castigated by many British people, as well as by many around the world. But we should judge him not by the standards of today but by those of 1908 or 1941. I would also assume that, as the scout movement he founded grew and flourished across so many countries of the world, his Anglocentric views would have changed had he lived longer.

The manual, Scouting for Boys, certainly changed; it went through at least 14 editions. To study those editions would be to trace very important changes in such matters as politics, international relations, civic responsibilities and gender issues.

When Lut and I visited the Kenya Scouts Association headquarters last week, we bought a copy of the Association’s Patrol Leaders/Peer Educators Training Manual. The emphasis is on life skills, reproductive health education, drug and substance abuse, crime, youth employment, development, environmental conservation. There is also the prevailing focus on outdoor activities.

We had a talk with Solomon Kimani, the Association’s Camps and Sites Manager. He also said that, these days, the scouting messages are about peace, not war. He noted that the ‘Be prepared’ motto is now about youngsters being prepared to face challenges such as economic hardships, difficulties in finding a job, avoiding getting involved in crimes or drug taking. These are also social themes mentioned by Dwayne Fields, the new Chief Scout of Britain.

As a youngster growing up in north-east London, he was stabbed when involved in a street fight. For him, scouting provided a refuge. For the first time, he felt that he belonged to something worthwhile. He, too, sees the many benefits of being active in outdoor activities. These are also matters that were dear to Baden Powell – physical and mental health, civic duties, care for others and care for the countryside. I think he would have applauded the appointment of Dwayne Fields.

He would also have understood Solomon Kimani when he said that it has been important to ‘twist’ a bit some of the values advocated in early editions of Scouting for Boys – twisting them to fit contemporary circumstances and attitudes.

John Fox is Chairman of iDC Email; [email protected]