Scouting reminiscing

My pupils JM, Elgerald and Steve.

I learned a lot of things from the scouting movement during my elementary school days and up to now in my middle age I am still using the skills I learned from my former scout master Romeo Gonzaga, now retired.

One of the most useful scout skills is knot tying. I can tell if a person has a background in scouting by the way he uses the different kind of knots for different purposes. 

Bowline, regarded as the safest knot in the world, is also a scout's trademark. Aside from knots there are the lashes and hitches.

On our base with Maams Elsa and Cathy. Male teachers are still rare species in the elementary grades.

There are no more tent pitching contests today. Back in our days, tent pitching was one of the main events in scouting meets.

I still remember the hitches used in erecting this tent: tautline-hitch and two half-hitches.

We used the heavy canvass tents that required two tent poles, six pegs and ropes. It took two persons to erect one. Our scoutmaster trained us to raise a tent in under two minutes. We were timed and our performances were repeated until we get the best result. 

Living inside these tents was a challenge. It had a low headroom due to it's triangular shape and it had no mosquito net like the dome tents used by scouts today. But it we had fun sleeping in them during overnight camps.

I also learned the basics of compass reading in scouting and I wonder why they are not taught today. I guess the advent of GPS deemed compass reading an obsolete skill.

Girls scouts meeting before the activities.

But the fondest memory I have was that of cooking. First was firebuilding and then cooking fried egg on paper and roasting an egg pierced with a bamboo stick.

Sardines. There were no instant noodles, tuna, or coffee in sachets so the scouts staple food was canned sardines and kapeng barako or cocoa.

All the food had to be cooked that's why every patrol had to bring their own cooking and eating utensils, the real thing not the disposable plastics used today.

Anyway, I guess it is inevitable to compare my scouting experiences from today's scouting activities but my experience will not be different from what they are experiencing now. Like me, in the future, they will be telling stories, they will be reminiscing about their scouting days.