Festin, Festin! Una aventura Scout

On Saturday, Ceci got back into town from a business trip and took me to her Scout meeting.  Scout-obsessed as I am, I was extremely excited to see how a meeting works in Bolivia.  It was really interesting (and really long, like 3 hours).  They get together every Saturday, and the meetings are a real social event.  We started out with a prayer, and they normally do a flag ceremony as well, but it was raining a bit so they didn´t put them up.

Next, it was fun time!  We sang songs, danced dances, and played a game called Vacas locas (crazy cows).  In the game, there are several kids who are the crazy cows (it´s like being It in tag) who chase the other kids and try to tag them.  If a kid gets tagged, he has to freeze with his legs apart, and he can only get unfrozen when another scout crawls under his legs.  In return for getting unfrozen, you have to lend your savior a piece of your clothing (a shoes, sock, jacket, etc).  At the end of the game, the kid with the most clothing items is the winner.  It´s SO FUN.  The borrowing aspect gives the kids an incentive to participate, and they get so into it.  Plus, it´s hilarious to see the littlest kids hopping around with one sock and no shoes.

After about an hour of play time, there was a ceremony to award the new scouts their neckerchiefs and to say goodbye to the oldest scouts who were moving up from Lobatos to Exploradores (like from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts).  It was very solemn and sweet.  I learned that the Bolivian Scouts use the same left-handed, interlinked pinky handshake as American Scouts, which was kind of neat as well.

Finally, it was time for a Festin (Feast)!  Instead of doing a traditional snack time, Ceci´s troop teaches sharing through the feast method.  All the kids bring a personal snack, and they lay them all out on a giant blanket.  Once everyone´s items are on the blanket, they chant festin, festin, festin! until the leader says Go! and then they all run up, grab a random food item, and offer it to as many friends as they can.  This way, everyone gets an equally good snack (even if they forgot to bring one), and everyone learns about sharing and being polite.  I love the idea.

After the meeting, some of the scouts were going on a camping trip, so they stayed to wait for a ride to their campsite and I had some time to chat with them.  I talked to two of the 11-year-old boys for quite a while.  They were so well-informed about the world!  They asked me lots of questions about life in the United States, and even wanted to discuss the possibility of nuclear war with North Korea.  Pretty advanced stuff for 11-year-olds!  I was impressed.  One of them also gave me a pinecone as a recuerdo lindo de nuestro hermoso pais (a lovely memory of our beautiful country).  What a charmer!  I didn´t end up keeping the pinecone (I figured it would get destroyed on the journey, and you can´t bring plants back to the US anyway), but I´ll certainly keep the lovely memory.