I wasn't particularly looking forward to the briefing weekend. The first had been alright: useful information, a questionable fancy dress disco, and a morning discovering how hard it was to talk about what there was to do in a British town using Chingford, Essex as the model town. There was some new information to be disseminated this weekend, but that could surely have been done in an email. I had forgotten the names of many of the people I met at the first weekend, and frankly I wasn't sure that 26 hours would be time enough to re-learn all those names. With only about three weeks to go before I leave the country and embark on my own adventure, did I really need to be attending a weekend about how to visit a foreign country and meet a bunch of people?
Well, as it turns out, yes I did.
This weekend was one of the first times that I have seen the tangible become the intangible. It was the first time that the reality of over one hundred young people, armed with hiking boots, microfleeces and (in my case) an arguably inflated notion of how good their dancing was, become the people who would be having the life-changing, character-building and horizon-broadening experiences that are spoken of in the leaflets and adverts for events like this. It was a weekend at which I was forced to reconsider my own opinion of what, precisely, I was doing at this event and in my own Scouting career in general. And, it must be said, the disco was infinitely better than it had been at the first weekend.
The first morning was, as I had expected, good and informative. We learnt why we hadn't heard lots of information from the Moot organisers that we had been told we would have by now, and we discussed when payments were due, and so forth. Then, in the afternoon, we played a game. This game involved splitting into three groups, each of which was given a different objective to complete and a different method of communication. Then, at the blow of a whistle, one person from each group was sent to watch the other teams and interact with them. At the time, I thought this was a disaster. We didn't know why we had to go and watch the other team, or how on earth we were going to interact with them (or at least I didn't). I was just as confused when I returned to my own team and realised I had forgotten how to communicate with them, and that in any case we hadn't been given enough language for me to convey my utter confusion at what we were doing. At the end, when we were asked what we learnt, I was hard pressed to find an answer that wasn't sarcastic and irritating.
No matter. I moved on to some more information bases and a chance to put up the tent, or more precisely to hunt for the tent that my friends Nik and Jon had put up earlier, which was easier said than done. Turns out that "the green one near the tree" is a very poor description when looking for a tent in the woods. But the tent was eventually found, and by that time it was dinner. And, after dinner, we were spoken to by a very unassuming man from Oxfordshire named John.
John casually informed us that he was the Vice-President for the World Organisation of the Scout Movement; essentially, the number two Scout on the planet. He had come to talk to us as his role was primarily concerned with international trips such as the Moot, and because he was extraordinarily excited that we were going. With my hand on my heart, I can say that I have never been inspired by another person in quite the same way as I was by John. He had the room spellbound as he told us of his experiences in refugee camps in Rwanda during their civil war, in which orphaned children were comforted and entertained by Ugandan Scouts who were 18. He told us about the wide game he played on the Russian tube network with a 14-year old who had started up Scouting in his apartment block in Moscow, months after the fall of the Iron Curtain. And most importantly, he told us how these experiences had shaped him, as a young man the same age as we are now, and convinced him that young people, both under and over 18, could be vehicles for change in the world and had so much to learn and to offer by meeting people from other countries. He then handed back over to Toby Parsons, contingent leader for the UK Moot contingent, who announced that pudding was ready. It was, I think, a sign of just how incredible a speaker John was that in a crowd of Scouts, the applause for his talk was greater than that for the announcement of pudding.
That evening and into the next morning, as I looked around me, I started to see these people John had been talking about. As I saw others getting on, laughing, and heckling the disco from the safety of the balcony upstairs where they weren't under any pressure to dance Gangnam Style with any kind of competency, I managed to get a sense that this trip was not simply another foreign excursion where we would soak up all the usual gumph about making friends for life, struggle with the language barrier and then go home. It also occurred to me, as I sat chatting to one of the people I had played the afternoon's game with, that perhaps the friendship we had started to forge in the face of adversity (adversity in this case being an utterly incomprehensible task with no discernible point) was more the point of the game we had played than whatever point we had in fact been searching for. I wondered if the Moot wasn't actually going to be like this throughout; a list of things to do which give 5,000 people an excuse to get to know each other, even if all we did with those activities was throw all our hands up in the air and go "what on earth are we supposed to be doing?!" It was a most enlightening experience, made all the more revelatory by the fact that it was set to the music of The Time Warp.
One of the final things John said to us was to bear three things in mind as we went through life; I was thrilled that they all started with the word "travel". He told us to travel with an open mind, an open heart, and an open wallet. All very good pieces of advice, and ones that I managed to put into practice when the briefing weekend broke up and we went home. A chap milling around the car park, Cameron, asked us if we were heading to London. Travelling with an open wallet, we took the opportunity to further reduce our fuel costs by letting him travel with us and splitting the fuel 4 ways instead of 3 (I think the advice was more to do with not being cheap on your travels and spoiling the experience for yourself, but the open wallet can accept money in as well as give it out!).
As we travelled south, I was struck by him and Libby, another Scout from Berkshire who hadn't been to the first weekend, talking about how excited they were to be a part of the Moot, and I realised that the even they were talking about did sound pretty exciting, and - hot damn! - I was going on it too! As we drove home I found my mind opening up just a little bit, and really getting excited about what we are about to embark upon. I was also struck by some very harsh criticism of my singing ability, but I managed to shelve that hurt and keep smiling (and, I argued, if we hadn't been listening to Elbow for half the journey and got some proper music on the radio, my singing might have improved).
Finally, John's words came back to me as we sped down the M42, and I found myself wondering: what was the Moot? Before this weekend I had viewed it as a bit of a holiday, something to reward the adults in Scouting for all the hard work they had done with their groups, districts, of whatever they helped with. To me (as I have said in an earlier blog), Scouting was something that was for children, and adults in the movement were there primarily to help develop those children. But that wasn't how John spoke about the Moot. He spoke about it as though it was an opportunity carry on learning. He spoke about it as though we 18-25 year-olds still had a reason to go to Scouts beyond passing on our enthusiasm and our knowledge to the kids. The Moot, it seemed to John, was an event that Scouting owed to us in some way, a forum they needed to provide for us to get together, to exchange ideas, beliefs, attitudes, and to try and make a difference in this world. Maybe, I thought to myself, Scouting wasn't entirely centred on children. Perhaps there was something in it for me; a 'young person', 'youth', 'motor-mouthed chap with more enthusiasm than sense'; whatever you want to call me. And maybe that thing wasn't about learning how to be good citizens, or how to care for the environment, or to canoe down a river. Maybe we have been given an opportunity to try and change the world, in big or small ways, and we just have to get on and take that opportunity.
Well, now, that sounds like an exciting thing to be a part of, doesn't it? Good thing I'm going! :)
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