Mexican Scouting - a brief introdction

I've now had the pleasure of meeting quite a lot of Mexican Scouts from the Quintana Roo region of Mexico, (on the Yucatan Peninsula, including Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Merida), so I think I can start to let you know about how they work and what they are like compared to us back in the UK. Of course, some of the details might be different in other regions, but if they are then I'll let you know in a subsequent post. Of course, this does mean that you will need to keep reading to find out if anything changes!

First - the sections. split down quite similar lines to the UK sections, but the first section pretty much incorporates beavers and cubs together. So from 6-10 years old is the Menadas, the equivalent of our cub scouts (Menada means cub in espanol).The next section up is the Tropa , or Troop, from ages 11-14, pretty much the same as our Scouts. Up next is the equivalent of our Explorer Scouts, the Caminantes, or Pioneers, ages 14-18. Once you graduate from the Caminantes, you have the Clan de Rovers, (the Rover Clan) who correspond with our Scout Network, but only go from ages 18-22. After the ages of 22 you become a Scouter, or a Scout Leader. This means that, at 23, I should technically be a scouter.



It was just a bit unfortunate that the rovers adopted me first!

The sections, as in the UK, are easily identifiable by the colours of their shirts; Yellow for the Memadas, Green for the Tropa, Dark Blue for the Caminantes, Red for the Clan de Rovers, and Scouters wear a light blue/grey shirt. The shirts are all the same style, so it's only the colours that differ; unlike the UK, the Menadas wear full shirts instead of jumpers. The official scout trousers in Mexico are also far cooler than the UK Scout trousers, and the model they took the sizing from seems to have actually been a genuine human being instead of whatever it was they based the UK trouser sizes on! They zip off to make shorts, which I suppose is necessary given the weather, and for the girls there is an option very similar to the old Girlguiding Culottes, only more hardwearing - shorts with fabric over the front and back so they resemble a skirt.

There's quite a bit more pageantry surrounding the scouts that I've seen so far; on the camp, each group had their own banner to mark their area, and the individual patrols in the different Tropas all had made their own flags, so when they all formed up they really looked quite good! Each section also has their own chants (which I won't pretend to have remembered or understood), which made it quite hard for the county commissioner to get everyone's attention when trying to close the camp! Its something that I think we could do a bit more in the UK, it was quite apparent that the kids were getting into the spirit of things quite a lot more thanks to all the chanting and the jumping and the flags. In fact, especially with the Menadas, the leaders really struck me as being tremendously excited about what they were doing there; they were certainly jumping around enough!

As for the programme, the only section I can talk about is the Clan de Rovers; while on camp I attended a four hour forum about their community service projects (surprisingly, it wasn't boring, despite being in Espanol!) It seems that the rovers here include, as part of their programme, various service projects which they conceive of, organise and run. Suggestions at the forum included beach cleaning, painting the bottoms of trees to prevent ants from destroying them, and other things which I didn't get time to ask about as I was whisked away by an avid badge collector to talk about badges. But the idea struck me as one that we could use in the UK - how big a part of community service is Scouting, these days? We have our resurrected version of bob a job week, but certainly for groups in my area, this is about it. And it’s certainly true that one of the reasons Network doesn’t work that well in many places is a lack of focus. What if we incorporated these service projects into our programme for network, and so gave them something to base their programme around? Of course they would do other things, but making a difference in their local community might give them a bit of focus – and, of course, help the community, which is one of the things Scouting was originally built around! Because the planning and organising are all part of the process too, you can try literally any project you want – arranging it with the local council, getting paperwork; all these are part of the challenge!

So there you have it. No doubt I will add more as I go, but right now I need to send some more couchsurfing requests and pack for Merida and the 38 degree heat they were talking about on the TV earlier. Wish me luck!