WE’VE just had a most interesting experience, interacting with a group of Girl Guides on a conservation programme. You may have seen a piece in last week’s newspaper on the subject, but let me explain.
Some weeks ago I was approached by Girl Guides South Africa and asked if I could organise a conservation programme for a group of Guides coming down to Trafalgar from the East Rand for a week during the holidays.
Now, let me say this, I have had nothing to do with teenage girls since I was a teenager myself, and the circumstances were very different then. Anyway, I obviously agreed to help and pulled in my friends and colleagues in the Trafalgar Conservation Group.
I organised a nature walk through Trafalgar Valley, a project of our group involving a 24ha piece of declared conservation land which we look after for the Hibiscus Coast Municipality. We followed this with a beach walk through the Trafalgar Marine Reserve, with special stops for talks on fossils and the Portuguese shipwrecks for which this coastline is notorious.
Then one of our members, Pam Osborn, an 11 times Comrades Marathon runner and mountain climber of note, gave the girls something of a pep talk on how to run the marathons and climb the mountains that life tends to offer.
For reasons already stated I was a little nervous about the whole exercise, but when we first met the girls on that Saturday morning down in the Trafalgar Valley, I knew we were in for a good experience. They were all in the 15 to 17-year age group and from every conceivable background on the East Rand, but they had one thing in common – a lively interest in everything around them.
As a matter of interest, one of the issues that came up was global warming, and I have to point out that while the girls were here we had the coldest night we have had in 10 years. It was 7°C, and it rained. Why do I mention this? Because our Girl Guides were camping – perhaps this is an indication that these girls are made of the right stuff.
The leader of the group, Elaine van Zyl, told me that the Girl Guides are, “encouraged to live by their motto, ‘Look Wide’, and learn about the diversity and challenges of the world in which the live. Through a progressive, non-formal education programme they gain skills which prepare them to be responsible citizens of their communities”. Hear, hear to that, and we were delighted to be able to play a part in that programme.
The girls were camping, in tents, and we had a 10-year record low of 7°C, day time high of 15°C and we were bragging about it. Meanwhile, as we were languishing in such temperate luxury my brother-in-law phoned from their farm in the New England district in the Eastern Cape – they had a minimum of -15°C (that’s minus 15°C) and a day time high of -3°C. Not a lot of camping going on up there. Cheers!
