Ticket to Life - A wider angle
On the way to the camp, despite their poverty, the street Scouts scraped just enough money to buy some snacks and drinks to share with new (and wealthier friends). “It’s what we do, they are guests in our country”. Driving through the camp gates, the faces of the Drgroretti Scouts were a sight to see - so many people, so many foreigners, so much colour, so much activity, just so much of everything and, inside each street Scout, so much trepidation! While, for their hosts, watching the bus grind into view, there was so much uncertainty. Then the bus stopped, the dust settled, the door opened and two worlds just collided in a spontaneous ocean of grins. During the afternoon, the two groups fused into one. That night, the eighteen caught During the World Rover Moot, in Nairobi this year eighteen Scouts were selected for a unique experience.
Eight international Scouts were to spend a couple of days with ten of their peers from a group of street Scouts in Drgroretti, a shanty village, about twenty kilometres away from the camp. As a photographer, it was interesting to observe each group over the two days - each confident in their own setting - the international Scouts comfortable on the Jamboree site, seasoned travellers at ease with their peers from other countries, and the Drgroretti guys, who are “kings of the streets” in the slum areas of Nairobi … But when it came to passing outside of their own comfort zones, what would happen? the bus to Drgroretti. This time, it was the Scouts from the Moot who were overawed, not just by the appalling deprivation but by how their counterparts, with the help of the Kenya Scouts, had risen above the squalor. They sat and listened in admiration and respect to the stories about their struggle for life. They danced to local music and ate a hearty local feast prepared by the Drgroretti hosts.
Next day, “Goodbye” came as a huge, unwanted, wrench. They had to be prised apart. Yet, as they separated there was no longer any barrier between them, no stereotypes, just young Scouts with aspirations and dreams. The impact of each group on the other was so profound that there are eighteen more Messengers of Peace and another part of the world has been changed.
Yoshi Shimizu has worked for 10 years on different field assignments for the Foundation but in his visit to the World Scout Moot - a camp for older teenagers in Nairobi - he witnessed for himself how boundaries dissolve.