Written by Annie Spriggs Year 12

The summer of Year 11. Ten weeks: no school, no worries, no responsibility. Nothing more than a jam-packed summer of sun, sea, and … cholera?!

Well for me and 40,000 other young people, that was the story of our summer, when we travelled from all corners of the globe as participants of the 25^th World Scout Jamboree. An event, which similar to the Olympics, happens once every four years in a different country.

Attended by carefully selected scouts from over 150 countries, the quadrennial event is a celebration of culture, a converging of young people, and most importantly, a salute to the movement of scouting, and the principles which it promotes. Regardless of race, Religion, or even the language we know our scout laws, the neckerchiefs seen around everyone’s necks show the overwhelmingly large family of which we are all a part: The World-Wide Family of Scouting.

Yet, when I was selected to represent the UK in the February of 2022, the experience I would come to have was nothing of what was initially expected…

After a total of 15 hours flying, the UK Contingent had safely landed in Seoul, South Korea. Where my unit (Unit 14), spent an amazing 7 days exploring a totally foreign city. Two words culture shock. Within this week we spent as much time as we could exploring markets, Hanock villages, the compulsory touristy bits, and so much more, all while facing out largest battles: the Seoul Metro, and how to feed the vegetarians – the first ‘taste’ of the troubles which would only grow as our time in Korea progressed.

A personal highlight of mine from this first week was having the privilege of visiting the DMZ. The Korean DMZ (Demilitarised Zone) is the region that demarcates North Korea from South Korea – The 38^th Parallel. This unique opportunity left every one of us speechless, The history we learned, what we saw with out own eyes, and the locals we spoke to was honestly just unbelievably difficult to comprehend, and something I am incredibly grateful to have experienced.

Other highlights have to be getting tickets to watch a baseball game, going up the N-tower (being able to see the entire of Seoul from half a kilometre above sea level), and eating in what we initially thought was a restaurant, however turned out to be more similar to a very enthusiastic Korean man’s kitchen. You can’t get more authentic than that, although you probably also can’t get much closer to food poisoning than that!

However things soon began to take a turn, as the night before we were set to move to site, we were told by our unit leader that we would not be leaving for site early the next morning, we infact did not know when we would be leaving for site, where we would be sleeping the following night, or what the next two weeks now held. When asked by a member of our unit whether it was a possibility that we would be staying in Seoul indefinitely, it was a question that just couldn’t be answered. The trip of a lifetime that had been in the works for over 5 years had been flipped upside down in a matter of hours, as the site we were meant to be living on for the next two weeks was flooded. Funny that… Seeing as it was built on what used to be an 8.8 square kilometre rice field… And it was the beginning of August. For anyone confused: rice fields are built to flood, and it was now rainy season – what genius thought of that?!

Our ‘Homeless In Korea’ era had officially begun.

However, we were the lucky ones. We only had to spend one additional night in Seoul before moving to site as out pitch had dried up in the 36 degree heat. Despite the expected 12 days on site, we would come to only end up staying there for 5, as the problems which we thought we were aware of, were infact not even a fraction of the true issues on site at The 25^th World Scout Jamboree.

On the evening of what we would learn to be our penultimate night, we were once again sat by our unit leader and told that every single UK scout would be evacuated from site within the next 48 hours. There is no true way to describe how we were feeling: we were angry at the Korean ‘organisers’, sad to be leaving, yet relieved, as even we as sixteen-year-olds were beginning to feel uneasy in the conditions we had been put in. The state of the toilets was… questionable, the showers were… dry, and the food was… nowhere to be found.

But still amongst the uncertainty, the overwhelming determination of everyone on site to make the most of the time we had left, was the only fuel we needed to keep the fire of the jamboree burning (scout pun intended). We had so far managed to make the most of what we had; using the drinking hoses to have shower parties with our Belgian neighbours, keeping us both clean and cool in the scorching heat; doing tai-chi with the Japanese in the mornings, and playing in a national volleyball tournament with the teams in our sub-camp from Cape Verde, Senegal, Australia, and Belgium.

Although it may not sound fantastic, these 5 days were the best days of my life.

Swiftly following the hesitant departure of the UK contingent, it was announces that the entire site would also be evacuated, moving the participants into university halls, temples, hostels, and anywhere that could be found. My unit was allocated six hotel room, that worked out as one double bed per five girls – an experience we loved, thinking of it as just a long sleepover. We managed to maintain the ‘glass half full’ kind of mindset that we had on site. Yet the only difference now was the glasses were half full because we chose for them to be, not because we were living in a flooded camp with limited water.

Some may consider the 25^th World scout Jamboree to be a failure, some may criticise the Korean Scout movement for the poor organisation of the event, and some may say we were deprived of the Jamboree experience (and food). And to those people I entirely agree… If you take the literal sense of the word. The Oxford dictionary states that a Jamboree is ‘a large celebration or party, typically a lavish and boisterous one - NOUN’. I disagree.

To me, Jamboree is a verb. A doing word.

For while our Jamboree was cut short, oh we Jamboreed.