Time Immortal

This is the third entry in a series in which I am transcribing my diary from the 21st World Scouts Jamboree into something “a little more readable and a little more descriptive…and, of course, a lot less ‘pen and paper’.”

Previous entries: July 24th | July 25th

Breakfast

I woke up at 6:00 AM again, and the thought crossed my mind to make a habit of doing so — the lines outside the food tent were short at that hour, and the food hot and fresh. They served the same mixture of bacon, sausages, eggs, hashbrowns, and stewed tomatoes, but as I’d found this to my liking the previous morning I didn’t mind the lack of variation.

Stewed tomatoes were definitely a superior option as compared to ketchup.

[thumb:4112:r:s=1:l=d]Faith and Beliefs

I spent most of the day working at the Faith and Beliefs area, helping out in the morning with general details (mostly in the Jewish display, again). After an hour or two, the volunteers were split up into groups to tour through the various religious displays, to both get a sense of what each display was focusing on, and to help each volunteer form an idea of which groups they would prefer to help, or prefer to avoid. Most of the displays were still in some stage of construction, but representatives from each stopped to give us explanations of what they had on offer.

[thumb:4116:r:s=1:l=d]The Muslim tent, for example, offered discussions of both the Sunni and Shia schools of Islam, and they had free Korans to hand out upon request in a variety of different languages. I took one in English, and found (to my delight) that it was an interlinear translation, lining up the English against the original Arabic text. I can’t read a whit of Arabic, of course, but I appreciate the scholarly gesture. Other events in the Muslim tent included Henna and some examples of traditional Arabic cuisine.

One aspect of the Muslim display that I found slightly disquieting was the ladies-only “how to fashion and wear a hijab” event. Apparently, the organizers of the display even had a digital camera on hand to take pictures of any participant trying on the headwear, which could then be emailed to the participant upon request. Make of that what you will, O Reader.

[thumb:4115:r:s=1:l=d]The Mormon tent also had an interesting display going, including a bank of computers connected to a massive online database that in theory could trace at least a portion of the family tree of almost anyone in the Western world. I didn’t get a chance to put these to the test, however.

[thumb:4113:r:s=1:l=d]Meanwhile, over at the Protestant display, one of the Church of England volunteers — in the middle of our conversation about the theology underpinning the displays that the Protestant group would be running — suddenly broke forth with a rather scathing condemnation of pluralism. I’m about as far from being a Protestant as possible, but I could appreciate what he was saying all the same.

After lunch, I wandered into the Catholic display and asked if there was some way in which I could help. One of the priests, Guido, gave me a job that involved suspending pictures of saints and other notable Catholics — exemplars of virtue, basically — in wooden frames using string, which would be used as a part of a display meant to foster personal reflection in the participants. I got about halfway through the pile, so to speak (there were seven frames that needed fabrication), when Guido introduced me to Anne-Laure and Romaine, a pair of volunteers from Switzerland; they had elected to volunteer in the Catholic display as well.

We ran low on string and had to improvise for a bit, but after a while some more twine arrived and we were able to frame the last of the pictures and descriptions. After that, the three of us were given a new (and somewhat more difficult) task: cutting wax.

[thumb:4120:r:s=1:l=d]One of the events at the Catholic display was candle-making, and to that end an Irish wax company — Rathbourne Candles, I believe — had donated four massive blocks of beeswax (several hundred Euros in value!) to us. These blocks needed to be chopped up into smaller bits — “bite-sized” might have been a better term for the size of pieces we were aiming for. So, armed with a saw, an axe, and a few other sundry tools, we set to work trying to turn four large pieces of wax into many, many smaller pieces.

It was not easy. I was staggeringly tired by the end of the day, but fortunately there was Mass in the evening, and I took that in order to unwind after a very physically strenuous day. Mass was multilingual, reflecting the fact that there were Catholics from all over the world at the Jamboree, and to be honest I didn’t mind this at all: I find it easier to be more reverent when I can’t *quite* understand everything that is said at Mass, as it adds to the sense of divine mystery.

I also got mistaken for an American for the first time — but then, I subsequently mistook for Australian the South African who mis-identified me, so it evened out. (oops!)

[thumb:4135:r:s=1:l=d]Writtle

Mass ended at about 6:15 PM, so I walked back to the adult sub-camp and lined up for dinner. I ate alone, unable to find any of the rest of the Crew, and so I got bored and decided to walk off in search of a phone which would accept the phone cards Grace had bought for me just prior to my leaving Canada (the Jamboree phones required the purchase of a special, Jamboree-only phone pass). Initially, I wandered back to Hylands House and the little restaurant next door, in the hopes of finding a public phone there. That didn’t pan out so well, but one of the waitresses there suggested that I set my feet upon the walking path just outside the restaurant and follow it to the north-west; it would lead me in due time to a little village called Writtle, she assured me, and I’d be able to find a phone there.

[thumb:4137:r:s=1:l=d]As I wrote previously, Writtle “is not a particularly big town, but it is quite old, dating back at least as far as 1210, when it was a Royal demesne comprising some 194 households. Robert the Bruce was born there in 1274.

It has been described, as I understand it, as one of the lovliest villages in England, and that’s a fairly fitting title for it, because the place is beautiful. In the middle of the village can be found a large Norman church which caught my eye (and camera lens) very easily indeed.

[thumb:4152:r:s=1:l=d]Walking through the graveyard here was, I think, the first of a few humbling experiences I had in England regarding the age of Canada as compared to England. One of the first gravestones I saw — not one pictured here, however — was dated 1837, which is both recent (by the standards of Writtle’s 800-year history) and older than Canada proper. Another tombstone hearkened back to the 1850s, again being older than Canada.

[thumb:4141:r:s=1:l=d]The churchyard was filled with graves, with only a couple of walking paths cutting across its grass, and many of the headstones were old indeed. Many, including the ones pictured here, were chipped and off kilter after so many years — or centuries — of standing vigil over the deceased.”

[thumb:4138:r:s=1:l=d]I eventually did find a public phone, and along the way I took a goodly number of pictures — if I didn’t finish off my one flash card, I certainly came close to doing so. It was pretty amazing just walking through this beautiful English town, as old and as steeped in history as it was. I don’t remember how much time I actually spent there — over an hour, almost certainly — but as the sun began to sink a little lower in the sky I made my way back to the Jamboree, and happened to bump into Jamie and Adam — two of the Crew — on the way back to the adult sub-camp. We were waylaid only briefly in our walk by a group of British Scouts who were completely taken with the red berets (which, in spite of the sunny weather, all three of us had decided to wear instead of our wide-brimmed, ear-protecting hats).

[thumb:4159:r:s=1:l=d]Back for the Evening

Back at the sub-camp, we skipped on beer owing to the fact that the bar was intensely crowded, and found a place to sid down nearer to our tents. Jamie asked if I’d managed to get a panoramic of the adult sub-camp from the top of a tower that had been erected near the showerhouse in the south-western part of the sub-camp. I admitted that I had not managed to do so, and he informed me that opportunities to do so would be pretty thin on the ground now that the tower had been fenced off for “safety reasons”. I resolved to somehow find a way to sneak up there.

[thumb:4161:r:s=1:l=d]And I learned that the name “Sioban” is pronounced “Chevon”, something I hadn’t known before. I forget exactly HOW I learned this, though, though I do remember that it was something that came up in a conversation at some point that evening.

I went to bed a bit early, my hands ringing in pain from my efforts against the wax, and hoped that the following day’s work would at least leave them mercifully numb.