Guide Visit in Santa Fe
Friday, June 1st, 2007
Firstly, this is a very long post all about Guiding, those of you not interested, please turn to the next entry.
Secondly, I apologise that it is so long it is copied straight from an account sent to the Guides in Guernsey.
The Guider I had been in touch with for a few months before I arrived in Argentina was Gisela Carrizo, the regional training co-ordinator for the Santa Fe zone, known as the “Big Chief” zone. We had been e-mailing for a few months arranging the visit and she had been incredibly helpful providing me with lots of information about the region and places to stay in the city.
On a very muggy Saturday afternoon Gisela collected me from the hotel to drive me to the meeting; her English was excellent as she is an English teacher, so all of my communication worries were quickly resolved – for now at least. We drove out of town for about ten minutes to a small park and community hall in the suburbs of Santa Fe where the Guide and Scout groups meet every Saturday. Argentina is divided into Guiding Zones, and the units are known as communities. The First group we were going to visit was the “Comunidad Guia No. 1, San Pablo”. This week was the first meeting of the new term, so things were different to a normal meeting, and I was excited to see how their meetings differed.
In good weather the girls meet outside in the park, and all age groups meet together for a large part of the meeting, from age five to 19. Usually they wear a uniform very similar to ours, a t-shirt and a neckerchief for their age group, but as it was the first meeting only a few girls wore uniform.
The meeting starts with an opening prayer and bible reading, before announcing the activities for the afternoon. But first, they had to introduce their special guest – ME!! And there was no avoiding it, I would have to have to try out my best Spanish on a group of over thirty staring girls – including teenagers! Well, I managed to introduce myself and explain where I was from, but then after some spluttering and apologies for my lack of Spanish, Gisela came to my rescue and acted as translator. At first the girls were shy and didn´t ask questions, but as the meeting went on they were full of questions about Guides in Guernsey, where was Guernsey? Why was I called Butterfly? (In Argentina Guiders are know by their first names) and all sorts of other questions, which I answered as best I could with help from Gisela.
After the introductions, the leaders announced that the theme for the new term would be “Fruit” and as such, each girl had already been asked to bring along a piece of fruit at the start of the meeting. Using the different fruits as the deciding factor the girls were put into groups of mixed ages (a group of apples, a group of pears etc.) for the start of the wide game. The teams were then transformed into countries by way or copious amounts of coloured face paint – I of course was in the Argentinean team.
The activity for the meeting was a wide game themed around travelling to the Scouting Jubilee on Brownsea Island, I’m not sure if this was for my benefit or not, but it did involve a lot of complicated questions about British transport systems, including whether or not it would be possible to travel down the M4 on roller-skates! To arrive at the camp, the girls had to complete a number of activities involving crossing rope bridges, cracking codes and one particularly aggressive game involving shoe throwing at head height which I’m not sure would be permitted under the UK guidelines!! It was a very elaborate and well thought out wide game and all the girls had a terrific time with all of the ages working together.
After the game was the more ceremonial part of the meeting where the new girls were welcomed and girls that had moved to a different section met their new leaders. In order to do this all of the leaders hid around the park and blew a special whistle sound so that the girls in their section could find them. Each section then had a particular song as they marched from their hiding place back into a circle. It was wonderful to watch, although I understood very little of the songs.
At the end of the meeting each section sat together for a few moments to have “Mate” (a traditional Argentinean herb tea) and biscuits. I sat with the older girls for a few minutes and we were able to chat for a while, with my basic Spanish, their bits of English and Gisela’s kind translation. They were fascinated to hear about where I was travelling and for how long. It is I think, difficult for them to imagine earning enough money to be able to travel for that long and I almost felt a bit guilty explaining the extent of my trip.
After the meeting ended Gisela and I moved on to visit a second Guide unit, “Comunidad Guia No. 6, Nuestra Señora de Lujan”, who meet in the local Zoo (although I don’t think they’re permanent residents!). Unfortunately the girls had all but left but one of the other Guiders showed me round and told me all about the training you have to undertake to be a guider in Argentina. Essentially the training is very similar, they have about two or three years supervised training in similar key areas as the UK training scheme. Often they start taking responsibility as older guides, in a similar way to Young Leaders. The major difference is that the Argentine training scheme involves training for camps as well, and each year all sections travel to a different province to hold a week long camp together. In Argentina I learnt, most of the Guiders are young women in their 20s and early 30s, who have yet to have greater family responsibilities. Most women start their training to become Guiders after being “Guias Meyores” (Young Leaders).
Guiding in Argentina is divided into five sections (roughly matched to UK sections):
• Pimpollitos (Rosebuds – a fact that stood me in good stead in Spanish Taboo on a recent occasion!) age 5 & 6 = to Rainbows
• Alitas (Little Wings) age 7 to 10 = to Brownies
• Caravanas (I think as it sounds “Caravans” I have no idea why and someone with better Spanish might want to correct me?!) age 10 to 12 = to Guides
• Guias del Sol (Sun Guides) age 13 to 15 = to Rangers
• Guias Mayores (Oldest Guides) age 16 to 19 = to Young Leaders
Visiting the Guides in Argentina was a fabulous experience. It was great to see how differently they conduct their meetings, and yet how similar all of the activities and trainings etc essentially were. To me, an important part of Guiding is that it is an international organisation, that we do in a very real sense have Guiding friends all around the world, never has this been more evident to me that in the warmth of the welcome I received in Santa Fe from Gisela and everyone I met. I think that receiving a visitor from the other side of the world also makes that element of international Guiding real to the girls in the younger sections and I hope one day that Gisela might be able to visit my Brownies in Guernsey.
I spent the rest of the weekend in Santa Fe with Gisela and her family, they took us on a tour around the city, we sampled some of the cities nightlife and then on Sunday we were invited to Sunday dinner at their home where I was interested to see photos of Gisela herself as a Guide, froma a Pimpollito to a Gias Meyores. I should also mention that in the weeks before I visited Santa Fe the large parts of the city had been devastated by heavy flooding and the damage was evident during my visit. Fortunately none of the Guides in the units I visited had been affected but many had in other parts of the city. The older Guides, the Guias del Sol and Guias Mayores, had also played an important part in the volunteer clean up operations in the city.
During the last few months I have also been in touch with Maria Paz Hermosilla, International Commissioner for WAGGGS in Chile and I hope to be able to visit her in Santiago and other Guide units in the north of Chile in October.
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