Welcome to Scouts, soldiers!

It's the last week before finals, when Teacher Brian James planned to review for finals and to give the students ample time for comic book completion. "Due to circumstances beyond my control" (there's a shout-out for you), Srinagarinda The Princess Mother School Phayao instead decided to turn its boys into men and its girls into womyn--for my feminist readers.

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Reader, take a moment, a serious moment, and contemplate what Scouts means to you. What do Scouts do on overnight camp outs? What valuable survival skills should a Scout demonstrate? Think... and some more... construct some vibrant mental imagery...

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Now, picture this:

A group of girls, not-yet-ripely aged, donned in matching light blue, loose-hanging pajamas tromp through the mellow tans of the dry season rice paddies. In their hands they carry with faux importance forked sticks, reddened by their dripping blood--oh poot len, kidding, they painted them red beforehand--, and upon their heads rest forest green fisherman's hats. The midday sun beats down on their matching black backpacks, each emblazoned with the school crest, and disguises the distant mountains, each with their own set of browning foliage, behind a hazy foreground. Forty pairs of effulgent ivory eyes reside contrastingly behind forty dark countenances, disguised in earthen clays reminiscent of a long-gone tradition, an odd but modernly idolized tribal hunt.

I wait with four comrades, taking cramped yet cool refuge in a dilapidated bamboo hovel. The nearly impenetrable heat reduces us to idol onlookers, gazing lazily across the heat distorted remains of the previous rice crop. A train of blue, red, and black figures appear ant-like near the horizon, gathering girth with step, their impending nearness a menace to our languorous spirit. When the spectacle arrives, the forty individuals assemble as if trained and await an unexpectedly puerile set of tasks.

What we do with these Scouts after they arrive:

1. We force them to construct a teepee with their (walking?) sticks. Then, we knock it down and tell them it did not meet our standards.
2. We make them perform a song and dance number for us. We tell them that it was atrocious and that they must do it again with our suggested quickly crescendoing and flamboyant "Hey!" at the end.
3. We have them play a game during which their goal is to grab a fellow Scout's finger when the word "rabbit" (krathai) is spoken aloud.
4. We direct them to the location of the next station, where the food will be served and where the tents, fire, water, showering area, and a new set of clean pajamas have been prepared for them.

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*Two slow shakes of the head for objective-action misalignment*

At least, they seemed to have fun.