Camping

My husband took dd9, dd7, and dd4 camping the past two nights. We had planned for them to go camping during Mongolia weeks--since so many Mongolians still live nomadic lifestyles--but it didn't work out. Happily our current country of focus, Zimbabwe, is connected to camping via the Scouting movement.

Over a hundred years ago around Bulawayo, a city in then Rhodesia and now Zimbabwe, British soldier Robert Baden-Powell commanded recon missions in hilly enemy territory and got many of the ideas that he put into a small manual he later wrote called "Aids to Scouting." The popularity of this manual led to the founding of the international Scouting movement:

In 1900, Baden-Powell became a national hero in Britain for his 217-day defense of Mafeking in the South African War. Soon after, Aids to Scouting, a military field manual he had written for British soldiers in 1899, caught on with a younger audience. Boys loved the lessons on tracking and observation and organized elaborate games using the book. Hearing this, Baden-Powell decided to write a nonmilitary field manual for adolescents that would also emphasize the importance of morality and good deeds.

Excerpt from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/boy-scouts-movement-begins

I love Boy Scout manuals. As a girl, I would pore over my brother's Scout manuals, and what knowledge I have of knots and the Morse code is from them. My husband was involved in Boy Scouts for years and loves to camp. He's quite good at setting up tents and building fires. I was never involved in Girl Scouts, but our church does have a summer camp program that I regularly went to as a teenager, so I also love camping (but not with babies or toddlers). I'm glad that my husband is passing on the benefit of his years in Scouts to our daughters now.