SANJAMB: 2001 Report
Vaal Dam, Gauteng: SANJAMB 2001
10 to 19 December
Eastern Cape Contingent's Report
On 9th December a big group of scouts, girl guides and a few troop Scouters and guiders met at Greenacres. We loaded the bus, said our goodbyes and left for the Vaal Dam. As usual, Algoa booked the back of the bus and we were the noisiest bunch!! Just after midnight, when nearly everyone was asleep, Darryl (Kalvin's brother) decided to wake up everyone and sing campfire songs. On the 10th we finally arrived at SANJAMB, around 10H00. We got our T-shirts, scarves and our first SANJAMB newsletter. Then we went looking for our Sub Camp, offloaded the equipment and had the whole day to set up camp, get to know the place and meet other people. That night was the opening ceremony.
Every morning we woke up at 05H30, had breakfast, and at 08H00 our activities started. They ended at 17H00. We did Gladiators, pulling, solar cooking, water tube rafting, hiking, orienteering, mountain biking, shooting, sailing, canoeing, water snake, paintball, radio pioneering, obstacle course through the mud, backwoods cooking and even dyeing of hair and T-shirts, and polishing our nails which Jared, Peter, Phillip and Kalvin did.
At night there were parties or games evenings (the PE group came 2nd!!) and one of the evenings we got taught barn dancing. It usually was very hot during the day, but the day we arrived, one of the other nights and the last night we were caught in a thunder storm and everything got soaked. We met lots of wonderful people and made new friends!
I would like to say thank you to Butterfly for being our mom during SANJAMB and letting us use her cell phone to phone home. Thank you to Scotty for finding someone who could get us there safely, and to our Troop Scouters, fellow scouts and committee for finding and supporting fundraising projects which made it possible to pay half of our transport to Gauteng. And a special thank you to our wonderful parents for finding the money and allowing us to go to such an awesome, fun and unforgettable holiday. Sarah Lower
On the way to SANJAMB, everyone was very hyped up on the bus. We got there at about 10H00. When we received our scarves we were told to go to the blue sub camp. Our sub camp chief was Dave Cooper and we had a troop Scouter who looked after our troop. His name was Buffalo (the gigolo). We had a range of activities to do. We started at 08H00 and ended at 17H00. My favourite thing was meeting new people (chicks). There were three more sub camps: green, yellow and red. There were over 900 people from South Africa and other parts of the world. The 2nd night was the barn dance and the 3rd was a disco. The 7th night was about astrology (boring) and the 8th night was a hectic live party with bands Tweak and Wonderboom. For our day activities we had to go to a different base every day: blue base (water activities), violet base (commando course and paintball), green base (hiking and shooting) yellow base (body base, dyeing of hair, tattoos, etc) red base (gladiators) and orange base (mountain biking). Karl Kafer and Kalvin Garner
With acknowledgements to Algoa Anchor News and OUTTRAY Cape Eastern Newsletter Vol 13 No 1 Jan/Feb 2002