The Scouts

The school Scouts are amazing. They would put any sissy American Eagle Scout to shame. How many Eagle Scouts have you seen carry a kid eight kilometers to the hospital? How many Eagle Scouts have saved a school form burning down - twice? Probably none. All Eagle Scouts (glorified Webelos) are good for is being boring and wearing a bunch of badges on their uniforms.

Last week I was sitting in my office when I heard the school bell ringing and teachers screaming ndoo! ndoo! (bucket! bucket!). I stepped out to see the staff flinging plastic buckets from the second story of the admin building at the hundreds of students streaming out of their classes. Everyone was running towards the school dining hall. I looked up and saw a huge black cloud of smoking rising up above the hall. I immediately thought the students had delivered on their promise of a few months back to burn down the school. (The scouts saved us that time by quickly locating the hidden stock of gasoline).

So, I joined the party, grabbed a bucket and ran over there. The kitchen was on fire and it didn't take long to put it out. The problem was that the chimney on the roof was on fire as well, and the roof is high. As I enjoyed the entertainment from the outskirts of the 750 students and a dozen teachers, I had trouble figuring out which of the following were more amusing to me.

1. The Scouts came about 5 minutes after everyone else to climb on the roof and extinguish the fire. The reason they came late...they had to run to their dorms and change into their Scout uniforms. People could have died but apparently Scouts can't scout without proper atire. How many firemen have you seen putting out a fire in pants, a shirt and a tie?

2. The fire happened before lunch on Tuesday - the worst day of the week to have a fire because Tuesday is rice day. The other 6 days we eat ugali (stiff tasteless porridge). As I was watching the show I had to break up an altercation between a group of students; they were fighting over the last piece of a blackened burnt wad of rice.

The Scouts in uniform throwing buckets of water into the chimney and students eating burnt rice-dirt off the ground made for an eventful afternoon. Fortunately nobody was injured and we all learned a valuable lesson: all future fires should take place on days that are not Tuesday.