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AFRICAN ADVENTURES
Lord Baden-Powell of Gilwell

CHAPTER I
OFF TO AFRICA

WELL, here I am, off again overseas! I have only been home for about two months from Australia and Canada, and now I am starting off to visit Scouts in East Africa that is, in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika. Look at the map, see where they are, and come with me in imagination. I will tell you, as we go along, what they are like, what sort of people I meet, and something about the wild animals there. When I was in those parts before, I used to go out shooting them, and I hope to do so again this time, but I shall be using a movie camera for the job instead of a rifle.

SMOKELESS EAST LONDON

When East Africa has had enough of me I shall go on to East London, not the smoke-begrimed, crowded East End of London in England, but the sunny, seaside city in South Africa. That is where the Boy Scouts of all the South African Provinces are going to assemble in a Jamboree camp, early in January. Then I shall trot up to Rhodesia, where in old days I saw a good deal of fighting with Matabele warriors, and where my son Peter is in the Mounted Police to-day. Africa is a big bit of the earth’s surface, and it will take me a lot of time to get round it, so, though I am starting now, in October, I shall not be back in England before July next. Still, it will be great fun to see all those brother Scouts in so many different countries, and, you bet, I shall enjoy it I only wish you could all come with me. Wouldn’t you like to go and have a peep at some of those distant lands? Well, very likely you will do so later on, and, meantime, I will tell you what I think of them, and you can thus make up your mind as to which you would like to visit when your chance comes to go overseas. In the meantime, through Scouting, you can prepare yourself for life overseas. Scouts must, as part of their training, be accustomed to living in the open; they have to know how to put up tents or huts for themselves; how to lay and light a fire; how to kill, cut up, and cook their food; how to tie logs together to make bridges and rafts; how to find their way by day and by night in a strange country and so on. In Scouting you learn all these things as part of your work and games; and so when you go overseas you know how to fend for yourself in a strange place. You will not be an utterly helpless tenderfoot.

Table of Contents

Frontispiece
Pentwall
Chapter I. Off To Africa
Chapter II. Tugs
Chapter III. Marseilles
Chapter IV. Egypt
Chapter V. The Red Sea—Port Sudan—Aden
Chapter VI. British East Africa
Chapter VII. Africa From The Air
Chapter VIII. The Jamboree At East London
Chapter IX. Durban
Chapter X. Through South Africa
Chapter XI. Rhodesia
Chapter XII. Two- And Four-Legged Animals
Chapter XIII. St. Helena, Ascension, And Home


	The Scouting story continues down to the present day at the website of the Boy Scouts Association of Zimbabwe, Matabeleland Province and of the 1st Bulawayo (Pioneer) Scout Group.
	The Baden-Powell Library. A Selection of excerpts from the works of Lord Baden-Powell and works relating to his life and career.
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