Ash' Springbok Service Project

My Springbok Service Project was definitely a long and hard job. The idea first came when speaking to Braam about the upkeep at Appleton during another Springbok Camp that I was staffing on. I later reached out to him to ask what needed to be done and we went from there.

Appleton has been an area that has been held close to the Scouting movement from years and so we only felt it necessary to show it the same love that it has shown us through our camps and stays there. And so, on the 3rd of July 2019 myself and a group of Scouts from 1st Muizenberg (namely Liam, Kiara, Jack, Dom, Enzo, Ethan and Matthew), went up to Appleton to give it just that.

Throughout our 4 day stay at Appleton we managed to clean out the entire bunk house, getting rid of every speck of dust and removing any unwanted arachnids. We then painted the walls with a fresh coat of paint. We painted the doors and redid the bunks, getting rid of any graffiti with sandpaper and giving them a fresh coat of varnish. "Why is there so much sanding" quickly became the phrase of the project as well as; "That's about as real as James Balenciagas".

We gave a fresh coat of paint to Braam's table that sat in his childhood home and cleaned out the two fridges that sit in the main room.

We then moved on to the bathrooms; cleaning the toilet bowls, getting rid of any dirt from the floors and walls and proceeded to give it a fresh coat of paint to match the bunkhouse. Although this sounds like an impossible job to some, the group pulled through and worked together to get the task done!

We had nights of Monopoly and saucepan tennis and even an ice-

cream sundae delivery, which only raised our morale and pushed us to work even harder.

At 16:00 on the 6th of July we packed up and left Appleton after taking pictures with Braam and thanking him for hosting such a wild group of kids and their strange choice in music (which played from 7:00-19:00 might I add).

I would like to thank everyone for coming down and helping out (a special mention to Connor W who came down on the last day to help, as well as Elizabeth who taped up a few doors for us). Thank you to my parents Debbie and Tony who helped out with lifts and bringing me coffee during long nights of planning and organizing this project, I appreciate and love you both. This project would not have been a success without the the help of all the amazing scouts and parents at 1st Muizenberg!!

YIS Ash Rorich Sandpipers Patrol Leader