The Hardest Three Weeks Of My Life

So, it has been over 6 months since I went on this trip. There's many reasons this post has taken that long to put together. Mainly because of the title (like the headline, not trying to think of a title).

Me at the World Scout Jamboree in 2019

In 2019 I went to my first ever World Scout Jamboree. It was in America and we travelled from New York, to West Virginia (where the camp was), Washington DC, and then on to Canada. A World Scout Jamboree is a wonderful experience. In America there were around 45,000 Scouts from around the world all sharing a campsite. This means having meals together, completing adventurous activities with each others support and taking part in cultural celebrations. That time of my life was incredible.

Unfortunately, this wasn't replicated when I went to the 2023 World Scout Jamboree in South Korea. In contrast, this was one of the most difficult and exhausting times of my life. A few weeks before we were due to fly out we heard on the news that the site had been flooded due intense weather - not the most ideal start to a journey to the other side of the world. We were assured that the site would be ready for us when we eventually flew out, so we continued our travel plans.

We arrived in Seoul and the heat hit us like a brick wall. We'd arrived in Korea during one of their biggest heatwaves in recent time (knowing we were going to be living in a field for 10 days didn't feel me with a lot of joy at this point). But for the first few days we were staying in hotels so had a chance to explore the city of Seoul while acclimatising ourselves to the scorching heat and high humidity we'd landed in.

We had a great time in Seoul. We visited museums, ate from some of the best Korean BBQ places and even tried some chicken feet from street food vendors - I wouldn't recommend them. And as we approached our departure date to head to site I was called into an all leaders meeting. The UK Contingent (our management team) explained that they'd made the decision that the UK Scouts wouldn't be travelling to the Jamboree site on the day planned and had given the Jamboree organisers 48 hours to get the site ready. So we had one more day in Seoul (we actually ended up leaving one day later than planned so not the full 48 hours were used).

When we eventually travelled to the site, we arrived and we were met by a vast, flat landscape which had been reclaimed from the sea. This meant the ground was practically all sand and there was very little shade other than structures put in the camp. Within two hours of us being on the campsite we had to prepare to go to the Opening Ceremony. Having been given no food and only just having enough time to put our tents up, we made our way to the line to walk to the arena. Along the route, the temperature really started to effect some of our Scout's health. Multiple Scouts from our group decided to had back to camp rather than going to the opening ceremony. This is where it started going downhill for us.

One of our Scouts had started to feel really faint, dizzy and his legs were going weak. I phoned for an ambulance and we made our way to the medical centre on site. When we arrived it was like a war zone. There were young adults everywhere. There weren't enough beds for everyone who needed medical attention and within 10 minutes of us being there it became clear that they had ran out of IV drip bags with the majority of the people in the medical centre being there for dehydration.

Trips to the medical centre became a regular occurrence for members of my group. Luckily no one had any lasting health problems but we did end up taking multiple members of the group there over our time on camp.

We stayed on site for 4 days before being taken out of the event by the UK contingent management team and taken back to Seoul where we were in much safer conditions.