COVER N. 484 - SRI LANKA

Postmark: Headquarters P. O. Colombo Mail 25.06.24

Posted on the 25th June; Received on the 4th July 2024

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Boy Scouts... one of the great frustrations of my childhood days...  happy to remember it though. Bohomȧ  sthoothi, Ravindra!

Faro, the city bordering the marshes of Ria Formosa and the Atlantic ocean  in the South of Portugal.

My father used to take me on long walks along the beach or in  the pine groves there and I still remember the pleasure I had when finding strange bottles washed ashore or the odd chameleon in the branches of the pine trees.

On one of those walks in the woods we came across a scouts camp. They were probably there for the weekend or so and the 5 or 6 year old that I was, was immediately fascinated by all the activity that was going on there in the centre of  the circle of neatly erected tents, carried out by boys who were not much older than I.

I told my father I wanted to participate in  such a thing. There was this aura of adventure and self-reliance in the air, and I just couldn't resist the thought of being a part of it

And I can't precisely remember it, after all it's almost 60 years past, but I think my father asked one of the older guys there how could one join, etc etc.

The headquarters of the Scouts in Faro was right on the way to the Gulbenkian Library, I wrote about here before. So, some days after this episode, on one of our joint excursions to the library, I asked dad to pass by the Scouts headquarters, so that I could enrol.

I was full of expectations and on my way to the library, I was already picturing myself with a striped scarf around my neck and a dandy hat, walking in the forest right into the heart of adventure.

But the scouts headquarters was closed. That day and on all the days after that we went by on our way to the library (it probably would only open on weekends, and we never went to the library on weekends...)

Not that much later on, dad would be transferred to Santa Maria in the Azores and we all went along. So I never became an a official Boy Scout. But the four years I spent in Santa Maria, more than compensated for this in  terms of personal development, adventure and contact with nature. Also given the deep religious nature of the organisation, sooner or later it would conflict with my own beliefs, so it was probably better for things to have evolved this way, even though, to this day, I can remember the frustration I felt from not having been a part of the organisation.

The three stamps on the cover are part of a ten x 50 Rupee stamp set dedicated to the Scouting Movement in Sri Lanka, issued on 21FEB2024.  The stamps have been issued both as a single minisheet with the 10 stamps or as 2 x 5 stamp souvenir sheets, one dedicated to Boy Scouts and the other to Girl Guides, the sheets being shaped cut in the format of both organisations emblems.