MRS. SUE COMPTON
Quite appropriately my first guiding memory is of the day I was enrolled. I had been a Lone Guide for a time, and had then been asked to form a Brownie Pack at Sydney-on-Vaal - a tiny and pretty village on the alluvial diamond diggings, forty miles West of Kimberley.
On the 23rd May, 1933, the Division Commissioner, Mrs. Daisy Eden, came out from Kimberley to enrol me, present my Warrant, enrol my Brownies and to form a L.A. Committee. All the villagers had been invited and it was quite a festive occasion.
For me it was an ordeal. My Father had decreed that after the Ceremony I would have to stand up and say thank you, and as I had never made a speech in public before I was terrified! The day came, and after a practically sleepless night, I rose at the crack of dawn and started to rehearse my speech. I must have disturbed my young brother, who rushed to my parents, concern all over his face and said, "I think Sue has gone mad. She's standing in front of the mirror in her pyjamas saying 'Mrs. Eden, Ladies and Gentlemen' over and over again!"
I'm happy to add that all went well, and now, as a Division Commissioner myself, I often look back and remember the unfailing sympathy, help and encouragement that Mrs. Eden gave to a very young and inexperienced Guider, and try, in my own way, to emulate her example.
I remember taking my Brownies, twenty miles on the back of a lorry, over dusty, bumpy roads, in the blazing heat of summer, to Barkley West to meet the Chief Guide. By today's standards, such a journey might be frowned on, but we managed it, and came home enriched with memories of a wonderful occasion that I, for one, will never forget.
A wonderful memory is of my first camp in 1936. Fifty us from the Northern Cape spent ten days at the Victoria Falls. My first camp; my first visit to Rhodesia; My first sight of the Falls; how could l ever forget it? It was also my first experience of meeting Guiders of other places and I remember how the Mafeking Guides were at the station to regale us with tea and buns as our train passed through, and of course, the wonderful day of sight-seeing and entertainment by the Guides when we reached Bulawayo.
The Falls area was far more primitive than it is now, but our camping ground was beautiful, set among lovely big trees. The only thing was, hordes of monkeys lived in the trees and though amusing at times, were also rather a nuisance. I remember, as one of the Cooks Patrol, putting a loaf of bread on the table, reaching out for a knife and turning back in time to see a monkey disappearing up a nearby tree with the whole loaf of bread.
Our "bathrooms" were made from hessian screening erected under the trees, and the sight of fifty Girl Guides performing their ablutions held an irresistable fascination for the monkeys. They would congregate in the trees above, peer down at us, and chatter madly. Their little faces were so oddly human, that at times, we'd feel quite embarrassed at their invasion of our privacy! I remember one morning thinking it was raining and looked up to find a small monkey on a branch directly above me! Thereafter I used to take my umbrella with me when I went to bath, much to the amusement of my tent mates! We used to call them our 'little brothers' but when describing their antics were always very careful to explain that we were referring to the monkeys - not the Boy Scouts!
Soon after this I moved to Kimberley and took over a very lively Brownie Pack there. I remember one outing very well. I had read in a Guide magazine that eggs could be successfully cooked by coating them in mud and placing them in the hot ashes of a campfire. Being young and foolish, it never entered my head to try this out before doing it with the Brownies. For the next meeting I told the Brownies to bring an egg with them and we hiked to a nearby field. Here each Six (under adult supervision) made a fire and each Brownie made a mud pie with an egg embedded in the centre of it. Then each mud pie was ceremoniously placed on the embers. Within moments there was a loud "Pop" and egg and mud flew in all directions. What went wrong, I still don't know. Possibly the embers were too hot. It was not long before pops and splutters were coming from all sides of the field and by the time the 24th egg and mud pie had exploded we were all convulsed with laughter. It was certainly not what I'd planned, but the Brownies loved it and insisted that our cooking failure had been far more fun than any success could possibly have been.
About this time it was decided that the Kimberley Guides needed their own Hall and a big fund raising Fete was planned. My Brownies were to run the sweet stall and months of effort went into our preparations. The date was fixed - 1st September, 1939 - and when the news of Germany's invasion of Poland came out, it was too late to withdraw, the Fete had to go on. How well I remember working with other Guiders that afternoon, setting up the stall, while their faces registered their grim determination to "smile and sing" even while we knew in our hearts that we were on the brink of war. The parents and the public were wonderful. Perhaps they looked on it as a "final fling"; whatever the reason, that Fete was a resounding success: and I was there ten years later, when Lady Baden-Powell opened Kimberley's lovely Guide Hall.
With the outbreak of war, I exchanged my navy blue uniform for a khaki one and it was in the late 1940s that I was able to come back into the Guiding world. At that time my job precluded any regular guiding activity, but a friend who worked as a Wayfarer Guider made me a "part-time trainer" and whenever my office duties permitted I would attend Wayfarer meetings, and take sessions on some aspect of Guide work.
One of these sessions nearly ended in disaster:- I'd been teaching knots, and set the girls to tying clove hitches round each other's arms. One bright spark decided to tie her rope round her partner's neck, and having done the knot wrongly in the first place, tried to undo it, and the more she tried to pull it undone, the tighter it drew round the girl's throat, and I arrived on the scene just in time to save one Wayfarer from strangulation. On my next Wayfarer session, I taught First Aid, with special emphasis on artificial respiration. I loved the Wayfarers and I think it was my association with them that sparked off the interest in African Guiding that I still have today.
In 1950 I took over a Brownie Pack in Jagersfontein, a small mining town in the Orange Free State, and I recall that my daughter attended her first Brownie meeting at the age of 6 weeks.
It was in Jagersfontein too that I was first warranted as a Guide Guider. As 99% of my Guides were Afrikaans speaking, and as my knowledge of the language was approximately 1% of nil, the running of this Company probably left much to be desired. We had a lot of fun though!
Guiding in Rhodesia started for me in the Mondoro Reserve. It was while going round to African Women's Clubs in the area that I was approached by some of the women, anxious to know if I knew anything about Guiding.
After visiting several companies and packs, I realised that help was sorely needed in this area and on a visit to Salisbury found my way to H.Q. where the then Secretary, Mrs. Sheila Nolan, put me in touch with Mrs. Hale, District Commissioner for Norton. Mondoro was one of the more inaccessible bits of Mrs. Hale's District, and she was delighted to hear of someone on the spot ready to lend a hand. Her satisfaction was short-lived however, as within a few weeks we were transferred to Mrewa, - and this was my first experience of the Girl Guide Grapevine.
On our first day in Mrewa, my husband, a Police Reservist, called at the Police Station to say that his transfer papers would be following, but he was on the spot and available for call-out if needed. The Member-in-Charge had only one comments- "Yes, we knew you were coming. Your wife is going to take charge of the Girl Guides." To say we were flabbergasted is putting it mildly! It was only when we discovered that the District Commissioner, Mrewa, was Sheila Hill, wife of the Member-in-Charge, that we began to see the light.
It was from Mrewa that I attended my first Council meeting. And I've never been so bewildered in my life! It very soon became apparent that Rhodesian Guiding was very different from the South African variety, and there was not a soul I knew who could enlighten me. I must have looked a bit forlorn because a Guider, whom I later got to know well, Miss Marjorie Baker, suddenly appeared and tucked me under her wing, and by the end of the day I was finding Council interesting, instructive and enjoyable.
My next appointment was District Commissioner at Msengezi, and a couple of years later, when we moved to Gwelo I stated firmly that my Guiding life would be confined to a nice, well-behaved little Brownie Pack - preferably as Tawny Owl. Then I met the Provincial Commi3sioner - Mrs. Sheila Pirie - and found that I was Division Commissioner, South Midlands! I had three districts, African and European, and the nicest collection of Guiders imaginable. My years of Guiding in Gwelo provide some of my happiest memories.
Shortly after I took over, a farming family in the District, Mr. and Mrs. Doyle, whose daughter, Penny, was Gwelo's first Queen's Guide, offered the Guides the use of a tumbledown cottage on their farm, about seven miles from town.
It offered a lovely Pack Holiday Home for the Brownies. The grounds were a perfect camp site for the Guides, and it was not long before we had organised work parties of Guides to tackle the necessary repairs and renovations. I recall one Saturday afternoon when I arrived with a work party, bent on painting the bathroom walls. But someone had removed the step ladder. However, my husband is not a guide for nothing! He saw no reason why he shouldn't be a step ladder, and hoisting the smallest Guide up on to his shoulders, he instructed the tallest Guide to stand beside Lim to hold the paint pot, and two more Guides stood in front of him to do the lower half of the wall. By the end of the afternoon the wall was painted. So was my husband, and so were four Guides! I don't think I'll ever forget the expression on Reverend Mother's face when I deposited four pale green boarders on the steps of the Regina Mundi Convent.
The cottage, looking very spick and span, was eventually officially opened by Mrs. Kathleen Rea, then Chief Commissioner, and with about 300 Brownies, Guides, Rangers, Scouts, Cubs, parents, friends and civic dignitaries present, this too was a very memorable occasion.
Forty years of Guiding! What a wealth of memories they hold! If any one reading these yarns doubts it, I'd say, “Come and join us!” You'll find that in Guiding, anything can happen - and usually does!!!
Since writing the above, I have remembered another little episode which I feel has a rather wider interest. It concerns Miss Sutton, former Provincial Commissioner of Natal, whose name is familiar to most of us, for it was she who gave us that lovely hymn, "Look down, 0 Father."
My first memory of her was at a campfire in Johannesburg in 1938. She told us a most delightful story about a family who liked eating "thauthageth and math". So convincingly did she lisp her way through the story that many of us were completely taken in, and remarked afterwards that it must be a great handicap for a person in her position to have such a serious speech impediment.
It was a few days later, when she read the Lesson during Morning Prayers, that we realised her lisp had been purely a campfire act.
Miss Sutton was a grand person, and a connoisseur of story-telling. Another of her stories, about a mouse, is one that I have told to Brownies time and time again over the years.
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