Year 2021 – What a perfect time to be a Scout!
Sri Lanka forced to impose island wide curfew as the COVID-19 withspread rapidly around the country with a heavy amount of casualties rushed to hospitals. Hospitals reached their capacities, ambulances and all the medical vehicles were loaded with casualties, emergency contact numbers were busy due to the high demand. This resulted in people with COVID-19 symptoms to stay back at home helpless as there were no one to help them. People feared to help the victims as the virus is spread via air.
Hashmitha, one of the President Scouts who is currently one of the Assistant Scout Leaders of 39th Colombo Scout Group couldn’t just watch people suffer. “I’d say scouting paved the path for me to get involved in community service” said Hashmitha. Due to the shortage of transportation for COVID patients, many reports showed patients passing awat at home before the ambulance or medical vehicles arrived.
Hashmitha’s instincts kicked in where he hired a vehicle with enough space to take up to five patients at a time. Until he hired a vehicle, Hashmitha used his own vehcile to transport COVID positive patients to hospitals and drop them off after medcation all free of charge. “I just get the urge to do it. I know that what I’m doing is an unnecessary danger to my life, but I just can’t watch people suffer. I mean how can you not want to help out?” shared Hashmitha. Words of a true Scout, one would say. Putting his own life on the line to save more lives a true act of unconditional kindness, bravery and patriotism.
He has shared a small experience with the hope of inspiring his brother scouts to contribute to this great cause. “In one poor family I helped, the father and mother were badly affected by the virus. They were both too ill to get quarantined at home and provide shelter for their daughter. I had to rush them to the hospital because the father was in a critical state, leaving their daughter helpless and alone. She rarely had a proper meal for a day, slept on her own not knowing the status of her parents and was in tears when I occasionally visited her with some food i got from my home.”
Hashmitha has proved that what we learn in Scouting isn’t to leave behind once we leave the troop. These are hard times for everyone. A leap of faith is all you need to join your brother Scout Hashmitha Fernando and many others like him to carry out the will of our founder, Lord Baden Powell.
Compiled by Instructor Lehan Hewawasam
