Hungarian Scouts live everywhere from Brazil to Armenia, and nearly two hundred of them celebrated the centenary of the first Tisza raft expedition in 2013 in Jánd. They spent ten days drifting on their own boats. Index also made a film about that tour, in which young people from all over the world talked about how they preserved their Hungarianism in Argentina, Brazil, Boston, Canada and Armenia.
Young people who speak Hungarian with a distinct accent will gather again this year on the banks of “the most Hungarian river”, the Tisza, and will start building rafts in Tesapeake on Friday, July 14, 2023. They set sail on Sunday and finish their voyage in Benek on July 22.
The unique Scout Raft Camp is organized by the Association of Hungarian Scouts Abroad (KMCSSZ), in cooperation with the Hungarian Scout Associations of Hungary, Vojvodina, Upland and Transylvania: They keep the 110-year-old tradition of Hungarian Scouting alive – in everything. Hungarian organization. The nine-day raft camp takes place on the 100-kilometre wild section of Upper Tissa with 250 Hungarian-speaking Circassians from three continents (South and North America, Australia and Europe), in 14-person designed and self-built rafts.
500 barrels, thousands of screws and nails, 27 tons of materials – that’s what we brought here to the river, making 14 rafts with our own hands, partly from traditional materials, but the 21st century. Horn items as well. Fifteen Scouts will populate each raft for six days as we paddle from Tiszabec to Benk, along the Ukrainian border. It’s a huge undertaking, but we’ve had two years to prepare for it
– said Scout Officer Istvan Vamos, the camp leader from Boston, according to their announcement.
Land occupation and garbage collection
The water tour runs along the Ukrainian-Hungarian border, starting in Tiszabecs and ending in Benk. According to the plans, the fleet will cover 15-20 kilometers per day. The framework history of the camp will be the conquest of the country, which will be supplemented by Scout programs. Since the Tisza River is one of the most polluted rivers in Europe, the primary objective of the camp is for participants to collect rubbish and waste in the Tisza during the tour and leave the river clean at the end of the camp.
Raft camps have a long history in Hungarian Scouting, from the 1913 Vág raft expedition to organized tours on the Paraná River in Argentina and the Connecticut River in North America. In Hungary, KMCSSZ last organized a Tisza boat tour in 2013.
